Category Archives: Political Correctness

Three years ago my wife came to me with a stack of papers and some textbooks. Can you believe this? she asked. They are calling women birthing people. She explained that in the curriculum for her certification as a birth doula it was now de rigueur to refer to mothers with this ridiculous-sounding neologism. Itll never catch on, I told her. She disagreed.

My wife was right. When Rep. Cori Bush made headlines last week with a speech and a follow-up tweet about birthing people, the Missouri Democrat was not speaking in a vacuum. The pro-abortion group NARAL was there to explain that Bush was simply being inclusive. Nor is she the first member of Congress to refer publicly to birthing people. The ludicrous phrase is becoming ubiquitous, not just in activist circles but in the medical profession.

On the Web site of Harvard Medical School, you can read about how advancing something called maternal justice is essential for all birthing people. The National Institutes of Health, the New York State Department of Health, the apparently real California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, the Hawaii Department of Human Services and even the city of Milwaukee all present helpful information about this hitherto-unknown category of human beings. Countless state legislators across the country have introduced bills or resolutions that include the preposterous terminology.

They should all be on their toes. You never know when yesterdays woke terminology will be considered insufficiently inclusive. The Health Resources and Services Administration corrects this oversight by referring to pregnant and birthing people, in case anyone were to make the mistake of assuming that men, in addition to being unable to give birth, cannot get pregnant. (Dont even get me started on chestfeeding, which also appears in seemingly respectable medical books.)

The rise of birthing people and chestfeeding follows a well-established pattern: Universities carry the terminology from once-fringe activist groups to the professional classes during what passes for their education. Graduates bring it with them to hospitals, law firms, big business and, of course, politics. A new consensus about apparently settled questions such as the definition of motherhood is established before ordinary Americans are even aware that new terms exist, much less that the liberal establishment wants to mandate their use.

Birthing people should be a line in the sand for all decent and rational Americans. It is not a question of so-called political correctness, which is often a simple matter of politeness. The phrase is not only an insult to mothers everywhere; it is an attack on reason itself. Everyone knows that women who give birth to children are mothers. Those who suggest otherwise are either living in a fantasy world or the kind of people who get their jollies by forcing others to say that 2+2 = 5, which is the ambition of every totalitarian.

Words mean things. We already have a name for people who give birth to children. That name is mothers. If your definition of justice requires you to invent jargon to describe things for which there are already words in every language ever observed in human history, you need to find a new one.

In a few weeks, my wife will give birth to our fourth child. We pray that everything goes well and that she and baby Sylvia are happy and healthy. It is impossible to say what our little girls life will look like in 20 years, but one thing that is absolutely certain is that she will be loved by her father, her siblings and the person who gave birth to her: her mother.

That word is not a slur.

Matthew Walther is editor of The Lamp magazine.

Twitter: @MatthewWalther

Originally posted here:

Sorry, but they're called 'mothers' not 'birthing people' - New York Post

media updates Talisa Jansen van Rensburg dives into the importance of emotional correctness in the media industry.

The media has come a long way, especially when considering the type of information that should and should not be put out into the public, the infiltration of filter bubbles and the rise of fake news. But with all of these things happening, audiences are becoming more aware of the effects certain content holds.

It is no longer about what word or phrase you decide to use, it is rather about how you are going to use that phrase or word. For example, are you calling a person overly sensitive online because you want to reach out and help them, or are you saying they are overly sensitive; aka, just stating a fact and not interested in helping that person grow at all?

This all ties into your emotional correctness, and its something that all members of the media need to be wary of when distributing their content. This is not to be confused with political correctness, which is an entirely different story.

For example, when a person says that they are part of the LGBTQ+ community, it would be incorrect to assume their sexual orientation just because they support members of this group. Instead, if you are curious, the right thing to do is to be politically correct by asking, Is your partner here to join us today?

This way, you are not assuming anyones orientation and you leave it up to the person to disclose as much or as little information that would like to share.

Emotional correctness can be viewed as the tone, the feeling, how we say what we say, the respect and compassion we show one another. This is according to Sally Kohn, one of the leading progressive voices in America. She had a TED Talk back in 2013 where she spoke on being emotionally correct in the media industry.

