Watch out! This one is really, really stupid.
Increasingly embarrassing New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation last week officially eliminating the word “salesman” in official parlance and replacing it with “salesperson.” “Jobs have no gender, but unfortunately, many of our state’s laws still use gendered language when discussing professions that are practiced by people of all genders,” state Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Nassau) said of the bill she sponsored with Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell (D-Manhattan).
No, unfortunately the legislators’ political party is now addicted to Orwellian GoodSpeak measures, as it tries to control thought by restricting language.
The new law also replaces “his” or “her” with “their” in relevant statutes affecting the real estate industry. Other new Big Brother laws in New York ban the official use of “mentally retarded” and “inmate” in favor of “developmentally disabled” and “incarcerated person.”
Did you know that Donald Trump and Republicans pose an existential threat to democracy?To make Hochul’s virtue-signaling (at least for those—you know, progressives—who believe censoring speech and thought is virtuous) especially ludicrous, her bill signing coincided with the beginning of rehearsals for an upcoming Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which will begin preview performances on Saturday, September 17. The new law, peak Great Stupid, makes no sense when applied to the past, but then Hochul’s party continues to want to re-write and airbrush the past out of existence. There were no female traveling salespersons in the period of Miller’s play, and having a woman play a distaff version of Willy Loman would be as destructive to that classic drama, which is probably The Great American Play if anything is, as all-female casts are in the occasional misbegotten production of “Twelve Angry Women.”
In the new production, the Loman family is black, which makes the production “diverse.”
I regard the Left’s obsession with manipulating language to indoctrinate society as a throbbing neon tell that should warn everyone how proto-totalitarian these people are. It is amazing and depressing that so many fail to recognize it.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack,
I’m sorry, but I’ve advocated the use of gender-neutral terms in professional industries since I was in high school. While it historically made sense to default to “man” in most cases (and keeping in mind that, in Latin, “man” denotes “human”), it doesn’t anymore. Androcentrism in language is a small and subtle form of discrimination, but pervasive nonetheless. It’s not Orwellian newspeak to want to honor the contributions of women (and now non-gendered individuals) in the workforce.
More and more all I hear when you digress into these rants on rhetoric is “Damn kids, get off my lawn!”
Correction, in GERMAN
1. Why are you sorry?
2. Your comment is not germane. There is no reason not to call a councilman a councilman if he is a man, and a councilwoman that if she is a woman. The distinction between actor and actress is useful, as it conveys more information. I have no problem with insisting that “ombudsman” not be used for womwn, but banning the word—or any word—is restricting expression in pursuit of a political agenda.
3. Finally, the “Get off my lawn” slur is a cheap shot, and an ad hominem attack, and the equivalent of “OK Boomer,” which is an asshole’s way to duck an argument. Beneath you. Do better.
What about when you are not referring to a specific individual, but speaking in generics? In that context I can see the likes of “salespeople”, “councilor”, “firefighter”, etc. fitting better.
Sure. No dispute.
I don’t have any issue with “salesperson” or “councilperson” or any non-gendered term. I sometimes use them when I CHOOSE to use them. What I do have issue with is the same thing people like Jordan Peterson have been fighting for years in other countries: being forced by a government to use – or not use – a certain term.
“Forced speech” has not been, is not, and never will be, “free speech”. If a female employee helps me purchase a car, and my wife and I talk with her manager about how good the “salesman” was, I should not be looked down on, criticized, cancelled, fined, or arrested. It’s a WORD. Not that I would necessarily do that anyway, because I would just use the saleslady’s (or saleswoman’s or salesperson’s or salesman’s) actual name.
Again, forced speech is not free speech. If I call a saleswoman a “salesman”, maybe I’m a jerk in the minds of some, but I’m free.
Re: Death of a Salesman
I can think of one specific case where I would like to see a different cast: a Japanese family with all the cultural beliefs, obligations and baggage related to (SPOILER!) honor and suicide.
It would probably be more of an adaptation/inspired by thing instead of a direct run with just a different cast (thinking along the lines of Miss Saigon here).
Maybe there is something like that with a black family, but it does not come to my mind right now.
A BLACK Loman family??? THAT is cultural appropriation. All white families are prosperous and happy? You’re telling me black families actually have the pathologies of white families? Black guys are liked, but they’re not well liked? Maybe such casting is good: Welcome to the white man’s world, black people! Congratulations! You can be failures too!
Insanity.