Irish Examiner view: Is rebranding for gender-neutral reasons PC gone mad?

Michael Healy Rae. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae is a not a man given to mild pronouncements yet there was a large dollop of common sense in his statement on Thursday that rebranding The Kerryman newspaper as the gender-neutral Kerry People was “balderdash” and political correctness gone made.

Soon, people will be asking that manholes be renamed person holes, he added with characteristic wit. And what of the problematic Isle of Man, another mischievous wag might ask?

Mr Healy-Rae was responding to a call from Josepha Madigan, minister of state for special education and inclusion, to replace gendered titles such as ‘chairman’ and ‘spokesman’. The minister also agreed that the magazine Woman’s Way should also undergo a rebrand.

The Kerryman’s general manager Siobhan Murphy said, as a woman, she had no problem with the title, adding that the publication’s content had changed to reflect the times.

As every Tom, Dick and Harry knows, we still have a way to go before language is gender neutral. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.