‘Manholes’ Are Now ‘Maintenance Holes’: Berkeley To Remove ‘Gendered’ Language From All City Code

SirKolbath · 2019-07-18T15:45:59+00:00

They can rename it when they find a woman willing to climb into one of the damn things.

Harry_Tuttle_HVAC · 2019-07-18T15:44:20+00:00

I wonder how many women work in the sewers. I’m guessing zero.

Atrrophy · 2019-07-18T15:56:36+00:00

Berkeley sounds like a shitty place to live.

Throwaway_Old_Guy · 2019-07-18T16:49:42+00:00

Just another empty gesture to please the PC crowd.

It's been years since I heard about it. The UK was trying to get Plumbers and other trades to stop using vernacular such as "stop cocks" or "ball cocks" to describe different types of valves.

https://chestofbooks.com/home-improvement/construction/plumbing/Principle-Practice/Cocks.html

Uzrathixius · 2019-07-18T16:30:57+00:00

Should have changed it to "womanhole"

The_Great_Sarcasmo · 2019-07-18T16:45:03+00:00

What if the manhole is gender fluid?

What then?

masterdebator300 · 2019-07-18T16:23:39+00:00

You can’t spell maintenance without men, let alone accomplish it.

LacklustreFriend · 2019-07-18T17:46:23+00:00

When are they going to remove gendered language from the term "feminism"?

Dr_Dornon · 2019-07-18T15:52:53+00:00

How much will this cost.

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2019-07-18T17:11:02+00:00

They won't have women working in those sewers of course.

bufedad · 2019-07-18T20:31:04+00:00

Are they going to remove the gendered language from feminism?

PeonSupreme · 2019-07-18T19:35:13+00:00

The whole Bay Area is turning into an open sewer, so it doesn’t matter what you call them if they’re basically useless

tenchineuro · 2019-07-18T21:35:05+00:00

NBC News reported that on Tuesday, the city council adopted a first reading of a new ordinance which removes “gender preference language” from Berkeley’s municipal code. NBC also reported that city council member Rigel Robinson, the youngest member of the council, orchestrated the new ordinance.

“It is Berkeley being Berkeley, and what that means is it’s Berkeley being inclusive,” Robinson told the outlet’s bay-area affiliate. "A male-centric municipal code doesn’t reflect the reality of the city of Berkeley."

The full list of changed words is reminiscent of the decades-old move to change words that typically end in “-man” to ending with “-person,” such as “salesperson” instead of “salesman.” But the Berkeley list goes further, changing words in a way that would make a Gender Studies professor proud.

Instead of “manhole,” city code must now say “maintenance hole.” Instead of “brother” or “sister,” city code must now say “sibling.” Instead of “manpower,” city code must now say either “human effort” or “workforce.”

I heard about this from the morning DJ on the way to work.

I wonder how much it's gonna cost to rewrite and reprint everything? And almost all of the heavy labor that it takes to run a city will still be provided by men. Or are they gonna enact quotas?

TheBaredBodkin · 2019-07-19T00:26:09+00:00

Let us hope they send maintainers down to do the maintenance, then, and give the men a break.

NAWALT_VADER · 2019-07-19T01:48:12+00:00

This is feminism in action. All while they push negative gendered terms like mansplaining, manspreading, toxic masculinity, patriarchy, etc.

KnightofNarg · 2019-07-18T19:47:35+00:00

Down a manhole is where you find some of the nastiest, filthiest crap you could ever imagine... and they want "man" removed from it? I'm fine with this.

full_control · 2019-07-18T22:28:34+00:00

It's amazing, George Carlin in his comedic hyperbole predicted this exact thing. He said it would be a personhole cover and that you'd hear about it on Late Night with David Letterperson.

throwaway46819 · 2019-07-18T22:37:06+00:00

To be fair, "Maintenance holes" is a much better name for it IMO.

But the reason (removing "gendered" language) is just flat-out stupid.

masterdebator300 · 2019-07-19T02:14:39+00:00

Im actually fine with that.

lowsodiummonkey · 2019-07-19T03:53:45+00:00

George Carlin literally predicted this change of language. How many women do you see go into man holes.... lol.

genkernels · 2019-07-18T21:17:52+00:00

Seems like a reasonable change of term. It only costs $600 to boot. Hopefully all law will become more gender neutral.

AlexEquilibrium · 2019-07-19T06:10:01+00:00

Reminds me of the comedian George Carlin, who when making fun of overly gender-neutral language and political correctness, made a joke about how one day in the future, manhole covers will need to be called “personhole” covers so as not to offend feminists and some social-activists. He was way more correct than he probably ever thought he’d be.

DivisonNine · 2019-07-19T08:08:01+00:00

That image is so frustrating, why not right Human instead of Woman? Wouldn’t that fix it?

Lion_amongst_gods · 2019-07-19T10:23:55+00:00

A government doing this crap is reprehensible. Some countries use "motherland" to refer to the nation. Ready to dismantle that?

2019-07-19T12:12:59+00:00

The term 'man' in this context refers to the size, not a sex. If you go to a shop, they'll have a 'shop door' that's large enough for vehicles, and then they'll have a 'man door' that's a regular sized door.

Svenskbtch · 2019-07-19T13:44:08+00:00

In the 1920s, some linguist-anthropologists supported the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that claimed that language (syntax and lexicon) influence and even structure the way we think.

This theory was debunked soon after as there was simply no empirical evidence for it.

Yet outside of linguistic nerds, no one seems to have gotten this message. The underlying assumption is completely false.

In Sweden, we went even further and introduced a new, gender-neutral pronoun. And, conformist as we are, more and more people are actually using it, not only in official correspondence, but in everyday speech. There are very, very few examples of a political change of something as essential as a pronoun in history.

The Swedish word for criminal perpetrator, however, ends in -man, with no obvious and commonly accepted female or neutral alternative. My guess is that one wont change for a while.

dukunt · 2019-07-19T18:48:46+00:00

What are they going to call cockpits now?

2019-07-20T00:32:32+00:00

I hope they realize that's wasted money.. everyone is still gonna call them manholes Just because the formal documents dont say the big, scary m-word now, doesnt mean that people are gonna stop using their jargon. Just saying ☆ﾟ°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

ShylockSimmonz · 2019-07-21T03:26:36+00:00

What a fantastic waste of taxpayer money. Not like California isn't drowning in actual problems that need fixing.

Title	‘Manholes’ Are Now ‘Maintenance Holes’: Berkeley To Remove ‘Gendered’ Language From All City Code
Author	borga
Upvotes	65
Comments	59
Date	July 18, 2019 3:43 PM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/ceu4v3/manholes_are_now_maintenance_holes_berkeley_to/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/manholes-are-now-maintenance-holes-berkeley-to.873236 https://theredarchive.com/post/873236

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