As a person who earns his (modest!) living from assembling words for the enjoyment/irritation of English-speaking readers in Mallorca and parts of the United Kingdom, I am becoming extremely careful regarding the ways that I express myself in print so as to avoid all manner of folk who seem determined to take offence at almost anything nowadays. This is not about writing anything particularly unpleasant, or indeed a stray - ‘…ist/ism’ to any degree, just ordinary stuff about people and what they/we say and do in the pursuance of our ordinary, and let’s face it, our mostly dull lives.
However, I have recently noticed that there is an ever-growing list of supposedly ‘banned’ words that certain people find “inappropriate” or on occasions, supposedly “demeaning”. Before your verbal imaginations begin to work overtime on the awful words that I (and other writers) might use, rest assured we are not talking of expressions that might make you faint, but everyday words and expressions that some sensitive souls among us apparently find either “undermining or belittling.” For instance, no leading lady worth that label in the golden age of Hollywood would have balked at being called “glamorous”. But Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford were not working in a modern local authority offices, where according to an employment tribunal - the term is both “undermining and belittling” and “inappropriate”.
Do not think for a moment that I am a person that would want people to be demeaned or insulted by sexist descriptions of any sort, but come on - this type of nonsense does nothing to eradicate crude sexism from everyday-life - in fact, it probably does quite the opposite. I also noticed that a female Head Teacher who mentioned in passing, that the fact that a male sports-teacher was “quite fit” has been lambasted by teaching unions and all-and-sundry and the handsome ‘flat-belly’ involved was awarded £9,000 in compensation. Which I suppose goes to prove that this isn’t just a one-way gender-nonsense position, taken by organisations who are content to throw public money away - given any half-baked insult, provocation or joke uttered by just about anyone it seems.
I could list even more ludicrous examples of supposed verbal discrimination of both men and women, but - sometimes the ‘joke’ examples I have used, has and does, made real cases of disrespect and sexism, harder to drive home to the public all the time that silly and infantile supposed examples are placed before a disbelieving population. Indeed, there are many cases in the legal pipeline that I believe are linked to accusations of well-known (and widely used) phrases being described as “dismissive and stereotyping”.
Indeed, as someone who is fully behind any clear-out of this sort of thing - I would like to protest at BBC Radio 2 Sunday Morning presenter, Michael Ball, continually using the following form of words when greeting his listeners - as in - “Hello and good morning… my lovelies.” Come on dear reader, am I the only person listening to the wireless on a Sunday morning who doesn’t appreciate Mr Ball being quite so uninvitingly intimate regarding my loveliness, without being specifically asked to do so by me and his other listeners? Indeed, I’ve a good mind to report him to someone, but - unlike so many other people seeking to be upset or insulted on a regular and tedious basis - I really wouldn’t know where to start. Unhappily, it seems that I am practically alone in this regard.