Last month, Stockport College in Manchester, England, banned the use of more than 40 “offensive” words and phrases. To ensure that students and staff adhere to the policy, Stockport has made it a condition of service and admission. While this might seem alternately appalling and amusing from our vantage point across the Atlantic, it is a plausible manifestation of the attacks on the First Amendment that we’ve seen in our own country.

Among the terms that have been banned from usage on Stockport’s campus are “lady,” “slaving over a hot stove,” and “history.” It hasn’t been made clear whether they will recall all of the history degrees ever given out, or simply stop issuing them. An alternative word to describe the study of recorded past events has not yet been suggested. The ban is a little perplexing—the word is purportedly offensive to women, yet it is unclear why. “History” is a derivative of the Latin word “historia,” meaning “narrative.” Perhaps it has been mistakenly read as his-tory, ignoring the just-as-valid her-tory, meaning the female possession of a member of Britain’s conservative party. In an apparent oversight, “histrionics” was left off the list.

In our very own state of Maine, the state House of Representatives voted in March to ban the use of “squaw” from place names. The bill will require the renaming of 25 areas, the best known being Squaw Mountain. Anyone familiar with government bureaucracy can imagine the tremendous expenditure of taxpayer dollars on rewriting tourist brochures and reprinting geography textbooks.

Unfortunately, real discourse is crumbling under the weight of political correctness, multiculturalism, and gender neutrality. Silence, rather than awareness, is being fostered in an age where using the word “stud” in a term paper can merit the threat of disciplinary action, as in the case of a University of Michigan student several years ago. His paper for a political science class was read by a female TA who felt she was sexually-harassed by his example utilizing a character named “Dave Stud.” She gave the paper a failing grade.

This is an especially disturbing trend in academia, where debate and uncensored discourse has always been encouraged. It is the one place where freedom of speech and thought should be most protected. Sexual harassment policies, in particular, are often phrased in such vague and broad terms that any criticism at all of feminist theories and the women who espouse them can be seen as “intellectual harassment.”

The feminist cause has sadly become a quest for power, not enlightenment. “Female empowerment,” a term used in the late sixties to encourage self-actualization, has been militarized to endorse female domination and immunity from criticism. Rather than promoting real discourse based on mutual respect between parties that may or may not agree with each other, the feminist agenda demands one right way at the expense of anything else.

It is a sad fact that there are words in our language that have been used in a derogatory manner with the intention of offense. However, the offense comes from the intention, not the word. Banning certain words from public discourse gives them far greater power and significance than they would have otherwise, and sets a precedent for crushing constitutional rights under the heel of politically-correct politics.

– By Joanna Elachi

Public Policy Fellow