So, although a person might not be politically correct, they do need to act on and say everything out of a place of respect and love for others. This will lead to people actually listening to what media members have to say.

What this means is that there is no way to get a person involved in an important conversation if they are not listening to what you have to say. So, in the media industry, if you are trying to be politically correct by adding facts and data to your content, you should know that will not be enough to get people involved especially if they are not willing to hear you in the first place.

Members of the media need to shift their focus on emotional correctness by finding compassion for each other and they can do this by building strong and reliable relationships with the community they serve.

For example, Heart FM takes time to communicate with its listeners by asking them important questions in a subtle and respectful manner. This way, the radio hosts remain educated on how people are feeling about various topics within the media, such as asking people how it feels to get the new Covid vaccine, which can help those who are yet to experience it. Stating the question like they did allow them to be both politically correct and emotionally correct at the same.

*Image courtesy from Heart FM

It is essential that the people working in media understand that the role they play in informing the public is huge. Incorporating emotional correctness will allow for more people to actually become accustomed to the news you need to share with your audience.

This way, the industry will be able to get more people to listen and engage with the really important information that is being shared with the world.

What are your thoughts on emotional correctness? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below.

Emotional correctness Emotional correctness in the media industry Media industry and emotional correctness Political correctness and emotional correctness Political correctness and emotional correctness in the media industry

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The importance of emotional correctness in the media Media News - Media Update

Over one hundred years ago, two Gujaratis met in London Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Two more contrasting personalities could not be imagined and the fallout for the Indian subcontinent was contained in that epic encounter.

Some 50 years later, another set of Gujaratis would meet with consequences that were creative for Indian democracy and the Indian academy. Political scientist Rajni Kothari and sociologist Dhiru Lal Sheth came together with a few other intellectuals, to author a novel experiment that would be called The Centre (The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, CSDS) in 1964. Ashis Nandy and Giri Deshingkar would join the group later. While the sensibilities of the others were urban, Dhirubhais were distinctly rural.

In the mid-1960s Indian democracy and the Indian academy were undergoing a churning. The university system with its departmental silos was working to produceivory tower intellectuals, reproducing post-enlightenment European style knowledge and Western models, this group felt. Indian civilisation and society called for fresh understanding drawing upon its own resources.

Both Kothari and Sheth reflected on the social change that was produced in the wake of postcolonial democracy. The old picture of democracy and caste was redundant, they insisted. Louis Dumonts homo hierarchicus thesis that produced a ritual hierarchical theory of caste had given way to newer forms of exclusion. The backward castes, so called, were demonstrating a new horizontalisation of the traditional system that came from a combination of land, wealth and power. Political scientists were struggling with new characterisations. These were bullock capitalists, argued the politicial scientists Lloyd and Susan Rudolph.

Sheth argued that Indian sociology was in the grip of traditional theory and provided no room for the outcaste and the aboriginal. It had become blind to the emergence of new forms of discrimination, new refugees of development and the underclass.

The political scenario had, to begin with, been referred to as a one party dominant system by Rajni Kothari. The Congresss hegemony, however, was already eroding. The top-heavy Indian state, with its Soviet-style socialist accoutrements and dams-as-temples, was wearing thin.

Civil society was slowly coming into its own as a set of powerful non-state actors and began asking fresh questions about development and democracy. It sought to repair the rupture between knowledge and action.

Lokayan literally, dialogue of the people was launched in 1980 and brought together academics and activists, including Smitu Kothari and Vijay Pratap. It would go on to win the Right Livelihood Award, characterised as the Peoples Nobel Prize. Rajni Kothari emphasised in his acceptance speech, Lokayan operates from a basic premise arising out of its perception and understanding of the crisis of our times: that it is fundamentally an intellectual crisis, a crisis of ideas, a crisis of human knowledge, both generally but especially in the social arena.

