ADF has stepped on to a ferocious battlefield
AMERICAN singer Pat Benatar scored more than a million record sales in 1983 with Love is a Battlefield. I’m not sure she had the Australian Defence Force in mind at the time, but she could now.
The ADF has been accused of blundering on to the modern minefield of the culture wars, where words are a weapon and the slightest misstep can see you shredded online.
There was quite the fuss on Monday when it was reported that a guide issued to officers in training last year advised them to “use gender neutral language when referring to relationships or gender identities”.
The ADF and Defence Minister Marise Payne were at pains to point out that the advice was issued as part of their “LGBTI Guide”, designed to help staff become “better informed when making decisions regarding the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or intersex (LGBTI) community.”
It was not, they said, a “directive” to members to avoid using terms like “he” and “she”.
Which in a way, is just more tactical deployment of words. Granted, a “directive” is more, well, direct, but why issue “advice” to staff if you don’t strongly wish for them to follow it?
There was a similar story last week from the Australian frontline of the culture wars – Melbourne.
Another fuss. This time at the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, which has designated the first Wednesday of each month as “They Day”, when “gendered” language should be avoided in favour of gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “them”.
Reports of the initiative were accompanied by a surreal video of employees at the department making a somewhat unconvincing stab at explaining its benefits. The film is unintentionally comic in a The Office kind of way – if Ricky Gervais suddenly appeared on camera, trademark smirk crawling up his face, it wouldn’t look out of place.
All of this is sold as an effort to avoid causing offence to LGBTI people, most of whom I’m sure could tell stories of suffering some form of bullying or abuse in their lives, especially if they grew up in less enlightened times.
What is invariably absent, however, is much evidence of people who would crumple in a heap if mistakenly called “he” instead of “she”, or vice versa, especially if that mistake is innocently made. Most people, regardless of their gender or sexuality, are made of far sterner stuff.
And whatever about the gentle souls at the Victorian Department of Health, we certainly expect service men and women at the ADF to be tougher cookies.
Our forces would quite obviously face far worse in combat.
ISIS does not do “They Day”.
The creeping fear among conservatives is that all of this malarky has an underlying purpose.
No decent person wishes to cause anyone else needless offence. Quite frankly, calling someone “he” instead of “she” is bloody embarrassing in any context.
I have no issue addressing people according to their preference, in the same way that I could never see any reason to deny anyone the freedom to marry who they wish. And bullying based on someone’s gender or sexuality is never tolerable.
But times have changed for the better and these things are now a given for most Australians. There is no need for special guides or days or the extinction of the very building blocks of the English language. So why all the fuss? Sometimes I wonder if it’s not all a guise to flush out the last of the conservative enemy, to goad them on to the battlefield of ideas where they can be taken out by one last burst of sustained fire. The battlefield thus cleared, more contentious measures could be contemplated.
To fail to opt in to events like “They Day” at workplaces, support of which is made clear by the wearing of a badge, is to risk being labelled an enemy combatant.
And conscientious objectors are rarely known to have an easy time.
We see this most clearly in academia and the arts, long since conquered, where people such as Germaine Greer are now persona non grata for daring to question the prevailing orthodoxy.
The latest insult was delivered just last month, when Ms Greer and former NSW premier Bob Carr were both curtly told they were not welcome at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
When free thinkers are not popular in a democracy, we should be worried.
As we are when we see “guides’’ on how to speak, which deem even the most basic elements of the language as having the potential to cause offence.
Such an approach risks making the very act of communication a tricky business, laced with trip-wires to be carefully avoided.
That would be a shame. The English language – with its many shades of meaning, its quirks, its humour and its beauty, constantly evolving and enriching – is one of our most magnificent creations.
Like all good things, it can be misused and abused.
The full lyrics to Love is a Battlefield are proof enough of that.
But we will be very much the poorer if our language is allowed to become collateral damage in the scorched-earth warfare of left and right.