Lots of appropriately scornful responses to the charity Oxfam’s Inclusive Language Guide published this week.
First of all, it’s 92 pages long. You can read and download at the link.
I can’t say I’ve scoured every page and possibly some of it may be both sensible and helpful in providing respectful ways to talk about a whole range of complicated issues. That said, this guide is stuffed with all kinds of nonsense. You are what you say and think and feel you are apparently. And tomorrow you may feel differently.
This of course flies in the face of material reality but even some of that can be magicked away. Like being a woman. According to the wisdom of the Guide, anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman. This is cult status magical thinking.
When it comes to sexuality and women, Oxfam blows it completely.
Example:
‘”Non-binary’ is an umbrella term for people who do not identify within a gender binary, i.e. are not a woman or a man.”
Say what? If an adult is not a man or a woman, what is s/he (oops! must use “they”)? A pineapple?
And of course, there is all the nonsense about sex “assigned at birth” and the use of the totally unnecessary neologism “cis”.
We’ve seen all this before and by the time you have sorted it all out, there will be more gender and woo to contend with. Seems to me that this does nothing by way of helping people of any stripe.
The facts remain the same: We are all male or female; No one has ever changed sex; Sex matters (and in many places and circumstances – e.g. where Oxfam does a deal of its work – it matters a whole lot), and, We are all heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. Unless we start with that, everything ends up in confusion and obfuscation. Perhaps that’s the point – create confusion, fill everyone with anxiety, and erode the boundaries so we are all the same and are treated “equally”.
Inclusion means Intrusion and Exclusion
With this guide, sex-based concepts are out the window. And that – of course – given the state of our violent misogynist sexist world is not at all helpful.
Read the first and last lines of this statement as the guide gives with one hand and snatches back with the other.
Treating everyone the same is a ten-year-old’s idea of fairness.
Oxfam has forgotten that basic tenet of education and justice: Equity does not mean treating everyone the same. It means giving each person and each class what is needed for all to have equal opportunity. Ignoring the needs of women and girls and their needs as an oppressed class is actually discrimination and injustice.
By promoting a definition of woman as anyone who identifies as a woman Oxfam makes an absolute mockery of all issues relating to girls and women. This is a bit rich coming from an organization that has recently been found guilty of egregious sexual abuse and exploitation and a failure to learn from past episodes of the same.
And then there’s Gay, Lesbian, and Homosexual – a bit of an afterthought after all the gender nonbinary woo. Read this blather and notice the overlaid baby blue and pink “trans” flags at the bottom. Variations of that symbol are all over the document. It’s as if Oxfam has unilaterally decided that this divisive flag is a universally approved symbol and proof of goodness.
The effect of all this gobbledegook is to erase the very foundations of language norms and create confusion. perhaps that is the intention. If so, this is a very effective document.
Oxfam abolishes the word “mother”.
It’s not inclusive says @oxfamgb
No it’s not “inclusive” it describes a specific thing. That’s what words are for. 🤦♀️https://t.co/kOuw3Oz3ob pic.twitter.com/L0TUvOsaKW
— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) March 15, 2023
This diagram from Vincent Fitzpatrick conveys a sense of the power of the word “Mother’ in world languages. Starting with the origin of Proto Indo-European language we can see how language changed and spread over time and space. And also how the word for the powerful concept of “mother” retained much of its original sound.
Might be better for Oxfam not to mess with that.
I don’t know how much Oxfam paid which consultants to produce this bafflegab (it reeks of the discredited StonewallUK and its homophobia and misogyny) but it should ask for a refund. Gammon and spinach meet ideological gobbledegook and get paid.
I suppose I’ll now have to stop praying to Mother Earth, or, if you are of that persuasion, Mother Mary! Then again, no one will hear us! So that’s all right then, the voices in my head are safe for now!
While you are struggling with praying to Birthing Person Earth don’t forget Birthing Person Nature!
WTF…is that international?
It’s produced by the Oxfam outlet in the UK.