Rajni Kothari. Photo: CSDS.in

When I joined the CSDS faculty in 2002, I was happy to become part of its old-world culture with extended lunches and discussions. Working on the steering committees of Lokayan, Lokniti and the Indian Languages Programme was an enormous learning experience. In addition, there were evening addas where real battles were fought.

Dhirubhai had an extraordinary capacity to take on political correctness. Abhay Dubey records a conversation with Dhirubhai, which refers to a visit to the Deen Dayal Research Institute in Jhandewalan the 1990s. The RSS chief was late and Dhirubhai shocked the organiser by asking where Rajinder Singh was. He deliberately used his formal name, rather than Rajju Bhayya, as the RSS leader was called by the Sangh. Further, he spoke of Golwalkar rather than Guruji and to make matters worse asked the RSS to clarify its stand on constitutional protections for minorities.

In 2010, I recall a discussion at Squire Hall, the residence of the director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study when Peter DeSouza was director and Dhirubhai was a national fellow and Gopal Guru and I were visiting fellows. The discussion began with Facebook and its addiction, with Dhirubhai insisting that this relates to pre-modern forms of community, which have been effaced by modernity.

Dhirubhai and Surabhibehn, his scholar wife and Sanskritist, asked about the love seat on which Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten were reputed to have once sat together. Gopal Guru and Dhirubhai were in good form. Dhirubhai insisted that he wanted to take D.R. Nagarajs agenda forward in showing that Dalits were using Gandhi as a red rag. Gopal Guru asserted that Dhirubhai had misread Nagarajs argument in his book The Flaming Feet. Dhirubhai countered by stating that it was Ambedkar who stood on the shoulders of Gandhi; Ambedkar was possible only because Gandhi prepared the ground. Hindus were hugely hostile to the Removal of Untouchability Act. Gandhis agenda was, of course, upper caste reform because he felt that the problem of untouchability lay there. Gopal Guru pointed out Gandhis opposition to separate electorates. To which Dhirubhai responded that Dalits benefitted from joint electorates, getting a greater share of representation than they would have got from separate electorates. This has been to their advantage to this day.

The friendship between Ashis Nandy and Dhirubhai was tensile enough to take on the latters political incorrectness. Your critique of nationalism, Dhirubhai told Nandy, has handed over Indian nationalism to the right.

Last year, as I drew the introduction to my forthcoming book The Secret Life of Another Indian Nationalism to a close, a chance encounter with Peter DeSouza guided me to his new collection of D.L. Sheths essays At Home With Democracy: A Theory of Indian Politics. Peters introduction, titled A Political Theory of Indian Democracy, I was quick to note, validated my own argument about two kinds of nationalisms but emphasises how inclusive nationalism was undermined first by the Left and then the Right.

Political Hinduism was created by the independence movement but remained on the fringes and could not get the leadership of the Hindus, Sheth argues. Hindus, in any case, did not have a political-religious identity as mokha (salvation) is individual in the Hindu world; and Hinduism has not been a congregational religion; some have argued that it has been a confederation of religions.

The idea of India Tagores famous phrase was shaped under the leadership of Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and embodied in the Congress. Gandhi was more Hindu than the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whose ideas came from Europe, Sheth asserted.

He felt the inclusive idea of nationalism was undermined by Left secularists who pushed global cosmopolitanism and secularism while undermining both nationalism and religion. Sheth maintained that inclusive nationalism is vital for democracy as it offers a vision of India to the ordinary Indian that is inclusive, secular and egalitarian. The Left dominance fostered elitism and practicing Hindus developed a minority complex contrasted with the intellectual arrogance of the secularist.

With the election of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 and again in 1999, Hindutva forces sought to capture the space occupied by the Congress, including knowledge and cultural institutions. The elections of 2014 and 2019 brought the era of anti-RSS/anti-Hindutva politics, which had prevailed after the assassination of Gandhi, to an end.

Alas, that I was not able to show you my book, dearest Dhirubhai, to show how much I have learnt from you. But let the dialogue continue.

Shail Mayaram is the author of The Secret Life of Another Indian Nationalism: Transitions from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana (Cambridge University Press).

