I WAS recently having a chat with a friend about the ramping up of political correctness in government institutions and she raised the vexed question of gender identification. She is a nurse in a large city hospital, and she told me that they now have to refer to patients who present to the hospital as ‘non-binary’, or ‘enby’, by their chosen pronoun.
She is of a similar vintage to me, has long life, lived experience, and welcomes people of diverse cultural, religious, gender or sexual preference and neither of us could be accused of any discrimination or bias against anyone who is in any of these categories.
Where we do agree is this ridiculous state of affairs where a person in an extremely busy (or even if they aren’t) situation like a hospital ED, has to try to remember to refer to the person who stands in front of them by the pronoun they/them or he/she or whatever pronoun they choose to use.
If a person does not identify as male or female, then the only sensible non-offensive option surely is just to refer to them by their given name, and not this silly kowtowing to political correctness gone mad.
I have never used the fashionable word of the day to disparage someone who has different social concepts to mine but in this case, I think it is completely appropriate to refer to the compulsory use of pronouns to identify people of alternative genders by pronouns as ‘woke’.
Name and address supplied
