Qantas - Sorry But I Am Over You

[JohnK]

I try to stay away from these discussions but I do take offence when I am being told what is politically correct and what is not.

I am my daughter's father and my wife is her mother. Yes we are her parents but we are also her mum and dad. That is how it will stay for as long as I'm alive.

Now here is where it starts to get complicated. Someone cannot force me to use the term parents with my daughter and I would hate it if my daughter was seen to be politically incorrect if she referred to us as mum and dad. That's too much for a child to bear.

You can't go creating a new world and expect everyone to follow. Political correctness is out of control but poor old "Mankad" may finally get a reprieve.

 

[get me outta here]

How about HIStory?

 

[TheRealTMA]

How about HIStory?

As common on forums, this thread has really lost its way now.

 

[drron]

Indeed it has.I do wonder what they will call Tasmania now.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I try to stay away from these discussions but I do take offence when I am being told what is politically correct and what is not.

I am my daughter's father and my wife is her mother. Yes we are her parents but we are also her mum and dad. That is how it will stay for as long as I'm alive.

Now here is where it starts to get complicated. Someone cannot force me to use the term parents with my daughter and I would hate it if my daughter was seen to be politically incorrect if she referred to us as mum and dad. That's too much for a child to bear.

You can't go creating a new world and expect everyone to follow. Political correctness is out of control but poor old "Mankad" may finally get a reprieve.

You may have missed the point on this. It's not designed for you or how you interact with your family.

The inclusiveness is designed so that when your daughter travels as an unaccompanied minor one day, she is made to feel as included as possible. It could be that your daughter is gay, or transgender. If either one of those is the case you'll no doubt be one of the first to be hailing inclusiveness

For adults, we've moved on from 30 years ago where the wife was often asked 'so what does your husband do?' as a marker of social standing. More inclusive words, and respect for different relationships and identity is not a bad thing.

Many of us already work in places where inclusiveness and gender neutral terminology is the norm. Once it becomes the norm you appreciate how gender-specific terminology can come across as exclusive.

 

[dajop]

You may have missed the point on this. It's not designed for you or how you interact with your family.

The inclusiveness is designed so that when your daughter travels as an unaccompanied minor one day, she is made to feel as included as possible. It could be that your daughter is gay, or transgender. If either one of those is the case you'll no doubt be one of the first to be hailing inclusiveness .

Playing with the words "mum and dad" is always difficult, and I haven't seen the original QF document to comment propertly.

But as for inclusiveness, long before it became a reality that some kids had two mums or two dads bringing them up, there were all sorts of family structures - my aunt (who technically is my mum's cousin) was taken care of for half of her childhood by my grandparents after her mother passed away. I have friends who were raised by their grandparents after their parents either gave them away or died. And of course single mums and dads have been around for a long time. It's probably even more important to be inclusive of children who've lost parents than those who have two regardless of the sex of those two.

 

[Pushka]

Playing with the words "mum and dad" is always difficult, and I haven't seen the original QF document to comment propertly.

But as for inclusiveness, long before it became a reality that some kids had two mums or two dads bringing them up, there were all sorts of family structures - my aunt (who technically is my mum's cousin) was taken care of for half of her childhood by my grandparents after her mother passed away. I have friends who were raised by their grandparents after their parents either gave them away or died. And of course single mums and dads have been around for a long time. It's probably even more important to be inclusive of children who've lost parents than those who have two regardless of the sex of those two.

Yep. Adoption is rife in our family. My grandmother was adopted and she then went on to adopt her cousin who was much younger. I continued the trend. Makes for difficulty in doing family trees at school and the teachers never really got it without a bit of a lecture from me.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Friends, both with PhDs, are always called on boarding cards Dr and Mrs, never Dr and Mr, or Dr and Dr.

 

[love_the_life]

Yep. Adoption is rife in our family. My grandmother was adopted and she then went on to adopt her cousin who was much younger. I continued the trend. Makes for difficulty in doing family trees at school and the teachers never really got it without a bit of a lecture from me.