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Dhirubhai Sheth and the Political Incorrectness of Being - The Wire

[Reuters]

There are a lot of interesting things going on in the United States right now. President Joe Biden has identified the causes that gave rise to the Trump phenomenon and is trying to root them out. He is doing everything in his power to win over voters who traditionally voted Democrat but were disillusioned by a sense of social stagnancy and political neglect. He is a politician who knows how to accomplish this, the kind of man the average American could have a beer with.

Biden is pushing the envelope, by American standards. His proposals for reaping more in taxes and the suspension of the Covid vaccine patents demonstrate his determination to take risks. Some believe that he has learned from the mistakes of Barack Obama, who took few risks apart from in the area of social security. Others believe that his age is a liberating factor, making him a president who cares more about his legacy than he does about his chances of re-election, even though it is not sure he would even be able to run. It is telling that Bidens people love to compare him with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who took such an enormous risk after a major crisis and built an electoral alliance for the Democrats that stood the test of time.

It is interesting that much of what the White House is trying to accomplish now had been touted by Trump but never carried out. The overhaul of Americas infrastructure is one example; both administrations admit that much of the countrys infrastructure is unacceptably old. The projects outlined in the relevant legislation will give work to thousands of Americans and give the country a much-needed facelift. Trump had made similar promises but never carried them through.

The notion of strategic independence had also been adopted by Trump but did not get very far. The belief is that America needs to stop relying on other countries, and China in particular, for the production of certain basic goods and materials. Biden has elevated this issue to one of his top policies, relying on the same economic patriotism that Trump also sought to exploit. The overall approach to China bears similarities with the previous administration though without Trumps histrionics.

The Democratic Party had been stuck in a rut, as over-the-top political correctness alienated it culturally from a large part of the American population. Biden is trying to overcome this hurdle by providing solutions to the most vital problems faced by a working and middle class that has felt increasingly insecure for many years. Whether he will succeed is an entirely different matter.

American politics is a complex game where even the most well-intentioned efforts can be scuppered by powerful interests and lobbies.

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Biden the risk-taker and Trump - Kathimerini English Edition

Amid dissension and turnover at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum, an art museum of international standing, Hartford Business Journal editor Greg Bordonaro wrote the other day that the city has an "image problem," especially when compared to West Hartford, about which The New York Times recently published a report lauding, among other things, the suburb's great restaurants. (The Times seldom cares much about anything in Connecticut unless it's edible.)

But while the Times was merely patronizing, Bordonaro was profoundly mistaken. For the dissension at the art museum has no bearing on Hartford's image, and the city doesn't have an image problem but arealityproblem.

Dissension at the art museum is nothing compared to the other recent widely publicized troubles of the city.

For starters, Hartford has a "shot spotter" system that is often in the news as it monitors all the gunplay in the city. While it is a small city, Hartford has murders every month, some especially depraved, like April's murders of 3- and 17-year-old boys.

Even so, Hartford also has a cadre of political activists who want to "defund the police" and who last summer bullied Mayor Luke Bronin into cutting the police budget just before a spate of murders caused him to ask Governor Lamont to send in state troopers.

Some elected officials in West Hartford embody political correctness, but at least the town has a respectable school system, which Hartford doesn't. Even as the city's schools kept deteriorating a few years ago, Hartford put itself on the verge of bankruptcy by contracting to build a minor-league baseball stadium it couldn't afford, leading to a bailout by state government, the assumption of more than $500 million of the city's long-term debt.

Downtown West Hartford long ago superseded downtown Hartford as the hub of central Connecticut not because of the lovely restaurants lauded by the Times but because the suburb still has large middle and upper classes residing near its downtown, while misguided urban renewal in the 1960s turned downtown Hartford into an office district without a neighborhood.

Most of all West Hartford is desirable residentially because many of its children have two parents at home, while most children in Hartford are lucky if they have even one parent and so tend to live in financial, educational, and emotional poverty.

Art museums are nice but with or without them middle-class places can take care of themselves. Impoverished places can't.

Now Hartford city government is considering paying a special stipend to single mothers in the hope that it will help them climb toward self-sufficiency. Such projects in other cities have not produced impressive results even as they risk inducing more women to adopt the single-parent lifestyle when they can't even support themselves.

