The end to Fireman Sam?

[FnG]magnolia said:
This sensible solution would not work. We can't take away the outrage the OP feels about those who felt outrage in the first place. What next? Expect left-leaning and right-leaning folk to agree on something? The only solution is to bicker endlessly, driving ever bigger wedges between people, and providing no outcome that works for anyone.
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And this ladies and gentlemen is the definition of modern day USA...
unfortunately accurate.


As for the OP, I thought they were firefighters for years now also, or is the term fighter seen as too agressive when placed in a life or death situation?
 
There is an online fruit machine type game called Flame Busters which would be gender-neutral :D Fairly recent(ish) but stylised to make it look like SNES graphics :)

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During the 2002/2003 UK Fire Service Industrial Action period, The esteemed John Prescott repeatedly referred to us as 'Fireworkers'.

This terminology was all down to the spin doctors pulling his strings as 'Firefighters' sounded just damn too gallant and honourable a profession. So they settled on 'Fireworkers' in a benign attempt to belittle us in the media.

Oh how we laffed. :mad::rolleyes::cool:
 
Flubble said:
what next? stop calling people humans and call them hupersons instead? :rolleyes:
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As far as I know (and rather surprisingly), there is no known connection between the words "man" and "human". "man" is Germanic, going back a long way because it's common to various different Germanic languages (and must therefore predate the splits). "human" traces back to Latin, i.e. not Germanic at all. A connection seems obvious, but as far as I know there isn't a known one. A suspected one back to Proto Indo-European, perhaps, but nothing is known about that language. There's good reason to think it existed, but we're going back long before recorded history and it's all speculation.

Nasher said:
Pretty sure the "man" part in fireman, policeman, etc comes from the "man" in human. Like many words in English, man has more than one meaning.
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The "man" part in fireman, policeman, etc, comes from the word "man" (meaning "person") in Germanic languages. Old English in this case, obviously, but it's also found in other Germanic languages. (EDIT for clarity: I specified Old English because that was definitely a Germanic language and it's the origin of the word "man" in middle and modern English, so even when the compound words are middle or modern English the "man" part comes from Old English).

It's only in the last few decades that the meaning of the word "man" has been changed in English to be male-specific. For millenia, it meant "person". All of the compound words using the word "man" predate that change. Even the ones that no longer include it, such as midwifman ("mid" + "wif" + "man" = "with/helping female person", now shortened to "midwife").

That's why if you look back even just a little way you will find things such as a medical paper entitled "The uterus in rats and men". That made perfect sense until very recently because "men" meant "people". Another example off the top of my head is English translations of the Magna Carta. Unless you're looking at a very recent and carefully done retranslation into very modern English, it will be using the word "men". For example, here is the translation from the library of the British Library.

https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-english-translation

Note, for example, the initial statement regarding who the charter applies to:

TO ALL FREE MEN OF OUR KINGDOM we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs:
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The original text for that section, i.e. stating what the authors of the charter meant:

Concessimus eciam omnibus liberis hominibus regni nostri, pro nobis et heredibus nostri in perpetuum, omnes libertates subscriptas, habendas et tenendas eis et heredibus suis, de nobis et heredibus nostris.
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Note that the word translated as "men" is "hominibus", which is sex-neutral. If the authors had intended it to apply to male adults only, they would have written "viri", not "hominibus". The distinction is very clear in Latin. It's not a mistranslation - the translator used "men" as the English word for "people" because that was entirely correct until very recently, so the translation was correct when it was done.
 
(wo)man, just saying.

As an aside should we really be picking females for dangerous jobs just to make up leftist politically correct quotas? I was watching some programme the other week following the police around and long story short they walk around in pairs and a male officer had a 10inch kitchen knife pulled out on him, all he could really do was back away while his small female partner did absolutely nothing as she wasn't physically able, in the end the male office managed to singlehandedly wrestle the guy to the ground and disarm him. That situation could easily have had an outcome of two dead police officers. There was also a video in Sweden a while ago with one guy taking on 3 female officers and vandalising their police car to boot. I don't know how to say it without sounding sexist but shouldn't things like bravery and physical attributes be more important attributes for law enforcement and firefighting rather than what sexual organs they were born with? I recall a story not long back about some physical police test being downgraded because a female trainee couldn't pass it, are we not just making things easier for criminals and more dangerous for police as a whole?
 
