RNC Has A Space Policy Talking Point
The Republicans do not have a platform document this year – just a list of talking points. This is all they say about space – and its about "manned" space to Moon and Mars and #SpaceForce #RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/mjoZU8KcXq
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) August 25, 2020
– Draft 2020 Democratic Party Platform Statement On Space, earlier post
– And Today’s Stupid And Untrue Space Tweet Award Goes To …, earlier post
The vast majority of people read “manned” as a reference to humans aboard. All this verbal virtue signaling & PC reminds me of NewSpeak, requiring daily dictionary rewrites according to the whim of the moment.
Ask women what they think.
Female Air Force personnel are still called “airmen”. I suppose they could be called “airwomen”, but it is a bit awkward. Likewise, I suppose a “manning document” is no longer PC. Frankly, using the term “crewed”, when spoken sound too much like “crude” to me. I suppose we could call the personnel onboard a spacecraft, “humaned”? Space Force still hasn’t come up with a name for their personnel, male or female…
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
I have seen presentations by women, most recently on how SLS might be used for future robotic, planetary science missions, where the speaker frequently said “manned” and then corrected herself. It seems a number of women are either uncomfortable with or unused to using “crewed” rather than “manned.” And, when it comes to any debate about something some people find offensive, you tend to hear from the ones with strong feelings on the subject.
Instead of antidotal evidence, I would like to see an actual, well-conducted survey about how many women fine “manned” to be objectionable and how many don’t really care. I don’t know if it is as extreme, but many native speakers of Spanish don’t like the effort to get people to say “latinx” rather than latino or latina. But the you usually only hear about this question from people who strongly favor “latinx.”
Terry: You’ve staked out this position each time it’s flagged by Keith; and each time I wonder to myself if this is hyperbole, on your part, engaged to make a point; or if it’s simply an obtuse point of view?
In the past few years, America is moving towards a more inclusive society. And rightly so: who is against inclusion of every citizen into the body politic?
With the embrace, we learn of certain preferences; we were blind to some of them, but no more.
The use of “-men” is one of these; it is such a simple thing, isn’t it? And yet it is rightly understood as a mark of inclusion. Nobody is asking for first-born children. Just a simple accommodation.
The women in my life, professionals in medicine and education, agree; virtue talk and PC labelling is cheap & easy. How do you treat them? Is it consistently respectful?
Increasingly we see those on signaling side talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk. Do they object when, for example, conservative women or minorities are wronged, or do they fall silent? Do they participate? There’s a lot of both, even from womens & minority groups.
“Physicians,” heal thyselves.
There are some good points on both sides of this issue. The strongest, in my opinion, for not using `manned” or a job description ending in “-men” (policemen, firemen, etc.) is the way it could be taken by women, even unconsciously. It does sort of imply that the people involved are male, even if that isn’t the intention. So that’s worth avoiding when practical.
But I definitely don’t like “crewed” and “uncrewed.” It’s changing the language for political purposes (which I consider Orwellian.) The argument against that is that languages change all the time. But I disagree, since they change through a natural, evolutionary way all the time. That’s very different from a deliberate change for a intentional (political) purpose. I also don’t like “crewed” because of the obvious pun on “crude” and the fact that this makes it hard to get people to accept. I prefer “robotic” instead of “uncrewed” and simply rephrasing sentences to avoid “manned” or “crewed” (e.g. “the first launch with people onboard” as opposed to the “first crewed launch.”) That’s accurate, gender neutral and doesn’t deliberately warp the language.
In addition, I’ve also seen this sort of thing taken way too far. Last year, there was a debate among Wikipedia editors over the term “maiden flight”, which some considered to be an offensive and gender-biased term. And I’ve seem to remember objections to using “firefighter” rather than “fireman”; a “fighter” was supposed to imply aggression and traits which some considered masculine. That sort of thing, in my opinion, if going way too far. Not using words which imply a job is male-only is fine with me. Not using words which have any possible gender connection, no matter how remote, strikes me as offensive.
Like Keith said when I made a comment about the DNC’s equivalent, basically aspirations are all you can expect at this oint in the cycle.
True. But The RNC did not even try to explain its policy.
AIUI there is no RNC platform at all. That is the general platform for the next administration.
This leaves it open as to how they might do this – with a government system such as SLS/Orion or one they purchase such as Falcon Heavy.
It also leaves them open to doing nothing but aspiring and providing a token semblance of progress while their focus remains on other priorities, such as cutting the taxes which fund such efforts, cutting support for the basic services and infrastructure that make possible a society that can and wants to strive for such things, and cutting support for and access to the education that gives us the ability to achieve them.