But Hartford can't be blamed too much, for the city's poverty is largely the consequence of state government policy -- the failure of state welfare and education policy. Hartford and Connecticut's other cities are what happens when welfare policy makes fathers seem unnecessary, relieves them of responsibility for their children, and aborts family formation, and when social promotion in school tells students they needn't learn.

Of course social promotion is also policy in West Hartford and suburbs throughout the state, but those towns have parents who compel their kids to take education more seriously.

To achieve racial and economic class integration and to reduce housing prices generally, Connecticut urgently needs to build much more inexpensive housing in the suburbs and should outlaw the worst of their exclusive zoning. But the state has an even more urgent need to stop manufacturing the poverty that has been dragging the cities down for decades.

When the cities themselves are less poor, when more of their children have fathers at home and come to school ready to learn, when their home and school environments motivate rather than demoralize them, more people will want to live in Hartford just as people now want to live in West Hartford -- and the management of the art museum won't mean any more than it means now.

To change Hartford's image -- and Bridgeport's and New Haven's -- state government has to change their reality.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer.

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Changing Hartford's sad image requires changing the city's reality - Journal Inquirer

Andrew C. Spiropoulos

Its easy these days for Republicans to feel beleaguered. Aside from losing the presidency and Congress, it feels like all of the power centers of society are arrayed against them. They already knew the press, Hollywood, most lawyers and Wall Street investment bankers, Silicon Valley and the universities are against them and have been for years. Their only solace was that their party, with few exceptions. was backed by the money and power of big corporations in legacy industries like energy, transportation, manufacturing and consumer goods.

But now, it appears, the GOP has lost the support of even these corporate titans. After some Republicans in Congress hesitated to affirm President Joe Bidens election victory, and party leaders in an increasing number of states decided to revise the voting laws in order, in their minds, to address potential abuses that threatened the integrity of the process, these corporate leaders turned on them and threatened to withdraw both campaign contributions from them personally and business from their states.

While once big business only wielded its political capital in defense of its particular interests and assiduously kept clear of messy cultural conflicts, the managers of many of our largest corporations now think nothing of taking sides always on the left in our societys most divisive conflicts, especially those involving race, sexuality and religious freedom. Some of these companies have gone so far as to threaten economic retaliation against those state governments that dare to offend the pieties of woke-ism.

Many conservatives are shocked by these developments, but they shouldnt be. Ever since the rot of political correctness hollowed out the humanities and social sciences departments of our most prominent universities, it was inevitable that the products of this intellectual sewer would bring their tendentious notions to their professions. You can never forget that most of the people who run these big corporate outfits are not entrepreneurs who made good, but university-educated managerial elites who were trained to implement the progressive dogmas they imbibed at school.

The good news is, while these people may be wealthy and culturally chic, they dont represent a lot of votes. Most middle and working-class Americans as demonstrated by Republican near-parity in Congress and majority control in state legislatures think America, despite our undeniable sins, has been predominantly a force for good and that, while we should purge those who abuse their authority, most police officers nobly serve and protect our community. I dont know about you, but if I have to choose between joining a party dominated by patronizing progressive elites or one made up of small business people, blue-collar workers and religious families, Im picking Door #2. And Im not alone. Before this year, one poll showed 57% of Republicans were satisfied with big business. That number is now down to 31%.

Republican leaders worry about losing the corporate campaign cash they are used to relying upon, but it is evident that they can raise just as much or more money from individuals. In the past quarter, for example, Republican U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy raised a record $27 million from 50,000 unique donors, as opposed to the previous years $22 million from 6,000 donors. It wont be much time before the institutional shareholders who really own these companies inform their hired hands that their companies need the politicians more than they need them.

Andrew Spiropoulos is the Robert S. Kerr, Sr. Professor of Constitutional Law at Oklahoma City University and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. The views expressed in this column are those of the author and should not be attributed to either institution.

