Farewell to freshman - Washington State to remove 40,000 pieces of legislation of 'gender biased language'...but manhole survives

This week new laws will come into effect in Washington State to form the final piece of a six-year effort to rewrite all state laws using gender-neutral vocabulary.



The politically correct crusade will see terms such as 'fisherman', 'freshman' and even 'journeyman plumber' replaced with 'fisher', 'first-year-student' and 'journey-level plumber'.



Signalling an end to hundreds of years of accepted language, the move will now see the state's copious laws, including thousands of words and phrases re-written at tax-payers expense.

Fishers: Under new Washington State laws fishermen have now to be referred to as 'fishers'

Lawmakers have passed a series of bills since 2007 to root out gender bias from Washington statutes, though a 1983 state mandate required that all laws be written in gender-neutral terms unless a specification of gender was intended.



Indeed, the laws will change many words in use that date back to when women did not even work on police forces or the idea of a lady on a fishing boat was unheard of.

The measure approved by the Legislature this year mandated that references to 'his' be changed to 'his or her.' Other nouns like 'clergyman' must be changed to 'clergy.'



'This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman,' said Democratic state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle when the law was passed in April.

Gender Neutral: This child will no longer learn penmanship - but instead will be taught handwriting according to new gender neutral Washington State law

The new gender-neutral references will now demand and enforce linguistically 'handwriting' in place of 'penmanship,' and 'signal operator' for 'signalman.'



'There's no good reason for keeping our legal terms anachronistic and with words that do not respect our current contemporary times,' Kohl-Welles, the 475-page bill's sponsor, told Reuters.



The state likely won't change the words 'airmen' and 'seaman,' for example, because of objections by the state's Washington Military Department, he said.



Civil engineering terms such as 'man hole' and 'man lock,' also will not be changed because no common-sense substitutes could easily be found, Thiessen said.



Nearly 3,500 Washington state code sections, out of a total of about 40,000 have been tediously scrubbed of gender bias, although most involve adding pronouns 'she' and 'her' to augment the existing 'he' and 'his,' Thiessen said.



The bill passed the Democrat-controlled state House 70-22 on April 9 and unanimously cleared the state Senate on February 8 before being signed by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee - and now past the end of the fiscal year on July 1st is now law.



Washington State's war on sexist language: Translation guide to gender neutral words...and some which survived Fireman - Firefighter

Policeman - Police Officer

Ombudsman - Ombuds

Watchmen - Security Guards

Freshman - First-year students

Journeyman Plumber - Journey-level plumber And some that are still okay to use....

Airmen

Seaman

Man Hole

Conman

Family Man



Crispin Thurlow, a sociolinguist and associate professor of language and communication at the University of Washington-Bothell praised the project in an interview with Fox News in April.



'Changing words can change what we think about the world around us,' he said. 'These tiny moments accrue and become big movements.'



However, some while maybe admirable, the project has thrown up some interesting questions for Kyle Thiessen.



While 'manhole' and 'manlock' are not easily replaced, it does not substitutes from being suggested.



Such as 'utility hole' and 'air lock serving as a decompression chamber for workers.' However, Thiessen said that these were left alone to avoid confusion.



Washington state is the nation's fourth to boast of eliminating gender bias from its official lexicon, following in the footsteps of Florida, North Carolina and Illinois, Kohl-Welles said.



Other states that have passed gender-neutral constitutional mandates include California, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Utah, Kohl-Welles said. At least nine other states are currently considering gender-neutral legislation, she said.

'Words matter,' said Liz Watson, a National Women's Law Center senior adviser. 'This is important in changing hearts and minds.'