Political correctness gone mad
by hazel from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5024X)
I belong to a trade union with the rather silly name of Prospect. It used to have the entirely sensible and descriptive name "Institution of Professional Civil Servants" (IPCS). Then, when privatisation meant that a lot of us weren't civil servants any more, it became the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists (IPMS). Why they now call it "Prospect", I have no idea, but it's the type of change that has affected many other trade unions in the UK.
I receive a monthly broadsheet from them by email. In this month's issue, there was an article suggesting that we all show our solidarity with the LGBT+ community by putting our "preferred pronoun" in our email signature. The idea is that, as trans and "non-binary" people need to do this, they will feel less embarrassed if everyone else does it too.
I have nothing against trans people. I have seen quite a few on television that seem to be exactly what they say they are and you would never guess that they were ever anything different. But for the rest of us to have to state our gender explicitly just to make this tiny minority feel at home strikes me as totally ridiculous.
As to people who want to call themselves "they", I can only assume that they are very poorly educated and never learned at school that "they" is a plural pronoun and cannot be applied to an individual.
I receive a monthly broadsheet from them by email. In this month's issue, there was an article suggesting that we all show our solidarity with the LGBT+ community by putting our "preferred pronoun" in our email signature. The idea is that, as trans and "non-binary" people need to do this, they will feel less embarrassed if everyone else does it too.
I have nothing against trans people. I have seen quite a few on television that seem to be exactly what they say they are and you would never guess that they were ever anything different. But for the rest of us to have to state our gender explicitly just to make this tiny minority feel at home strikes me as totally ridiculous.
As to people who want to call themselves "they", I can only assume that they are very poorly educated and never learned at school that "they" is a plural pronoun and cannot be applied to an individual.