My Mistress is now an "It" not a she

[Badger]

Apparently the editor of Lloyds list has decided that boats and ships are no longer to be refered to as she but as IT. What a complete load of politically correct nonesense. Am I the only person fed up of poltical correctness ? One of the great charms of sailing is that much of the terminoligy is from a bygone age where there was no such thing as PC. My boat will always be a she to me. Steady as "it" goes will not catch on.

 

[ToMo]

Re: My Mistress is now an \"It\" not a she

Don't know what you are on, but can I have some?
Look at "God bless it and all who sail in it" about half a dozen posts below.
;-)
TôMö

 

[Guest]

Re: My Mistress is now an \"It\" not a she

May I very, very humbly suggest that you might possibly be fed up 'with' rather than 'of' political correctness?

Sorry to be so mindnumbingly pedantic but it's a real pet hate of mine and I had a very amusing row by e-mail with someone at Guardian Unlimited the other day on the very same subject. I wasn't ever so 'umble with them...

"El manana es nuestro, companero..."<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by The_Fruitbat on Sat Mar 23 12:45:22 2002 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[BrianJ]

Re: My Mistress is now an \"It\" not a she

Does that mean its now a "poofter " boat ?
BrianJ

 

[Jeremy_W]

Re: My Mistress is now an \"It\" not a she

I agree that it's nonsense. I'm not sure about it being "politically correct", partly because I'm unsure what that term means. But this isn't local government with too little to do declaring that "black coffee" oppresses the Afro-Caribbean community.

Maybe the streets of the City have been chocker with protestors for years now, but I haven't heard a single objection to the old terminology. Have PETS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Ships) been lobbying hard? Have radical splinter groups been storming the boardrooms of shipping lines and spray-painting "I am on IT" on the ship models? Has the Tom Robinson Band reformed to release a protest single?

No, the dumb decision has come out of nowhere. I read the editor's rationalisation which was "we're just following the trend. (What trend?) Ships will be IT in our news pages... but our columnists may still call ships SHE" (it's wonderful to see such a decisive editorial line).