Being politically correct isn’t easy

Justin Trudeau might be considered the most feminist Prime Minister of all mankind (or do we say peoplekind), but in an attempt to sound politically correct, the Canadian Prime Minister recently mansplained inclusivity to a woman, and murdered the word ‘mankind’ along the way.

As Trudeau was in the middle of a Q and A session at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada, a woman got up to ask him a question related to volunteering, which included the line “maternal love is the love that’s going to change the future of mankind.” The Prime Minister intervened at that point and said, “We like to say ‘peoplekind’, not necessarily ‘mankind’, because it’s more inclusive,” totally forgetting that peoplekind is not even a word in the dictionary and that mankind is, in fact, a gender-neutral word.

Though the audience cheered for him then, and the woman added, ‘There you go, exactly. Yes. Thank you,’ he was ridiculed and criticised by many on social media globally.

After the entire episode went viral, the Prime Minister even apologised for it, trying to pass it off as a joke, but people were not in a mood to buy it: “You all know that I don’t necessarily have the best track records on jokes. I made a dumb joke a few days ago that seems to have gone a little viral. It played well in the room and in context. Out of context it doesn’t play so well.”

“It’s a little reminder to me that I shouldn’t be making jokes even when I think they’re funny,” said Trudeau, as reported by dailymail.co.uk.

Shashi Tharoor. (Photo: PTI)

“The Prime Minister is wrong about the etymology of the word ‘mankind’,” wrote Piers Morgan in his column for The Daily Mail, and went on to add, “It dates back to a time many centuries ago when males were called ‘werman’ and females ‘wyfman’, and ‘man’ was a gender-neutral term meaning all human beings. So ‘mankind’ was originally intended to signify humanity.”

On the other hand, back home, “The irony is that there is already a perfectly acceptable substitute for mankind — humankind, which is what I preferred to use in my UN days!” says Dr Shashi Tharoor, member of Parliament, Lok Sabha.

“I think, peoplekind sounds odd. Imagine Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and saying, ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for peoplekind.’ Instead, I would say let’s go with the word womankind. But we won’t get there in a long time,” feels poet C.P. Surendran.

He adds, “That said, what’s important is whether we can change things conceptually. Just saying things is shallow righteousness, nothing more than that. For instance, so many men in Parliament couldn’t take Renuka Chowdhary’s laughter. The PM, Narendra Modi, went on to say that it reminded him of the Ramayana. Would they do it if it were a man laughing?”

However, Justin also managed to get a few supporters here. B. Murali Manohar, professor of English, University of Hyderabad says, “I agree with Justin Trudeau, why should we use the word mankind? Mankind originally included everybody, men and women. However, it’s high time we make words more inclusive. That said, I do find peoplekind awkward and odd to use. Maybe humankind is the word we should start using instead of mankind.”

Anil Dharker, social thinker, and founder and festival director of Tata LitLive, says that our need for political correctness goes a little too far, at times. “In our bid to be politically correct, I think we can come across as clumsy. I don’t think we can achieve gender equality by fiddling with a few words. What we need is a change in attitude. We should just let some words be.”

He instances that chairman, which refers to one of the highest post in an organisation was changed to chairperson to accommodate women as well. “The word chairperson was introduced to ensure that women get a fair representation. But instead, when a man has the coveted post, he is referred to as chairman, and in the woman's case, she is addressed as chairperson. In this case, women are losing out on their gender representation,” he sighs.