Ladies, gentlemen and others

If you think the line above is a title, you are only half-right. It’s also the solution to the urgent problem plaguing the British Red Cross. Or rather it’s the solution to just one of many language problems that venerable humanitarian organisation faces.

It’s institutionally committed to “refusing to ignore people in crisis”, but this last word has so far been misunderstood. Until now, ‘crises’ within the Red Cross’s remit have been defined as dire predicaments caused by war, displacement, imprisonment, deportation and so forth. But that’s a crudely materialistic, physical interpretation.

It ignores the mental anguish potentially caused by misused terminology. Yet words can hurt even worse than the proverbial sticks and stones. Choose a wrong form of address or a preposition, and a person victimised by the misnomer may writhe on the floor frothing at the mouth and spasmodically flinging his/her/its limbs about.

That’s where the British Red Cross steps in. This organisation, describing itself as “neutral and impartial”, has issued an internal language guide designed to prevent such calamities, rather than having to offer succour to those who have already suffered them.

To start with, the guide proscribes the address “Ladies and gentlemen” because it is “not inclusive”. Actually, I’ve always thought so too. That salutation marginalises women of easy virtue who clearly aren’t ladies, and out-and-out cads who manifestly aren’t gentlemen.

But that’s not what the authors of the guide mean. They seek to protect victims who regard themselves as neither ladies nor gentlemen, but rather as members of one of the other 100 or so sexes – and God knows they do need protecting.

However, being an accommodating person by nature, I think it’s premature to ditch the time-honoured honorifics altogether. They can be simply augmented in the manner I suggest in the title above. That way, no one is excluded, no one is offended, no one is traumatised for life .

The guide also corrects a widespread misapprehension by telling the staff that “people who are not women can get pregnant and have periods.” Much as I welcome this overdue clarification, I still think it needs a bit more work.

Reading the text as it is, one may infer that transgender women aren’t real women. I’m not suggesting that the guide is discriminatory, but it can be misconstrued that way.

I’d edit the text to say that “people who used to be men but are now women can get pregnant and have periods.” They can also cry at the slightest provocation, throw tantrums about an unwashed teacup and devote all their spare time to interior decoration.

According to the guide, expressions like “born a man or a woman” or a “biological male or female” are potentially offensive to non-binary individuals and hence off-limits. They may be factually correct, but that makes them even more objectionable.

While the use of lavatories and changing facilities isn’t a language issue, the guide makes another valiant attempt to protect the sensibilities of transsexuals by stating they are welcome to use any facilities they fancy. I assume that anyone who objects to such inclusivity has no place at the Red Cross.

Moving right along, “illegal migrant” is henceforth banned. Lest you may think that this injunction limits freedom of speech, the guide gives staff a perfectly free choice between “person in need of safety” and “person experiencing migration”.

Any distinction between someone who experiences it by applying at a British consulate and someone who catches a cross-Channel dinghy is deemed irrelevant. They are all in need of safety, aren’t they?

The guide isn’t averse to coining useful neologisms, such as the title “Mx”, as part of the general commitment to promoting “gender-neutral titles and/or titles that do not indicate a marital status”. So you see, I have been right all these years when refusing to use the title ‘Ms’. ‘Ms’ is now obsolete, and good job too: it’s criminally gender-specific.

Slightly less offensive but also banned are words like “elderly”, “youngster” and “pensioner”. They “promote negative stereotypes”, although at a pinch I still think they ought to be preferred to such terms as ‘wrinkly’, ‘crumbly’, ‘brat’, ‘freeloader’ or ‘sponger’.

Regardless of their colour, no people can be described as belonging to a “minority ethnic group”. The recommended, nay mandated, terms are “from a minoritised ethnic group” or, even better, “from a global majority”. Here I have two minor quibbles.

First, “minoritised” isn’t a mellifluous word, and it isn’t exactly precise. It suggests that, but for horrendous discrimination, non-white people wouldn’t be a minority in Britain, which is doubtful, at least as things stand now.

And “global majority” runs into arithmetical problems. After all, globally speaking, white people outnumber blacks three to one at least. And if we massage the numbers by lumping all non-white people together, we risk offending the racial pride of each group.

To avoid such problems, I propose the term “historically oppressed and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups”. There, that’s much better. What we lose in brevity we gain in probity.   

When a Red Cross spokesman was questioned about this valuable document, he said it was designed “to help staff and volunteers feel more confident when speaking with or writing about different people”. Hear, hear.

But what about my lack of confidence when speaking to people like that Red Cross spokesman? What about the discomfort I felt when finding out that up to 40 and never less than 20 per cent of this organisation’s funding comes from the public purse?

The Red Cross doesn’t care about me. It’s too busy indulging in political activism, of a most radical and subversive sort. So how can I continue to pay taxes knowing some of my hard-earned subsidises glossocratic terrorism against everything I hold dear? You tell me.