In a bid to encourage inclusivity, Berkeley City Council adopted an ordinance Tuesday to replace gender-suggestive language with gender-neutral terms in the city’s municipal code.
No longer will ‘he’ and ‘she’ be used by the workers of the local government, male and female workers will instead be referred to collectively in the third-person as ‘they’ and ‘them’, as a result of the ruling.
The legislation, which passed unanimously among council members on its first reading, will also see the thousands of city’s manhole covers transmuted into ‘maintenance holes’.
‘Craftsmen’ will also be an accepted term no more, with the city set to instruct its workers to use the word ‘craftspeople’ instead.
In a bid to encourage inclusivity, Berkeley City Council meaning adopted an ordinance Tuesday to replace gender-suggestive language with gender-neutral terms in the city’s municipal code (pictured: Berkeley City Council)
The legislation, which passed unanimously among council members on its first reading, will also see the thousands of city’s manhole covers transmuted into ‘maintenance holes’
Justifying the vernacular overhaul, a memo for the motion explains: ‘In recent years, broadening societal awareness of transgender and gender-nonconforming identities has brought to light the importance of non-binary gender inclusivity.
‘Therefore, it is both timely and necessary to make the environment of City Hall and the language of city legislation consistent with the principles of inclusion.’
Berkeley has a long history of leading on politically and socially liberal issues, and Tuesday’s motion became one of the first of its kind to pass in the US.
As a result, more than two dozen frequently used terms will be changed in the city code when the measure is fully implemented.
Such changes will include the term ‘manpower’ being eschewed for ‘human effort’ or ‘workforce’, while ‘man-made’ will be substituted out for ‘human-made, ‘artificial’, ‘manufactured’, ‘machine made’, or ‘synthetic.’
In total, more than two dozen frequently used terms will be changed in the city code as a result of the measure – including ‘craftsmen’ and ‘manpower’
The sponsor of the ordinance is councilman Rigel Robinson, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He says his time in college expanded his awareness of gender issues.
‘Gender-neutral language creates a lot of room to acknowledge that it’s not just men running the country,’ Robson said of his sponsored motion.
He originally submitted a request in March to the city manager for a plan to adjust Berkeley’s code to reflect gender-neutral language and add more space on city forms to include preferred pronouns.
The council’s vote confirmed changes to the municipal code, though a decision on updating forms remains to be decided on.
In total, the cost incurred by the city as a result of the name-changing is expected to cost around $600.
The sponsor of the ordinance is councilman Rigel Robinson, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He says his time in college expanded his awareness of gender issues
The changes are subject to a second vote before being written into law, which will take place on July 23, but having passed unanimously on the first round of voting there’s little suspense about the measure’s fate.
Council members in King County, Washington, employed a similar policy last year, a move which was met with a mixture of indifference and outrage.
‘I’ve gotta say as a female engineer in Seattle, I really don’t give a crap what you call a utility access point,’ one woman wrote on Twitter at the time.
Critics of Berkeley’s measure have voiced disdain towards Robson and others insisting their time could be better spent on what they deem ‘more important’ or urgent topics.
But Robson was quick to point out other items of Tuesday’s agenda, such as the motion that passed which made Berkeley the first in the country to prohibit natural gas infrastructure in new buildings.