Cornwell baited into woke row as ‘fishermen’ turn into ‘fisherfolk’

‘I deal with this all the time, like you can’t say a vehicle is “manned”. Everybody’s so worried about offence’

PATRICIA CORNWELL has revealed she changed the word “‘fishermen” to “fisherfolk” in her books to avoid offending readers.

The best-selling crime writer, known for the Kay Scarpetta novels, has said she constantly grapples with the problem of which words are deemed acceptable or not.

Cornwell has admitted to having to use alternative vocabulary for objectionable words in her work, saying that the gender-neutral “fisherfolk” has replaced the traditional “fishermen” amid greater public sensitivity over causing offence.

The American author said: “I deal with this all the time, like you can’t say a vehicle is ‘manned’. It has to be ‘crewed’.

“I spent about 45 minutes yesterday trying to figure out the politically correct way to refer to people who fish for a living. Can’t call them ‘fishermen’. So I called them fisherfolk.

“Everybody’s so worried about offending everybody.” Her comments come after a string of controversial decisions on the use of language made by major organisations, including the BBC.

Last year, the BBC’S Europe editor Katya Adler sparked a backlash after using the term “fisherpeople” on Radio 4’s Today programme, despite women making up only a small fraction of trawler crews.

Words that could be linked to historical racism were also reviewed by the BBC following Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, with words “blackballed”, “blacklisted” and “nitty-gritty” highlighted in training material on racial bias.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust this year became the first to adopt gender-neutral language in its communications.

The NHS trust adopted “gender inclusive” language by introducing terms such as “chestfeeding” instead of “breastfeeding”, “human milk” instead of “breast milk”, and “birthing parent” instead of “mother”.

Similarly, at the University of Manchester, a style guide was issued advising that words like “manpower”, or “chairman” and “mankind” could be replaced with the gender-neutral terms like “workforce”, “chair” and “humankind”.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Cornwell said of the linguistic trend: “I mean, when are they going to say you can’t call them black holes any more? What will it be, a non-white hole?”

She has argued that issues of racial division have been made worse by the advent of social media, saying: “Instead of pulling everybody together it’s divisive. They keep saying we are different.

“We’re treated different because I’m a woman, or I’m gay or I’m black or I’m white, or I’m Hispanic or trans or whatever it might be.

“And that is a real shame. This has got to change, or the planet won’t survive.”