That’s fine, you’d be in the suitably non-descript “colleague” section with the rest of the proper riff-raff!
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Did you mean to post this on the whole gender neutral topic rather than starting another?
It was moved.
Fits the theme here and was posted without context or comment to suggest otherwise, so…
My hot take has always been if you’re going to retain the aristocracy/judges/whatever, just make lord the one used for everybody because it clearly feels bigger.
This article in The Times says that the RAF are ditching the term ‘Airman’ and going for ‘Aviator’ as a general neutral term. Leaving aside that that word is not gender neutral but the masculine of ‘Aviatrix’, what does this mean for the Senior Aircraftsman (SAC) rank - will this now be ‘Senior Aviator’?
Aviator these days in its English usage rather than Latinised usage is gender neutral in the same way we tend to use actor for both rather than actress.
I don’t think there has been a corresponding change to the ranks yet, just to the descriptor. i.e. we have soldiers, sailers and aviators, or would refer to a group of aviators rather than a group of airmen and women.
Making that change without changing the ranks though is pointless. It’s nice to see that the parent service also makes changes in a piecemeal manner rather than doing everything at once.
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Bloody Latin… What did the Romans ever do for us!?
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They’ve said they’re reviewing the Master in time, so that would probably fall into the same discussion.
There’s lots of unhappy (very) retired service pers on FB groups and pprune banging on about it. Funny and sad.
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It was discussed on the CAS Dial In yesterday, AC / LAC / SAC will all change in due course.
All members of the RAF are now Aviators, while the Army has Soldiers and the Navy Sailors.
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I wonder when the Royal Navy will change their airman and aircrewman ranks similarly.
If they keep dropping F35s into the sea they may as well just stick with Sailor for everyone!
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It’s like a Gammon convention on some of the FB pages, is an absolute chuckle watching them try to justify their 1950’s attitudes as anything other than just not being members of modern society.
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It would be really helpful if everyone could just be nice to each other please so I don’t have to remove posts.
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If you have a problem with moderation, follow the AUP and PM one of us.
I don’t mind “aviator” although for me it throws up images of goggles, open bi-plane cockpits and scarves blowing in the wind.
I like it.
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I’m a bit torn, to me an aviator is a pilot.
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Ditto. Aviator by definition is someone who flies. I don’t think it’s appropriate calling someone an aviator when they are a personnel assistant and sit at a desk all day.
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Any different to calling someone who doesn’t go to Sea a Sailor?
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