Say Hello to Gender-Neutral Sewers

Too long has society been stuck in the discriminatory world that it has created for itself; Berkeley(a city in California) is finally taking measures towards gender neutrality by stripping away all the gender-biased words from its city-code. In the progressive city of Berkeley, California nothing will be considered ‘man-made’ anymore, rather, they will be ‘human-made’. Similarly, words such as ‘manpower’ and ‘manholes’ will be replaced by ‘human-effort’ and ‘maintenance-holes’. College students will no longer be part of sororities and fraternities, but rather, they will be part of collegiate Greek system residences. Moreover, masculine and feminine pronouns like she, her, he and him will be substituted with words such as they and them.

These amendments don’t come as a surprise for Berkeley residents because Berkeley has always been at the forefront of revolutionary change – Berkeley was the first to adopt curbside recycling, the first to start taxing sugary drinks and the first to ban natural gas in homes. Repeatedly taking such liberal measures have earned Berkeley the reputation of being one of the most progressive cities in the US.

This act by the city of Berkeley to promote gender neutrality has given rise to mixed opinions among people. While some, who think that it is high time that our laws start to reflect the changes that our society is experiencing due to gender-related issues, are singing praises, others, who think that their tax money could be spent on something more worthwhile, have a lot of negative things to say about the new reform.