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Right Thinking: Republicans' corporate support eroding The Journal Record - Journal Record

On the first day of my Safety Lecture at the Tel Aviv University, a gruff older Biology professor was telling us about the importance of safety in a way that only an Israeli would: you are Israelis, so you know war, and in war, you all know that you must know your enemy. The Americans and I looked at each other with shock in our eyes. Thats because 10-20% of the hall was clearly Arab who in 1948 was the enemy and would take his quote in a very different way.

In the US, this professor would have been fired. But in Israel, there are more important things than political correctness, which certainly has its merits.

One year later, I would be attending the Kellogg-Recanati Executive MBA. This program is a jewel in the Coller Business School not just because it is a joint program with the top-ranked Northwestern University, but because it is one of the main programs that create dialogue and coexistence in the region.

This program is not just open to Israelis, it is open to everyone. This means anyone can apply, from anywhere. As a result, we have Arab and Jewish Israelis. We had Americans like me, Italians, and Japanese students. But that wasnt all, we also had a Jordanian student, who would drive from Aman for classes almost every week. Our class also included three Palestinians, one from East Jerusalem and two from Ramallah. That means nearly 10% of the class was from what could be deemed as the enemy.

The connection created in a 34-person class with each student is unique and long-lasting. Between classes, we had coffee and meals and we shared those meals together. We went to weddings together and weekend trips.

This dynamic would normally be no different than a Palestinian and Jew at the Northwestern campus, but the dynamic was completely different in Israel. Thats because, in Israel, conflict is never-ending. Every year Hamas would send rockets at Israel and Israel would respond (sometimes even when we were in class or heading out of class, and all of us would have to rush for a bomb shelter). Sometimes there would be riots and Palestinian friends would not be able to come through the checkpoint.

War is a stressful event in any country. There is a sudden feeling that everyone on the other side wants you dead and you must bind to your side because they are who will keep you alive. But becoming friends with the enemy means that we deeply care for each other as we know that we are all good people, working hard to create a better world for ourselves, our kids, and our countries. Our friends were not Hamas or Islamic Jihad, they are managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and investors. War would threaten their lives, their businesses, and their families just as it would ours.

So whenever unrest would begin, we would see in the WhatsApp group concern from our Palestinian classmates for the friends who live near Sderot, and likewise from the class for the Palestinian friends and hopes that they are safe and well, even if they live in the lands of the enemy.

It is hard to have war with friends, this is why there are boycotts. Boycotts isolate people, cultural and academic boycotts prevent people from interacting and talking and they make violence more likely because then we are more likely to think of one another as an other and an enemy. War and eradication of the boycotts in 1930ies Germany and are at the root of the current BDS boycott, which calls for a Boycott until all lands of Israel are ethnically cleansed of Jews. But if we resist and instead create an anti-boycott, a way to see each other, and our desires for peace and co-existence and dignity and self-determination, then negotiation and peace are the only possible results.

Sam Livin was born in Soviet Union and grew up in San Diego. In 2012, he travelled the world photographing Jewish communities publishing a book called "Your Story Our Sipur." Today he continues to write about Israel and Judaism as he lives and studies business and ecology in Tel Aviv.

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War is difficult, when you know the 'enemy' - The Times of Israel

Daniel Schemer| Correspondent

MIDDLEBORO The Spring Annual Town Meeting held on April 26 has come and gone. Hopefully, it will be the last one held during the pandemic.

Roughly 90 people were in attendance, meeting the reduced quorum requirements. Most of the articles dealt with the town budget, special projects, and necessary expenditures, though the Select Board and attending residents approached each decision gingerly given the last year of economic turmoil the pandemic has brought.

There were a few human interest articles that deviated from the fiscal focus.

One of the last articles was pushed to the front of the line by special request.

Article 30 proposed renaming the intersections of Center St., North Main St., Wareham St., and South Main St. locally known as the Four Corners in honor of Norman E. Record, former Police Officer and Veteran.

The family of Record attended the meeting for the vote, which passed unanimously.

The much talked about Article 26 sought to reimburse and distribute over $53,000 to 57 high school students who had their senior trips cancelled in 2020.

As previously reported, the school district worked hard to get the involved travel company to refund the money. That company has since gone out of business. Most of the families received half the initial deposit back in August.

