Gender Neutral Sir/Ma'am

Get that and not totally dismissive of your explaination, but badge/title is just that, its the person that matters and normally you can tell from them not the term regardless of the terms gender meaning.

So ultimately this boils down to:

“I’m perfectly happy with a gendered term and so are the few other fully-represented people with whom I’ve shared a grumble about it… Therefore nobody else should have an issue with it either.”

Hopefully we can see why that argument is fundamentally flawed.

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Unfortunately its impossible to please everyone.

I don’t necessarily completely disagree with you - but that is easy for me, as a male, to Shug and say “it’s just a term. It doesn’t mean anything”.

If I’d spent 20 years as a female trying to prove myself in a traditionaly male dominated career, I might feel differently. Or if i’d spent 20 years trying to come to terms with the fact that I felt like I was female in a male body, only to get a job that labels me as a man regardless.

Yes, it’s just a term - but it could have an adverse affect on the People that the RAF have a duty to look after. Losing gendered job titles may even attract some new talent, who perhaps would have been dismissive about a career in the RAF beforehand.

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Yes Miss, it is.

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Do you think that bother me, grow up

Eloquent solution.

Forego all genders and adopt a fruit or veg we prefer!

I’m partial to a good old fashioned sprout.

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Because you don’t like being referred to by terms which focus on a personal characteristic.

Are you really not getting this?

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No you are not getting that call me miss, ma’am etc I don’t mind don’t infer that old people are ignorant because they have a different opinion.

The point is I’m using these terms because they are outdated, unnecessarily personal and not neutral.

And you are clearly getting quite annoyed by it.

I’ve been doing it for about 30 minutes, and you clearly don’t like it. Try thinking about having to put up with a lifetime of terms which deliberately misdefine you, and wonder if actually it’s not a big deal to change a few terms here and there.

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Its your attitude towards age I don’t like, this discussion is about gender neutrality and not age ignorance spreads over all ages and I certainly didn’t call any one names so guess we winding each other up. Call me madam miss I don’t care but don’t assume that its an age or gender thing

Its the same point. Just using a different protected characteristic.

Also, it’s worth pointing out your own hypocrisy. You are getting upset at age related terms which imply older people are stupid, while consistently telling me to “grow up”, as if being young also brings its own levels of avoidable stupidity.

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This thread was going so well…

I wish I could think of a better word than ‘aviator’ - I share the feelings of others that it sounds like everyone is a pilot, and as I am generally quite good at Latin it does still feel gendered to me.

BUT I can’t think of anything better, and I’m sure that people did think hard before making that decision.

For the ranks, I think we should just take the old BT/BHS way out and say ‘SAC doesn’t stand for anything.’ Like BT no longer stands for British Telecommunications even though we all know it does really.

The misdefinition is only in the mind of the person it affects and they can call/refer to themselves as they see fit. Everyone else just carries on. Except they are not allowed to.
If the RAF was grown up it would allow people to identify as man or woman or neutral, this is what happens or seems to everywhere else, rather than trying a new one size fits all. This then allows for people to change their minds.
There are kids at school who have neutral pronouns, but it doesn’t mean everyone else has to and personally that’s where all this goes wrong.

Have you been asleep?

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But we are talking about what is essentially a collective noun. When you have a group of pupils which contains male, female and non-binary you wouldn’t refer to them all as “schoolboys” would you? You’d use something gender neutral likes “pupils” or as you have above “kids”. That’s the change here from airmen to aviators.

What if the RAF just borrow Air Trooper from the Army Air Corps? Trooper seems gender neutral to me, it’s also future proof for use with Space Command :wink:

MB

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Eurgh! Very American!

If going down that route:

Air-ranger
Air-Personnel
Air-Person
Air-scout
Flight-Personnel

I understand that aviator makes people sound like pilots, but no more than:

Pilot officer
Flying officer
Flight Lieutenant
Flight Sergeant

All imply that the role involves committing some form of aviation, but the majority don’t.

So not sure the aviators means pilot quite stands scrutiny with that in mind. Or at least is not out of keeping with what we have already.

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Don’t the RCAF use Aviator for their junior enlisted now?