New Zealand to replace 'sexist' road signs after 7-year-old girl's plea - Sensationalist Headlines

It's the classic thing where they say they don't give a shit and nobody else should, but then clearly give a million shits when they find out somebody does. If they genuinely thought stuff like this didn't matter then it changing also wouldn't really matter.

I don't know, but I hope they name us something good.

This is jut an anecdote, and I obviously can't speak for the kid, but as a child when I was learning English I distinctly remember thinking why police+man is the word to use. Granted, Estonian is a gender neutral language to begin with (politseinik in Estonian doesn't have any indication of gender), but it's not out of the question that a kid would think of it.

Humus Humanus. I would go with that

Then what about Homo Sapien?

"Why do you care so much?" Fuck can people not call out a stupid thing anymore?

pretty wild how many snowflakes get upset about things like this. "a sign got changed? outrageous! damn progressives, changing our signs and *checks notes* saying "police officer" instead of "policeman". when will this politically correct madness end??"

Alright let's have a little entomology lesson. Way back in the days of the Anglo Saxons, English used to have more specific words for man and woman: "Werman" and "wifman". Of course, the exact forms of these words varied with time and place, but the important thing is that both genders had a prefix (wer and wif). This meant that "man", without a prefix, could be used to describe a generic, genderless person. This is where words like "horseman", "policeman", "tradesman" come from. At the time when "man" was first used in this capacity, it was literally a gender neutral term. Eventually, use of the prefix "wer" fell out of favor. But the usage of man as a generic word for human stuck around. These people always assume that it's some outdated, sexist, male focused word, but it's literally not.

Just bring back Wer, problem solved. Now man is back to being a neutral term, even though it still technically is.

Listen, I'm not gonna let some seven year old cunt push their radical leftist feminist anti-male agenda on me, no matter how little it costs to replace a few road signs.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to naturally change terms to more accurately reflect reality. "Men at work" absolutely gives off a vibe of "males", even if it technically doesn't mean that. My only criticism is really tangential; that a movement so focused on minute details and individual parts of words can at the same time create a huge amount of leading terms like "patriarchy", "toxic masculinity", etc. If language is so vital to equality and we must ensure that we never ever ever inappropriately gender things, it seems a bit hypocritical to then use hyper-gendered terms to describe bad things. But that's kind of separate from whether or not "Linemen" should be replaced with "Line Crew". I think that's perfectly fine, especially considering they're just changing it for new signs being placed.

We are no longer Human(s), we are Hu or Hus We are no longer Mankind, we are Ki- wait..

she is seven years old.

yeah and her mother is an adult and obviously the one behind it

Have you considered she might have just contacted them of her own volition? Kids do shit like that all the time. Hell, I've done something similar (sending letters to local gov't about things I care about) Were you not encouraged in your childhood to take part in local government?

No and probably for the best because from 8 to about 12 I was a full blown Tankie

If you have enough freedom to be a full blown tankie at age 8 then why is it unbelievable that a 7 year old girl would write her local government about something she noticed one day? It's easy as piss to send a letter to the city.

Despite all of the shit going on in today's society, shit like this makes the headlines :V

This is how you know life in your country is good, though, when THESE are the problems and issues that get focus. So... that's...good? I guess?

Wow there Mr. Calmly reading the article instead of getting offended over the headline. Did you not get the memo about and their

Because no offence but one kid thinking the USSR was awesome because they destroyed the nazis and everyone was equal because of bad history lessons and a misunderstanding of WW2 does not equate to a young girl going out of her way to contact the exact government transport authority necessary for a mysteriously annoyingly worded complaint

Like with most of these letters from children, the text is almost definitely written by a parent but that doesn't mean that the child didn't see a sign and ask the question. It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for a child to bring up and the parents may have just thought it was a good opportunity to teach their child about civic duty.

Changing the sign implies that they think saying Linemen or Firemen or Policemen are sexist terms. It also implies that Human and Mankind are gendered terms. They're not. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109684/6abe473b-9ca0-4ff6-bc83-3c6d68da4277/menn.png That's like saying "woman" a sexist word. Girls can be women too!

"i was an idiot when i was a child thus all children are idiots and deserved to be chained to their rooms and not allowed outside" This reads like a 7 year old got help from their mother to write a letter. They're not sexist terms, and neither are the terms "line crew," "firefighter," and "police officer." But, if you specifically choose to use a gendered version of those terms, either male or female, you're only representing half of those occupations, and equal representation is important for good cultural development.

The reactions of some posters in this thread are insane. Oh no, a road sign is going to be replaced with a differently worded sign when it wears out. Big deal. How cynical do you need to be to think that children are incapable of noticing or caring about certain things themselves, or would think about sending a letter to their local civil servants? No, kids only care about video games or whatever, so the little girl clearly must've been brainwashed by her femenazi sjw parents. Ridiculous.

Literally nobody did that when we were younger, or if they did, it almost always very clear that it was their parents who told them to do it. Most kids just want to hang out with their friends, kick balls and play the occasional video game. Politics aren't in the mind of children unless their parents are being overbearingly deranged, histrionic and projectively-narcissistic.

For a kid to ask about, how come it only says linewomen, that sounds resonable, but for them to try and say the kid was like, it should be lineworker because otherwise it comes off as being sexist and I don't like that, that's not a kid, that's taking what they've said and trying to work it into your own agenda. Fuck you agenda.

Nowhere in the letter is the word "sexist," and it really doesn't breach into the sexist representation debate any further than "this sign says men but could also mean women and maybe that's not fair"

there are much worse things to be brainwashed about.

I was already beat to the punch but it reads like a 7 year old being helped by a parent. "mom, I saw a thing and it bothered me, what can I do about that?" -> assistance writing/sending letter is not that hard to believe, and it is also not the same thing as a parent compelling their kid to write a letter.