Attempts were made to get the insurance company to honor the claims for the rest of the refund. The School District and families have since filed claims with the Attorney General over disputes with the insurance company.

The vote itself is to authorize a home rule petition submitted to the General Court that would allow the town issue the reimbursements, which would come from Free Cash.

No one argued that students and families shouldnt be reimbursed, though there was some debate over where the refund should come from.

At least one voter asked for an amendment to change the funding source from free cash to the school department.

Town Manager Robert Nunes asked Attorney Jonathan Silverstein, acting as Town Counsel, if this was allowed.

Silverstein explained the proposed amendment was not in order because youre trying to force the school department to expend funds in a particular way, which Town Meeting doesnt have the authority.

In the end, School Committee member Teresa Farley offered: Its all semantics. We all pay taxes in town. Were paying for this.

Town Meeting voted almost unanimously to refund the families.

The Article that received the most debate and attention was Article 21. The article proposed to change all pronouns in the Town Charter to gender neutral. It was one of five articles proposed by the Town Charter Study Committee.

Committee member Paula Fay pointed out that a Select Board vote of 3-2 chose not to endorse this article. Fay defended the article against previous accusations made that it was an attempt at political correctness and erasing history, explaining the proposal is about equal representation in language and impacting the future of the town.

There is embedded gender bias in the Town Charter. Equality is not absurd or political correctness gone crazy, said Fay.

Selectmen Neil Rosenthal explained that personally, I dont think a historical document should be subjected to change.

Former Selectman Allin Frawley disagreed, arguing since it has the ability to be revised and adapt to with the times, that its a living, breathing document.

Town Planner Leann Bradley announced to the room that last June the Planning Board removed specificity based on gender from all the subdivision rules and regulations the Planning Department oversees.

Resident Jessica Chartoff reiterated the evolution of language in modern business and school settings. She concluded that the motion is a wonderful example to children that they are accepted into as a whole regardless of the pronouns they choose to use.

Numerous residents also pointed out the Town Meeting vote last October to change the Board of Selectmen to Select Board, though that is still waiting approval from the state legislature because it was a Home Rule Petition.

Town Meeting voted 63-26 in favor of applying gender-neutral language to pronouns in the Town Charter.

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Spring Town Meeting not all about numbers and budgets - SouthCoastToday.com

In the beginning there was a word. It stood for sensitivity and alertness to injustice in society, particularly racism to be awake. Righteous people strived to embody this word, and the progress it represented.

But then enemies of progress got ahold of the word and realized they could mold it to their dark fantasies. They extracted the word from its original context and repeated it over and over again, as they are wont to do. They started attaching the word to other, scary words, like radical and mob. Experts in linguistic distortion, they drained the word of its blood and turned it into a sort of verbal zombie to do their bidding.

It worked, for this word and for others.

This is how woke and its derivative not-a-real-word noun, wokeness, met its end. It had a good run. Its ideals remain a noble ambition. But at this point, its enemies have coopted it with such cynical tenacity that it no longer means anything. They use it to conjure some imaginary, frothing liberal mob that dares to ask for such outrages as equal voting rights and responsible policing. Or, really, anything that might challenge the rapidly slipping hold of white hegemony.

Simply put, the enemies of woke are scared. Wokeness is trying to destroy America, Sen. Ted Cruz recently said on Fox News (global headquarters of the wokeness cooption crowd). Wokeness is racism, tweeted pundit Dave Rubin. Pass it on.

Social conservatives, especially men, become adept practitioners of verbal jujitsu when demographic trends, historical awareness and basic decency turn against them. Unable to say whats really on their minds it should be difficult for Black people to vote; police should be able to kill at will; day care is for the weak they take a word from the other side and turn it into a bogeyman. Its a dark art, and theyre good at it.

As Tracy Westerman recently tweeted, Cancel culture, wokeness words used by conservatives to silence national conversations about racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry.