Yes, we used to have a unit on families when I was a teacher. Whenever it was taught we went out of our way to make sure blended/adopted/refugee etc families were treated respectfully and there was no pressure to include family trees etc for any one. (We used to try to dissuade students presenting trees). In many cases family stopped at parents (in some cases not even that far).
My great grandmother’s first child was taken by her parents to be brought up as she was unmarried. Many of my relatives did not know this which is sad as it explains a lot in the family. He had a terrible life from what I have found (my mother always knew) and died in one of the early Gallipoli battles.

 

[ALH]

Grammar thread?

My response is usually:

“If you knew to correct me, you knew what I meant”

 

[Deleted member]

Indeed. And the article you subsequently posted debunks that argument. But I was going to say that despite any claimed origins, the term today is perhaps associated with a 'man', and a more neutral term is fairly inoffensive.

No it didn’t. The article does say it’s gender biased, i.e. it is chairMAN.
At least that’s my reading of it as follows
........”She’s heard the chair+manus assertion before. “It’s been around since the 1990s, because that was when the pressure for non-sexist, inclusive language first surfaced. It was one of the defence mechanisms for people who didn’t want to change the term – a fig-leaf for people to say it wasn’t a reference to ‘man’.”

 

[Deleted member]

Actually every child there had a mother so probably hundreds of mums depending on the size of the school.

Did you mean to say you were aware of a "family with two mums in the 90s"?

You have to watch the whole thing. But the two mums reference is in there

 

[ALH]

If you want family surname uniformity I suppose all males can just change their surname to their wife/spouses surname. Did you cringe at the idea of you changing your surname? So did I, at the thought of changing mine to my husbands when I married 18yrs ago.

I was very happy to take my husbands surname when I married him nearly 40 years ago. I used to joke that it was so people would finally pronounce my surname correctly. I wasn’t aware that I would have Asian call centres adopting the most bizarre pronunciation of our English surname

I’m also very happy to introduce him as My Husband and be referred to as My Wife. I’ve always had my own career and been treated with respect, personally and in business. Never felt diminished or less of a person. YMMV

 

[TheRealTMA]

My response is usually:

“If you knew to correct me, you knew what I meant”

Isn’t that what David Warner said to the South Africans?

 

[Pushka]

I was very happy to take my husbands surname when I married him nearly 40 years ago. I used to joke that it was so people would finally pronounce my surname correctly. I wasn’t aware that I would have Asian call centres adopting the most bizarre pronunciation of our English surname

I’m also very happy to introduce him as My Husband and be referred to as My Wife. I’ve always had my own career and been treated with respect, personally and in business. Never felt diminished or less of a person. YMMV

I had a similar reason for changing surname. My maiden name was a challenge even though very British. I now have a simple and quite common name but you’d be surprised how people still mangle it.

 

[OATEK]

There were 2 mums at my son’s school back in the 90’s.

My son and his partner are doing the surname issue thing at the moment. I think they’ve reached a nice compromise that will work for their children as well without the double barrel name thing. It’s interesting that giving a child a double barrel surname pretty much prevents them from doing the same for their kids. Unless double double is the new norm. Marrying later means that a woman has had her surname potentially for almost half their lives so why should that just go?

I knew a couple that really struggled with the whole family name issue when they were approaching marriage Neither wanted their partner's name, one because some family members would have associated it with unhappy events in their past, and the other because it as regularly mangled by the majority of Australians.

So they decided to both adopt a new name, and in the end settled for the name of a (then) popular brand of swimwear!

 

[Pushka]

I knew a couple that really struggled with the whole family name issue when they were approaching marriage Neither wanted their partner's name, one because some family members would have associated it with unhappy events in their past, and the other because it as regularly mangled by the majority of Australians.

So they decided to both adopt a new name, and in the end settled for the name of a (then) popular brand of swimwear!

Mr and Mrs Speedo? Great name.

 

[drron]

I have an uncommon spelling of my surname.Amused by some who tell me I dont know how to spell my name.

 

[Deleted member]

I have an uncommon spelling of my surname.Amused by some who tell me I dont know how to spell my name.

Ron ?!

 

[TheRealTMA]

I have an uncommon spelling of my surname.Amused by some who tell me I dont know how to spell my name.

How do you prove them wrong?