Over the weekend, the Daily Mail reported that Senior Officers have now been told to refer to soldiers as ‘infanteers’ rather than ‘infantrymen’ despite the fact that no women have applied to join the unit.
It was reported that the instruction had been given in order to potentially avoid ‘offending women’.
The instructions which were seen by reporters working for the Daily Mail, also tell senior officers to use the term ‘infantry soldier’ rather than using the term ‘rifleman’.
This comes at a time when many people already feel that the tentacles of political correctness are already starting to erode any notion of common sense in the forces.
It was also reported that training manuals using gender-specific language will have to be destroyed and re-written at considerable cost.
This bizarre stance has come in the wake of the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, making the decision that women should also be allowed to join the Special Forces.
And yet not one of the 10,000 females currently serving in the Army has apparently made serious enquiries about joining the elite force.
The non-gender specific terminology will come into effect immediately at the Infantry Battle School (IBS) in Brecon, Mid-Wales, despite no women being scheduled to take part in any courses there.
At a time when the army is struggling to fill current vacancies, many will see this merely as political point scoring by some politicians who just want to ‘leave their mark’ in the shifting sands of political correctness.
A spokesman for the MoD confirmed the changes, but said they would not apply to historic gender-specific ranks such as guardsman.
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It’s a wonder they haven’t had to re-write the all the training manuals into all the different languages that one finds listed on Government documents, then add Welsh and Gaelic to the mix. They’d need a shopping trolley to carry one set of manuals. I still refuse to accept that a Chair is anything more than an inanimate object, not a person who leads a committee. There was nothing wrong with Chairperson as a compromise. And soldier not infanteer or they’ll be accused by the ignorant, illiterates of being pedophiles. And it should be Paedophiles not pedophiles. Why? Because the Latin from whence it came is Paed, paed means young, or small or boy, as in Paediatrician not pediatrician. Ped means foot as in pedometer and is Latin too. Trust the Americans to cock-up every bit of English! Now the politicians are doing it too. Bullshit, bullshit and more bullshit.
IF, and it’s a bloody huge IF, female soldiers can match the fitness, speed and carry the same weight expected of male soldiers, then it might, just might, make sense to de-gender the training manuals etc. As it is a higher standard is required for males and though a few females might be able to match it they are the exception, not the rule. As with the current gender equality MET firearms recruitment debacle, lowering the standard is NOT the answer.