Times - EU withdraws ‘inclusive language’ guide that lacked Christmas spirit

[highame]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eu-withdraws-inclusive-language-guide-that-lacked-christmas-spirit-bbbnqszcr

A bit of Christmas cheer (sorry share tokens don't seem to work for me)

Brussels has been forced to withdraw “immature” guidelines instructing EU officials to “update” their language by not referring to Christmas and asking “what’s your pronoun?” to ensure that “everyone is valued and recognised”. The new “guidelines for inclusive communication” aimed to provide practical advice for those in the European Commission who speak about EU policies in public. However the guide, running to 32 pages, was scrapped after an internal rebellion by civil servants.

Helena Dalli, the European Commissioner for equality, said the guidelines, which were issued around four weeks ago, “clearly need more work”. “Concern was raised with regards to some examples provided,” she said in a statement. “It is not a mature document.”

That last few sentences apply to every argument I've heard in this debate

So it was inclusive of everyone except Christians- we are not even allowed to mention one of our major festivals.
Much as women are excluded, labelled "cis" against our wishes, and told we cannot even keep the word "women" to describe our sex class.
This modern inclusive crap is about as exclusive as it's possible to get.
Yay for the EU civil service (not a sentence I ever expected to write!)

How come being "inclusive" always means restricting people and excluding things?

Weird.

How about we try being "tolerant" instead? Just a thought.

It tickles me that the times referred to it as an "immature" document as opposed to a premature one.

Clearly, it's both, but that did make me chuckle.

Does anyone know what the actual concerning examples were?

Needs more work - no rip it up and chuck it in the bin

The Christmas thing is so weird. Who expects to go anywhere in the world and thinks people should mentioning their major cultural and religious festivals in order to be polite?

Here’s a shareToken. The guidelines sound like utter bollocks.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/61ecc044-51cc-11ec-a5fe-8f0d6a1c517d?shareToken=421fcab656e214f8add2c86f37182491

Fgs

I have to say I live in a very diverse town with people from all sorts of religious backgrounds and in my 20 odd years of working/shopping etc in said town not once has any one had a problem with talking about Xmas.

Many a non Christian shop keeper has wished me a merry Xmas. I've been spoken to about the eid plans of others etc no offence taken on either side.

I have 2 dds in school and no parent has gone storming in demanding Xmas not be discussed. Guess what their kids participated in the nativity plays as well.

This article makes it sound like it's all life one of those face book posts that circulated every year where someone kicks off about Xmas.

“the guide […] was scrapped after an internal rebellion by civil servants.”

We don’t know their reasons, of course, but these words make me feel optimistic. I hope there will come a time when objecting to obsessive word-policing will be so normal that they’ll give up pushing for it.

I don’t know if it’s the pronouns or Christmas they rebelled against, but either way good. The whole US “Happy holidays” thing has always annoyed me. Fine if it happens organically, then I’ll have to accept it, but it shouldn’t be shoved on us from the top.

Straw poll: have any of the women on here (or any women you know) ever felt that the term "man-made" was objectional?

I'm just wondering who does object to many of these perfectly normal, everyday words and phrases. I've never known a Muslim (except perhaps the odd unrepresentative extremist) object to references to Christmas. This all seems to be an extension of white people making decisions on what black people ought to be offended by.

Commission officials were told to use the designation LGBTIQ rather than gay or lesbian and never to use the term “homosexual”.

“Be careful about the use of gay and lesbian as nouns, which may be considered inappropriate,” the now withdrawn advice said. It added: “The term ‘homosexual’ can be considered offensive because it follows the medical model and is sometimes used by anti-gay activists.”

Willow in the comments after the articke gay men said they prefer the word homosexual.

The only reason they want the word homosexual removed is because it refers to same SEX attraction and the genderists can't have that.

@Whatwouldscullydo

Fgs

I have to say I live in a very diverse town with people from all sorts of religious backgrounds and in my 20 odd years of working/shopping etc in said town not once has any one had a problem with talking about Xmas.

Many a non Christian shop keeper has wished me a merry Xmas. I've been spoken to about the eid plans of others etc no offence taken on either side.

I have 2 dds in school and no parent has gone storming in demanding Xmas not be discussed. Guess what their kids participated in the nativity plays as well.

This article makes it sound like it's all life one of those face book posts that circulated every year where someone kicks off about Xmas.

I live very near a mosque. I receive Christmas cards from several Muslim neighbours and the local school celebrates all the different religious festivals. I'm an atheist but celebrate Christmas as being part of the culture of the country I live in.

I sometimes think the people who come up with these ideas don't actually know any "normal" people from backgrounds that differ from their own.

@Whatsnewpussyhat

The only reason they want the word homosexual removed is because it refers to same SEX attraction and the genderists can't have that.

This with sleigh bells on. Genderists are so transparent.

The only reason they want the word homosexual removed is because it refers to same SEX attraction and the genderists can't have that.

Yes, exactly- you can't rebrand 'gay' with a straightforward and clear word like this knocking about!

It's so disingenuous when reports and advice say "gay people hate that horrid overly medicalised term". Medical, as in a scientific and logically functional term, then.

As a lesbian, I never ever called myself a homosexual before all of this, but now it's my preferred description as they've rebranded "lesbian" to mean something different.

Because the ideology has no logically coherent definition, they must change the definition of the globally accepted meanings of words.

Woman now includes men and the gay includes straight people.

And homosexuals must be now be LGBTQ++++ people and not separate and distinct from the T and Q

@DdraigGoch

Straw poll: have any of the women on here (or any women you know) ever felt that the term "man-made" was objectional?

I'm just wondering who does object to many of these perfectly normal, everyday words and phrases. I've never known a Muslim (except perhaps the odd unrepresentative extremist) object to references to Christmas. This all seems to be an extension of white people making decisions on what black people ought to be offended by.

Honestly I don't think that in many cases the term "man" as in human-kind was ever a really problematic usage. It just depended on people understanding that it had two meanings, which they did.

I find it quite odd when I see young people read older things and they can't quite get their head around the fact that it had two distinctive meanings. Though part of that is just about a real bias toward reading only contemporary materials in school.

People tend to severely overestimate the extent to which language supposedly prevents us for thinking our own thoughts about things.

I find it quite odd when I see young people read older things and they can't quite get their head around the fact that it had two distinctive meanings.

It's partly because of the drive to stop using it in its original unsexed sense. The less it's used like that, the more the remaining uses look like they mean "male".

The first problem was that the old word "wer" for males fell out of use, for whatever reason, leaving males called just "men". (Makes sense if you don't see women as people ie "men"?) So "man" had two meanings.

But rather than going back and fixing that by resurrecting "wer" or something based on it for males, so reclaiming "man" from them, we compounded the problem. "Human" changed from an adjective ("relating to man") into "human being" and thence to "human", and we started using that as an unambiguously sex-neutral "man" substitute.

But once that got adopted, leading to "man" in isolation being increasingly used for its sexed meaning, this then led to trying to turn every single "man" compound and phrase into something else too. Doh.

(Kind of reminds me of the mess of trying to use "woman" for something other than "adult human female"...)