Holy Birthing person of God it’s a birthing person lode of tosh.
Or is that just me being a birthing person hen?
(Ooops! – hen – that will be a problem. What if there’s a male chicken who identifies as a hen?)
But then – necessity is the Birthing Person of Invention – or so they say – so we’ll think up a new item from the bottomless cesspool of linguistic ideology to cover that situation.
It is nonsense and one of the many reasons I refuse to donate to charities anymore. The cause of Oxfam was noble but it has become twisted in incorrectness. What we have now is what we let them get away with, by being tolerant and accepting. What was seen as a whim and a fad has turned into the nine-headed hydra. Gender is not assigned at birth it is what you are born with. And not every little boy who tries on his mum’s shoes at some point or wants to wear a dress is crying out to be a girl. I was what was called a tomboy as a child, but I grew up, married and had children, as a woman which is what I am, even if I don’t like dresses much. Children express themselves through play and it is just play. If we listened to our children instead of labeling them, we might understand how dangerous adult impositions on young minds really is. So hell with Oxfam. This is not equality. It is simply appalling. Tolerance and understanding are not achieved by being intolerant and bigoted. Now I shall have a pineapple.
Sorry, I should have put eatingtheraj.wordpress.com!!
I should only write comments when the tea sinks in
Well put. Thank you. A nine-headed hydra says it well. So many things wrong with so many aspects of this it is always hard to know where to begin.
Perhaps we should ask Chatbot what to do….
Off to do that right now – just for the hell of it. But having wrestled with the pablum that emerges from its digital depths I think I know what I will get. It is a minefield of confident inaccuracy and a swampland of moral certainty and high-mindedness. And when wrestled to the ground for some getting something wrong, it will offer an unctuous apology. But then repeat the same mistake ten minutes later. I suppose that makes it rather human!
Just think of the money that was wasted on this gobbledygook and where it could have been spent to actually help people who need it. Pathetic.
Oxfam and all the other techno-robot human reality deniers can say what they want but they ALL had a mother. Every single one of them Perhaps SHE (and it was ALWAYS a she) loved, abandoned, abused them. Perhaps they hate, envy, resent her for good reason or none but she cannot be denied. SHE was still their mother.
Oxfam needs to take it’s misogyny somewhere and shove it.
And to think this group with its now well-documented history of sexual abuse and exploitation (n Haiti and then the Congo) is now moralizing about language.
Sickening hypocrisy.
Yes. This is true and can be rather angry-making.
Any ideas about what to do about it? Other than managing the steam from one’s ears I mean?
And thanks for the comment.
I have this visual of a “person” (is that still allowed?) sitting down with an abacus and feeding in all the criteria in order to come up with what you should refer to ? as. I have no patience with such rubbish. How did we get to such a place? Does anyone really think this can help anyone in any way? But who wants to hear the opinion of an old um…what am I again?
Mankind is verboten but people and persons are acceptable. In fact, the word “people’ occurs 444 times in the Guide. “Person” is used 104 times. So you are safe there.
On the “old’ here is the guideline:
“WHY
To describe people of a particular
age group.
PEOPLE OVER/UNDER X,
ELDERLY PEOPLE, OLDER
PEOPLE, ELDERS, YOUNG
PEOPLE
Write about older people in a way that
affords respect and dignity, and avoid
phrases which are homogenizing or
patronising. The same goes for writing
about young people.
WE AVOID
the elderly, seniors, youth.”
And as for what you are, friend, you are what you identify as because we must respect that. So if you identify as a woman then you are definitely a woman.
If you change your mind you can do that too because identities can be fluid and we must respect that fact.
(I have a friend in England who said she was going to enter herself in the local garden show competition as a cauliflower. She changed her mind over Christmas and became a brussel sprout because it was more festive and seasonal.)
And of course “elderly people” does nothing to correct the sour, dismissive, marginalizing whiff given off by the term “elderly.”
Why can’t we just settle for plain English and say idle, good-for-nothing, work-shy, coffin-dodgers? Or old farts?