Recently Christopher Akehurst wrote a piece for Quadrant about claiming back words—words that (he says) have been stolen from us by Left wing ideologies. He writes: ‘Language is spoken thought and if we unresistingly accept leftist distortions of words we end up thinking like leftists.’
So what words is he talking about? Here are some of the words on his list:
Gender—the Trans movement now claims that everyone has a ‘gender’ not a ‘sex.’ We need to re-claim this by insisting on using the word ‘sex’, as in ‘There are only two sexes.”
Woman—another word destroyed by the Trans lobby. We should insist that only people with XX chromosomes have a right to the word ‘woman.’
Sexism—Christopher Akehurst says we should deny there is any such thing as ‘sexism.’ He explains, ‘Sexism only exists in the collective imagination of feminism, whose privileged proponents, resentful that they hadn’t been born men, devised the first attack on the notion of a shared humanity.’ We are ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ but all of us share a common humanity.
Racism—Obviously, there always have been, and still are, some people who are racist. But to say the people should not be given special treatment on the basis of their race, rather than their need, is not racist. In fact, the opposite is true. People who want to give special treatment to a particular race—they are the real racists because they are making the patronising, arrogant assumption that every member of that race is the same and has the same needs.
Colonise—this has long been one of the hate words of the Left. They reject the reality that if you were lucky enough to be colonised by the British, whatever you might lose, you gained more. Colonialism brought: the rule of law, democracy, engineering, permanent dwellings, a written language and much more to Australia. We should be proud of our colonial heritage, not ashamed of it.
Climate change—is now used to refer to the weather pattern of the entire planet. Worse than that, it means the belief that politicians can control the global climate. Of course ‘climate change’ is happening. And it will go on happening. It can’t be stopped. Spending billions of dollars trying to stop a force of nature is both stupid and irresponsible.
So, what do you think? Are these words that we should reclaim from the ideologists? Should we insist on a realistic use of words that are (in the end) about reality?
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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