Schools in Melbourne, Australia, have been called upon to abandon using words such as ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ in favour of more so-called gender-inclusive language.
As a part of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network’s #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign, which aims to support ‘LGBTQI+’ children in schools, the advocacy group has suggested that schools in Melbourne fly rainbow flags, scrap single-sex bathrooms, and introduce non-gendered sports teams.
The campaign has also called for teachers, as well as pupils, to refrain from using words such as ‘boyfriend’, which they say should be replaced with “partner”. The group said that parental pronouns such as mum and dad should also be abandoned for the more inclusive “parent”, the Daily Mail reported.
The CEO of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network, Chris Carter, said that the #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign aims to increase support for LGBTQI+ children.
“The simple act of openly showing support can be a catalyst for great change for the better and it’s often the less obvious moments that can be the most impactful to someone’s wellbeing,” Carter told the Herald Sun per the Mail.
Headteacher of the Elevation Secondary College in Craigieburn, Colin Bourke, said that schools in Melbourne have already begun adopting measures to make LGBTQI+ pupils feel welcomed, including “gender non-specific bathrooms and taking down some of the boys and girls signs”.
The push to remove gendered language from schools has not been contained in Australia, as Breitbart London reported in March that the United Kingdom’s second-largest university has made similar requests of staff.
In a wide-ranging guidance paper on “inclusive language”, Manchester University told staff to abandon using terms such as “father” or “mother” and instead use “parent” or “guardian”.
The woke university claimed that “binary gender terms (man/woman, girl/boy) have traditional associations with sex, but we now recognise how some people identify with a gender opposite to that assigned to them as a child (trans) and others identify neither as men nor women (non-binary or genderfluid)”.
The transgender-inspired attack on the traditional family language has also extended to the United States, where a New York City private school has issued similar guidance, demanding that phrases like “mom and dad” be replaced with “grown-ups, folks, or family”.
The Grace Church School’s 12-page “Grace Inclusive Language Guide” said: “While we recognize hateful language that promotes racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination are already addressed in our school handbooks, we also recognize that we can do more than ban hateful language; we can use language to create welcoming and inclusive spaces.”
The head of the school, George Davison, said: “Families come in many shapes and sizes and always have.”
He added: “The recommendation to use the formal of ‘your grown-ups’ or ‘adults’ when you don’t know is a way of ensuring that you do not needlessly hurt or alienate before you do. This is a sign of politeness and respect that we have subscribed to for decades.”
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