Posts Tagged ‘gender neutral’

If one thing is certain in this crazy, mixed up, gender neutralized world in which we find ourselves, it’s that you can’t win. Literally. The Wakefield High School Field Hockey Team learned that the hard way last week. The local girls got bounced from the playoffs by a Wayland team — that included boys. Would […]


Eight men out

14Feb19

Who couldn’t have seen this coming? The folks who took the “man” out of selectman now want to manipulate the gender composition of other boards. So much being gender neutral. Recently, the Wakefield Town Council advertised for candidates to serve on the crisply-named “Public Safety Building Re-Assessment Committee.” In mid-November, the notice was posted widely […]


Terms that perfectly capture their intended meaning sometimes end up as clichés. They get overused because no other words serve the purpose quite so well. The term “politically correct” is a perfect example. It’s status as a cliche is used as cover by those accused of politically correctness. They dismiss the charge on the grounds […]


Kudos to the Wakefield Independence Day Committee for deciding to go with the 150th birthday of the Town of Wakefield as the theme for the 2018 Fourth of July Parade. This was the decision I’ve been hoping for since I wrote a column about it last April. But I can’t claim credit for the idea. […]


Name shaming

21Sep17

Wakefield’s inexorable slide from a proud, blue collar, working class town to the precious PC world inhabited by communities like Cambridge, Concord and Lexington accelerated just a bit this month when the Board of Selectmen decided that it would, after all, like to change its name to one that does not have the word “men” […]


Right on the heels of the plastic bags crisis, the latest issue to rock Wakefield is what name we should use for the town’s executive body. For the past 370 years, “Board of Selectmen” has done quite nicely, but no more. The position contains the word “man” (and in the plural, “men”). In 2017, this […]


It’s happening everywhere. The forces of political correctness have been picking off one innocent tradition after another. It hit Wakefield this week. The School Department announced that for this year’s High School graduation ceremonies, graduates will wear “gender neutral” gowns instead of the traditional red for boys and white for girls. No, this is not […]