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Political correctness

Avoid feminised nouns

Avoid something-man nouns

Avoid gender assumptive language

Gender neutral pronouns

Using gendered pronouns

Using gender neutral pronouns

Gender neutral names of people

Using he she

Racism homophobia religion sexism

Political correctness gone too far

Political correctness

There has been a big push over the last few decades to eliminate politically ‘incorrect’ language from writing and speech. The vast majority of incorrect language is based around gender issues. Take this sentence:

Call a repairman please; tell him our fridge is broken.

Now, if you read this sentence literally, the person is asking someone to call a repairer who is specifically male, both by using the noun ‘repairman’ and by referring to them using the pronoun ‘him’. Someone having a half-hearted go at being politically correct might change the sentence somewhat:

Call a repairer please; tell him our fridge is broken.

Now the ‘repairman’ noun has been changed to a gender neutral noun ‘repairer’. However, it doesn’t really help, since the repairer is still referred to as a ‘him’. What needs to happen is for the pronoun ‘him’ to be changed to something gender neutral:

Call a repairer please; tell them our fridge is broken.

Aha! We now have a politically correct sentence.

You can solve 90 percent of your problems by making sure you use gender neutral nouns and pronouns.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Avoid feminised nouns