LETTER: Neutral terms

By Richard J. Palyo Henderson

5 years ago

Pedestrians walk past a manhole cover for a sewer in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, July 18, 2019. ... — Pedestrians walk past a manhole cover for a sewer in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, July 18, 2019. Soon students in Berkeley, California will have to pledge to "collegiate Greek system residences" instead of sororities or fraternities and city workers will have to refer to manholes as "maintenance holes." Officials in the liberal city this week passed an ordinance to replace some terms with gender-neutral words in the city code. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

I read in Saturday’s Review-Journal (“Berkeley strips gender from terms”) that officials in Berkeley, California, are stripping gender from certain terms. “Manholes” will become “maintenance holes,” “man-made” will be “human-made” and masculine and feminine pronouns will become “they” and “them.”

Well, I certainly hope they will be changing “The League of Women Voters” to “The League of Human Voters” and phrases such as “women’s rights” to “human rights.” How can we live in this society if we label restrooms as “men” and “women”? All restrooms will need to have the word “human” on them. But men’s bathrooms have urinals in them which women — sorry, “humans” — can’t use, so we must replace them all with toilets.

I certainly hope they will be addressing the words “management,” “manicurist,” “manipulate” and “mandatory,” not to mention the other thousands of words that have caused such division in the greatest country on Earth.

God bless America. I hope I can say that.