Word police roundup

The word police strike in the US, Poppy Noor, The Guardian Australia website, Thursday:

Imagine if the word bitch was banned … Could this become reality? Perhaps in Massachusetts where … a Democratic state representative is trying to ban the word. Many are denouncing the “bitch bill” as a sincere example of the left gone too far in its bid to curtail free speech.

Disorderly wordage, Mary Markoc, Boston Herald, October 21:

A bill to criminalise the B-word — the term for a female dog that is commonly used to slander women — is up for a hearing on Beacon Hill in what one critic calls “patently unconstitutional” and the latest political correctness push from the “word police”. The legislation states: “A person who uses the word bitch directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person.”

Ellise Shafer, Billboard, June 26:

Lizzo’s Truth Hurts is an anthem for female empowerment. Its danceable beat and no-bullshit lyricism (“I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100 per cent that bitch”) turned Lizzo into a star, and her debut album, Cuz I Love You, met critical acclaim.

Mind your language, Josh Barrie iNews website, October 21:

A British drill rapper has been banned (by a court) from using specific slang words in songs … Rico Racks will no longer be able to rap the words bandoe, trapping, booj, connect, shotting, whipping, and Kitty. All are colloquial words relating to drug dealing.

Ellen Peirson-Hagger, The New Statesman, October 22:

It’s hard to imagine that — had the law been in place at the time — the Beatles would have been banned from singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which glamorises the use of hallucinogenic drugs, or Bob Dylan from sharing his incantation of injecting heroin in From a Buick 6: “Well, when the pipeline gets broken and I’m lost on the river bridge / I’m cracked up on the highway and on the water’s edge / She comes down the thruway ready to sew me up with thread.”

Man-made laws, Madeline Holcombe, CNN, July 18:

Soon, there will be no more manholes in Berkeley, California. There will also be no chairmen, no manpower, no ­policemen or policewomen … Words that imply a gender preference will be removed from the city’s codes and replaced with gender-neutral terms … manhole and manpower (become) maintenance hole and human effort.”

No more mere et pere? Ally Foster, news.com.au, February 19:

A change to a law in France will see schools unable to refer to a child’s parents as their mother or father on school documents, instead the titles will be replaced with “parent 1” and “parent 2”. The amendment was passed as part of the country’s law and aims to reduce the discrimination faced by same-sex parents.

Ricky Zipp, Vox website, February 27, 2018:

Days after the Chinese Communist Party announced that presidential term limits could be abolished, opening the door for President Xi Jinping to continue his rule indefinitely, censors issued an extensive list of newly banned words … My emperor and lifelong control were banned along with references to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, which describe worlds where authoritarian leaders control the population … And in perhaps the most blatant example of curbing free speech, the word disagree is now illegal to post on Weibo.

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