Ah, yes. Cancel culture. Another linguistic boogeyman, this one designed to argue that you should be able to say anything about anyone at any time, no matter how cruel, insensitive or dangerous, and expect a book deal with a major publisher in return. As if respecting the marketplace (We decided not to publish your book), and basic guidelines of civility, equate to cancellation. This one is a contemporary take on the old saw political correctness, otherwise known as treating those who dont look and sound like you with decency.

Sometimes the right goes uptown with its verbal boogeymen. Take critical race theory, which is basically an academic theory that seeks to unpack institutional racism in the present and throughout the countrys history. It argues that racism exists on a historical continuum (it does), that we are still living with the consequences of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow (we are) and that race is an idea created by society as a way to wield power (it is). Unlike in the old days, you wont get far anymore proclaiming your racism for all to hear. But you can always babble on about the threat of critical race theory. If youre in politics you can even try to ban it, as the state of Idaho is currently doing and a bill making its way through the Texas Legislature would. Critical race theory has been around for decades, but only recently has the time been so ripe to use it as a political cudgel.

Those who reference George Orwell some actually read him tend to go the lazy route and wax 1984. But in this case you neednt enter the realm of fantasy. In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell takes on political language that is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Those on the right arent the only ones who do this, but again, theyre really good at it.

Its up to the rest of us to decode the noise, to interrogate the original spirit and meaning of a word or phrase, and to remember that this country, great as it is, has blood-stained roots.

Wokeness is dead. Long live the woke.

Vognar is a writer based in Houston.

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Opinion: Wokeness is dead, long live the woke - Houston Chronicle

Probably the best news since you got your appointment for The Jab, Motherland is back, and back to its squirmingly socially embarrassed best. In case you missed the previous couple of series (which can be profitably binged via BBC iPlayer), its basically a sitcom version of Mumsnet. Am I being unreasonable to think that middle-class parenting comedy doesnt get any better than this?

Written by Sharon Horgan, Helen Serafinowicz, Holly Walsh and Barunka O'Shaughnessy, the first episode of the new run is quite a clever take on the whole Covid thing, and just the right side of good taste. Thus the gang of mums are faced with a nit pandemic, opening with the school headmistress, Mrs Lamb (Jackie Clune), doing a passing impression of Chris Whitty, complete with catchphrase next slide please and strict social distancing and hygiene guidelines to stop the spread of the parasites.

Each of the mums reacts in a warmly familiar way to the crisis. Alpha mum and uber-snob Amanda (Lucy Punch) discovers new reasons to segregate her friends/acquaintances/allies and make them keep their distance, literally as well as socially. Shes as ugly a personality as she is glamourous, though now with added post-divorce vulnerability, and Punch is still stealing most of the scenes she appears in. Single mum Liz (Diane Morgan) still couldnt give a flying breast pump about motherhood, while poor old Kevin (Paul Ready) is still overwhelmed by being a father in a womans world. Or, as he puts it: As a stay-at-home-dad, Im used to being treated like a turd in a swimming pool.

The ubiquitous Anna Maxwell Martin plays Julia, over-stressed and under-supported by hubby Paul (usually absent from the scenes), who organises a predictably boozy and disastrous home hygiene event for the mums and their kids it turns into an absolute nit show. Julia, who cannot even make it up the stairs with fatigue, is even more painfully put upon when she receives the news about her elderly mother that every baby boomer dreads: she cant live independently. Thus she finds herself the filling in an intergenerational care sandwich. Her Munchian reaction is visceral. As her mum (Ellie Haddington) patiently combs through Julias hair for nits, much as she did when she was little, Julia reassures the old lady that she wont put her in a home, yet. Its funnier than it sounds, and the Motherland team have a way of handling the worst of news in the best of humour, not least when powerhouse have-it-all mum Meg (Tanya Moodie) declares shes got a bit of breast cancer, at which even Amanda looks genuinely concerned.

As with any comedy involving Horgan, political correctness isnt always strictly observed in the melee of zingers and put downs, and I was a bit doubtful about the line its almost cool to be mental now but, like the mums themselves, they mostly get away with it. Im very glad they do.

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Motherland review: Middle-class parenting comedy doesnt get better than this - The Independent