http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/articles/Personhole.html
Well, the Sacramento, California, City Council, after
due consideration, has come up with a 'non-sexist'
'non-discriminatory' term for the blatantly offensive
phrase 'man-hole cover'. Will you open the
envelope, please. The winner is— 'maintenance hole
cover'! My chest has swelled to almost twice its normal size—
not from congenital cardio-pulmonary hypertrophy,
as the casual reader might assume— but from out
and out pride in those right-thinking public servants willing
to go beyond the 'cosmetic' issues of drugs and
homelessness to spend taxpayers' money on the
great moral concern of our day: being personipulated by
language abusers.
The problem is not as easy as it looks. Sure, we
eliminated the offensive 'chairman' by
substituting '-person', but 'personhole cover' would not only have
been clumsy, but clearly would have discriminated
against many of those disgusting hairy scurrying
creatures of the night who use the same passageways as we do
to get in and out of sewers. 'Disgusting hairy
scurrying creature hole cover' was a possibility,
I understand, but it , too, had problems. It is not clear
if we are talking about a 'hole for creatures
which are disgusting hairy and scurrying' or 'a creature hole
cover which, itself, is disgusting hairy and
scurrying'— you know, metal that moves and has
hair and yuck growing out of it. The term also excludes some of the
human beings who might use the device, or at least
I'd sleep easier at night thinking it did. 'Mammal
hole cover', another possibility, won't do either. Although it
fair-mindedly solves the problem by including most
things which might make use of the opening in the
street, it creates another problem by too broadly including an
awful lot of warm-blooded vertebrates who might
view the term as an invitation. Bears. Whales.
Just what you want kibbitzing over your shoulder while you
try to fix a broken water
main.
But 'maintenance hole cover'? I dunno. My spontaneous
reaction to the problem was: "Say, they must mean
'a closing or protective metal seal or covering for
openings into underground conduits, removeable for purposes
of allowing passage', and I submitted that to the
City Council. If you ask me, it has just that clear and
snappy ring which garners council prize money, and I could
hear it being intoned over patriotic music on the
sound track of some misty-eyed documentary about all of
us marching into a new future, a future where all City
Council members everywhere, regardless of race,
creed, sex, age or shoe size have broccoli instead of
brains inside their skulls. So, I'm holding out
for eventual acceptance of my suggestion.
I suggest that you all send in your ideas,too.While
you're at it, there are a number of other phrases
just crying to be put right (or 'put ambidextrous', if you're
worried about offending left-handed people— and
why wouldn't you be?). How do you think women
managers fee? Or female manatees? Or women residents of
Manhattan ? Or women soldiers forced to say that
they are going on maneuvers ? Or women
maniacs ? —those poor souls can't even commit manslaughter
with an axe anymore without being condescended
to. And how can a proclamation on The Rights
of Women be called a manifesto ?
I encourage you all to jot down the telephone number of
your local Language Abuse Hot Line and keep it
near the phone at all times. Hallelujah!
Apersons.
