The Green Party is going to war against language, having decided the words “mother” and “father” are no longer fit for its members.
Ahead of its conference in Brighton this weekend, Zack Polanski’s party has circulated an ‘Inclusive Terminology Guidance’ telling activists to drop “mothers and fathers” for “parents and carers”, and warning that the wrong vocabulary can create “unwelcoming or exclusionary” environments and feed into bullying and harassment under the party’s own code of conduct.
The Telegraph reports that the document, already in use as equalities training, brands a run of ordinary English “unacceptable”, then tells members what to say instead. ‘Sexual preference’ is out because it “implies that attraction is a choice”. ‘Transsexual’ is out because it “does not encompass non-binary people”. ‘Homosexual’ is discouraged for the same reason.
‘Lunatic’ and ‘nutter’ are non-compliant because they “reinforce negative stereotypes and stigma about mental health”. ‘Elderly’, ‘youngster’, ‘able-bodied’, ‘sex-change’, ‘female politician’ and ‘lady doctor’ are all on the discouraged list. Gendered job titles go too: ‘chair’, not ‘chairman’; ‘police officer’, not ‘policeman’.
The race section is the same project in different clothes. Members are steered toward “global majority”, described as an umbrella for people of Black, Asian, Brown, Indigenous and Latin American heritage, on the grounds that these groups are most of the world’s population and are “often minoritised” in countries such as the UK.
‘Brown’ should be “used with caution,” while “racially minoritised” is preferred because it “emphasises that minority status is created by social and power structures, rather than being inherent”. “Black, Asian and minority ethnic” is to be handled carefully, because “many people are uncomfortable with grouping diverse experiences under a single label”.
