29 APRIL 2019

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Article from BTNews 29 APRIL 2019

COMMENT: How far do you go with political correctness?

What’s with the latest fad “gender neutral”? Have we gone definition mad?! 

Last week BTN highlighted that United Airlines would be the first US carrier to offer non-binary gender options throughout all booking channels in addition to giving passengers the option to select the title "Mx" during the reservation process. 

Now it seems that the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine has announced it would give all vessels a gender-neutral identity as ships' signs featuring ‘she’ were vandalised.  Is a marginal section of society winning? 

According to no less than The Guardian old sailors used to answer with the sexist joke “Like a woman a ship is unpredictable”. 

Does this all come down to national pride.  “Land of Hope and Glory, mother of the free” refers to Pax Britannia as being female, yet Germans call their country “The Fatherland”. 

And with sport we have some strange occurrences.  Women play just three tennis sets at the Majors yet get same remuneration as men whose matches can last up to five really hard sessions.  With soccer the UK nationals offer excellent coverage of ladies football but League One and League Two very little exposure, whilst the attendance figures for the men (and presumably readership) is far higher.  The Women's Super League final on Sunday attracted just 5,265 at the AMEX Stadium.  One could also argue that since Scotland has its own TV, radio and newspapers why is the coverage duplicated at National level. 

The big news story over the weekend was Storm Hannah a violent outburst quickly over and forgotten.  But why “Hannah”?  Why not George or perhaps Amir. 

The Sunday Times summed it all up very neatly saying perhaps it was time to reconsider the term “Mother of Parliaments” after all the chaos over the last few months.  After what we have been through, and are going through, even is this term acceptable?

How far do you go with political correctness?  Are we posturing to a minority?

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OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)

All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum


A Reader, Washington, DC

You are right and thanks for having the courage to say that openly (unlike me). It's the LGBT Mafia at work, terrorism the majority that doesn't support them.


Allan Schoenherr, Prague, Czech Republic

Not even League 1 and League 2, I had trouble finding online coverage of the Easter weekend Championship games in the UK media, despite it being something like the 5th or 6th most supported league in Europe! Also, yes I get confused now that its not referred to as "Womens Football" or "Womens Cricket" etc and think I've missed a match! As for the United announcement, have they asnswered yet how they will handle this for interline tickets and/or condeshare flights where other operators may not accept the same?


Catherine Chetwynd, London

All political correctness drives me nuts and Mx falls into the same category as describing a human taking a meeting as a chair. I'd be quite happy to be described as chairman or at a stretch, chairwoman, which doesn't scan


Gerry Stevens, Isleworth

Your questions are pertinent.In my view it's all a load of utter claptrap !!!


Richard Davis,

Storms are named bu the Met Office alphabetically and alternate between male and female names. Fortunately we didn't get to Storm Malcolm, which was on the list for 2016/7


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