Well of course there is more than one side. Nobody here is “so thick skinned” as you put it to fail to recognise that… (by the way, I think have monumentally failed to understand what ‘thick-skinned’ means).
It’s just that one side of this is:
“Is there something we can do to make our staff feel represented, appreciated, and valued?” , and the other side seems to be:
“I don’t care what those people think; any perceived slight is all in their mind! I think this is all snowflake nonsense”.
…So, naturally, one side is roundly condemned by all who aren’t selfish morons.
Is this topic actually going anywhere? As it just seems to be bouncing round the same viewpoint and not really raising any new points or thoughts.
Also the i think the initial topic question of “gender neutral Sir/Ma’am” was answered quite early on by “use the rank title”.
Appreciate we do need to explore this concept for the ACO as it’s being debated in wider society & debate is the only real way to constructively explore the new philosophical concepts but there doesn’t seem to be any new lines of thought being explored or suggested or reference.
As such, this might be a natural point to close off. If people wish to open a new thread then that’s their prerogative but this particular aspect of the debate seems to have run its course.
I would imagine that in due course some replacement protocol will appear.
The usage of “Ladies & Gentlemen” as a polite way to call the attention of a room full of people to the arrival of a senior officer will certainly need to evolve. It’ll be interesting to see what the military adopts.
Personally, I never much liked that (it always just seemed to be an odd cadet-ism); Preferring “Sit up!” for a room full of cadets, and “Ladies & Gentlemen” for staff.
But once the RAF comes up with its new preferred option I’ll go with that.
Not that it will make much difference to anyone but at the squadron that I am at we use “Room ‘Shun” for both cadets and staff. Both cadets and stuff can use the command and do use the command. If there is a staff member in the room while the “Room ‘Shun” command is given, they are not required to stand to attention ( they sometimes do but tend not to ). It is infrequent for a staff member to be in the room while the command is given as they either come in as groups or while we are on activity ( the room shun command is neglected during an activity while a staff member Is present no matter rank ). On squadron we only room shun when a higher ranking officer ( commissioned or not ) enters or when an officer ( commissioned or not ) wants silence while shouting at noisy individuals. Other times we shout the command “ listen in “ and if that doesn’t work I shout “listen in” ( I tend to have the loudest “ drill” voice out of the cadet NCOs on squadron ). If that doesn’t work ( which may have been only once when I wasn’t there ) the most senior Cadet NCO brings the room to attention and has a real go at the cadets. ( this has only happened once in the 5 years that one of my cadet sergeants has been there )
We honestly all thought this was a common thing among the organisation however I wouldn’t be surprised if it had routes in tradition and word of mouth passing preferred methods.
I suppose if the RAF where to standardise a method then we will most likely use that preferred method. Room shunning as always been a tricky thing especially when we have different cadets from different squadrons who all do it differently. I remember one time specifically where someone room shunned while folding up a table. To say the least, both the cadet and the staff member were laughing after the chaos that ensued for a short while. I wonder what everyone’s method for bringing a room to attention while sitting down is. If anyone has any different ways of doing that it would be interesting to hear.
I apologise if this didn’t make sense or if I spelt anything incorrect, I am waiting for a bus and my hands are freezing.
I think it is worth keeping this open just because some interesting debate has ensued, and if anything it’s helped highlight how far we have to go in educating members of our organisation who are supposed to support young people (but seemingly only if it doesn’t inconvenience them in any way or force them to change).
I quite liked the new suggestions for rank, and think there are probably some areas of our organisation we could discuss to change in order to make them more inclusive.
Agree, as a side note if a person doesn’t agree with a term or name doesn’t mean they disagree with a change of inclusiveness, I apologise as I didnt come across that way. Dress regs are still mainly male/female but that’s probably a different thread.
The TLDR version there is instead of “Ladies & Gentlemen”, they’re using “everyone”.
That works okay in a sentence: “Good morning everyone”, “Hello everyone”. It’s not quite as applicable as a standalone, polite way of telling a group of officers “Pssst! You lot! Zip it”.
Or as C. S. Forrester once put it: “Stop it, you mad bitches! 'Ere’s the Cap’n!”
Not quite sure ‘room, shun’ would be appropriate in a scenario like a dining in night e.g. instead of “Commanding Officer (or Sir/Ma’am), distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen…” when addressing the whole room. “Everyone, The Queen” or “Room, Shun, The Queen” for the loyal toast both sound a little disrespectful to me too.
‘Room, shun’ is rather an instruction to subordinates, from someone senior (I can’t currently think of a time when a drill command is called by someone junior to address others potentially including people senior in position/rank).
I don’t have a better suggestion yet, but we’ve not found a winner yet.
Apparently gender neutral terms shun is also off the list. On a serious note its common sense use what is appropriate at the time its not about winning or losing room shun may work for an evening at cadet hut and may something more formal on presentation/ dining on nights.
