For once, my blog post title is purely descriptive. I want to write about the phrase "ladies and gentlemen"-- that and nothing else.
The single biggest shock to me in the onslaught of political correctness was when, in 2017, the London Underground announced (no pun intended) that it was no longer going to use the phrase "ladies and gentlemen".
One person suggested I was overreacting, calling the news "trivial". I don't find it trivial at all. Language is a very important battlefield, a truth very well understand by radical social reformers.
My friend Roger Buck has used this formulation when it comes to describing the progressive mindset: "Thou shalt be abstract, thou shalt be abstract, though shalt be abstract."
Everything that is specific and particular is suppressed for fear that somebody will be excluded, somebody will be offended. In the case of "Ladies and gentlemen", the fear is that people who consider themselves neither male nor female (a very small minority) might be upset.
I'm staggered that people can't see where this logic leads, if followed. All colour, charm, and character is to be drained from language, and from social institutions, for the purely negative aspiration of not hurting anybody's feelings. What about the feelings that are hurt by this imposition of sterile sameness?
Read this advice from the Equality Institute (whoever they are), if you have the stomach. It reminds me of the chilling line from Orwell's 1984: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
Thankfully, the phrase still seems to be in common currency...for now.
1) It evokes both the difference and the complementarity of the sexes.
2) It's graceful and genteel. It conjures an image of men in dinner jackets and women in chiffon and taffeta-- even if everybody is wearing jeans and t-shirts.
3) It immediately creates an atmosphere. If somebody clears their throat (or taps on a microphone) and says "Ladies and gentlemen", a strain of formality has been infused into proceedings.
4) It's friendly.
5) Ladies come first. Which is chivalrous. Which is nice.
6) In acknowledging the principal division of any gathering (unless it is same-sex), it acknowledges that we are more than pebbles in a pile.
7) It is a link with the past.
It's a valid point. "They" make these changes, each calculated to be too "trivial" to make a fuss over, but the accumulation is always aimed-at dehumanizing. "Death by a thousand cuts."
ReplyDeleteI don't see how anyone can miss the pattern at this stage. I lament every single one of these attacks on language.
DeleteAbsolutely. Their playbook is very familiar at this stage.
ReplyDelete