Remember when words mattered? You know what I am talking about. When words have a meaning before, they are artificially softened. The days before taxes were called revenue enhancements, before government spending of our hard-earned money was called investments, when there were terrorists instead of militants, and illegal aliens were not undocumented persons.

Back then, before women were called birthing persons or moving into a neighborhood filled with people of another race were examples of cultural appropriation. One of America’s most famous and respected universities, Stanford University, is trying to get its entire student body to use those imbecilic woke phrases instead of English. The school is suggesting using its “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.”

What is this harmful language? Here are some examples from Fox News.

Among the words the university urges people to avoid in the imprecise language section is the term, “American.” People are instead asked to use “U.S. Citizen” because “American” typically refers to “people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas.” The Americas, the index notes, comprises 42 countries.

Other terms deemed harmful in this section include “abort,” which offers the replacement of “cancel” or “end,” because of moral concerns about abortion; “child prostitute” is replaced with a “child who has been trafficked,” so the person is not defined by just one characteristic; and “Karen” is replaced with “demanding or entitled White woman.”

Under the ableist section, the index urges people to use “accessible parking” instead of “handicap parking,” “died by suicide” instead of “committed suicide” and “anonymous review” instead of “blind review.” It also says people should use “unenlightened” as a replacement for “tone deaf,” and a “person with a substance abuse disorder” as a replacement for “addict.”

I wonder what they want to call a birthing person after menopause,

Some of my favorites include:

  • Calling Latinos or Latinas; Latinx. Any person of Latin-American background I’ve asked about the word Latinx rebuked the use of that word –did Stanford ask anyone?
  • There are no more Karens: they are to be called; “demanding or entitled White woman.”
  • Have you ever called a spade a spade? That’s a no, no. You should be calling something what it is
  • There are many more, but if I added them, it would be beat(ing) a dead horse. I apologize. I meant to say that it would be refus(e/ing) to let something go.

The entire list can be found in the Wall Street Journal

Now Stanford is suggesting these woke terms, not demanding their use. Have you ever heard of a woke program that remained voluntary?