Don’t want to start a debate on LGBT/genderism/non-genderism itself (we have many other threads,) but just want to ask about the **practicality **of this:
Does this mean that police will not be allowed to describe a suspect as a man or a woman, and can only say “person of interest” or something non-gendered like that? That wouldn’t help the public in identifying the suspect. Are medical professionals allowed to say that a patient is a man or a woman? (makes a big difference if a patient needs a vasectomy or hysterectomy, for instance.)
If a child goes missing, are the authorities allowed to say that it’s a boy missing or a girl missing, or does it have to be non-gendered pronoun child? Again, that wouldn’t help the public in finding the missing kid at all. If a school prided itself on increasing its representation of women (i.e., “our student body used to be only 12% women, but now is 45%!”) then doesn’t this mean they couldn’t convey such a fact anymore?
It sounds like from a practical standpoint, the cons significantly outweigh the pros, especially in light of all the names, policies, practices that would have to be changed.
If this is what you’re talking about (“Berkeley plans to remove gendered pronouns from its municipal code”), then I fail to see how it would affect any of your examples at all.
AFAICT, the purpose is simply to make Berkeley’s own code of municipal regulations non-gender-specific in its language. That is, the code would presumably refer to “firefighters” rather than “firemen” and “firewomen”, “mail carriers” rather than “mailmen”, “meter readers” instead of “meter maids”, singular “they” rather than “he” or “she” as a gender-indefinite singular pronoun, and so on. Nowhere, AFAIK, is it proposed to restrict what municipal employees can say about the gender of individuals when it’s pertinent to what they’re talking about.
Is there some right-wing huffery-puffery making the rounds claiming that Berkeley police henceforth won’t be allowed to mention the gender of a suspect, or something? If so, that sounds extremely implausible, but please link to it so we can check if it has any discernible merit (and if not, at least we’ll get a good laugh out of it).
It sounds like you have no idea what you’re talking about with respect to Berkeley’s policies. No link, no description of what Berkeley is actually doing… nothing.
Berkeley is removing gender-specific language from its municipal code. This only affects about 40 or so words. “Fireman” is now “firefighter”, “manhole” is now “maintenance hole”, and so on. The updates will cost the city $600.
A police officer can certainly refer to someone as a man. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to.
Have Republicans take the issue to it’s farthest, illogical conclusion and insist that this is what is happening.
Have it get distorted, further exaggerated with a pile of outright lies on top as the story makes its way through the right wing media and blog circus.
“We’re changing Fireman to Firefighter in our policies and documentation.”
becomes
“You won’t be able to refer to someone as a man anymore, they’re making it illegal.”
And “Robinson’s office estimates it will cost only $600 to implement the change to the municipal code.” prompted a long discussion on a local radio station about how that must mean $600/per taxpayer- because $600 total makes no sense ,according to one of the hosts and a bunch of callers.
Of course $600 total is perfectly reasonable total for what amounts to a search for : “he, she , him ,her, his , hers” and replacing them with " “the Title" , "“that Title” or "“the Title’s” as appropriate. My guess is that Berkeley went from “fireman” to “firefighter” years ago, so actual titles wouldn’t need to be changed now.