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mmj_uk said:
As an aside should we really be picking females for dangerous jobs just to make up leftist politically correct quotas?
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Assuming they are able to do the job as well as their male counterparts then why not?

mmj_uk said:
I was watching some programme the other week following the police around and long story short they walk around in pairs and a male officer had a 10inch kitchen knife pulled out on him, all he could really do was back away while his small female partner did absolutely nothing as she wasn't physically able, in the end the male office managed to singlehandedly wrestle the guy to the ground and disarm him. That situation could easily have had an outcome of two dead police officers.
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Care to explain how swapping the genders of those officers would make any difference? If the small partner who was physically unable to do anything happened to be male, would that have somehow resolved the situation?

mmj_uk said:
There was also a video in Sweden a while ago with one guy taking on 3 female officers and vandalising their police car to boot.
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Again, how would this be different if those officers were male? Unless the only way to restrain the guy was to attack him with their penises, then the gender of the officer is irrelevant.

mmj_uk said:
I don't know how to say it without sounding sexist but shouldn't things like bravery and physical attributes be more important attributes for law enforcement and firefighting rather than what sexual organs they were born with?
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This is basically the only part of your post which isn't sexist! But if that's your opinion, then why are you banging on about male and female officers, when bravery and the physical attributes I assume you are referring to are not gender specific? :confused:

mmj_uk said:
I recall a story not long back about some physical police test being downgraded because a female trainee couldn't pass it, are we not just making things easier for criminals and more dangerous for police as a whole?
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Finally, a valid point! But then the same would be true if the test was downgraded because a male trainee couldn't pass it...
 
@Haggisman Do you honestly believe there is no difference in strength between a physically fit female and a physically fit male? You're trying to tell us that gender is irrelevant, but how can it be when there are real, demonstrated differences in strength between men and women?

Yes I know you can give me an example of a female power-lifter who might be stronger than 90% of men. But if a man and a woman are both physically fit and training their bodies, on average men will be stronger.

You seem to be in complete denial that there are any inherent physical differences between men and women. Yet science shows us men have stronger bones, are larger and stronger on average, etc, etc. Seems a bit weird to want to brush that aside as irrelevant.

e: In fact in the case of the female dog handler, she successfully argued that requirements for women should be lower because of inherent physical differences between men and women... proves the point without any further evidence required :p
 
FoxEye said:
@Haggisman Do you honestly believe there is no difference in strength between a physically fit female and a physically fit male?
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Not at all, I believe a man and woman with equal physical traits have equal physical traits, and in that case, what they have between their legs is irrelevant.

If a woman is equally as strong as a man then there is no reason why she can't do a job that depends on that strength just because she is a woman. Replace strength in the above sentence for any other physical trait you wish.

I'm not denying that on average, men are physically stronger than women, but there are plenty of women who are stronger than plenty of men, and they shouldn't be disregarded for certain positions because of the ignorant supposition that they are physically inferior purely because of their gender.

The examples given in the post I responded to are not arguments against women, they are arguments against people with an inadequate level of physical strength/fitness, made from a position based on the (incorrect) assumption that all women inherently have an inadequate level of physical strength.

If mmj_uk has a problem with police officers being recruited who are not strong/fit enough for the job, then by all means campaign to increase the entry requirements, but those requirements should apply equally to everyone regardless of gender.

If we're going down the route of only employing a certain demographic due to physical traits which generally apply to that demographic perhaps we should only employ black police officers because they are faster at running and so will be better at catching fleeing criminals?
 
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@Haggisman

Well that's fine in theory but it's not how it's working in practice. Here's the detail on the police dog handler job.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...n-female-candidates-by-tribunal-36663491.html

The employer claimed that it was a key requirement for dog-handlers to be physically fit because the nature of their job often required criminals to be tracked through difficult terrains. However, the claimant alleged that there was a higher pass rate amongst men than women because women had different levels of strength and stamina and, as such, the test favoured men more than women.

The tribunal also heard evidence that women were under-represented as dog-handlers in all three police forces and that out of a total of 49 posts in the Tri-Force area, only 11 were held by women.

The tribunal agreed that a Provision, Criterion or Practice (PCP) existed, i.e., that an assessment was required to qualify as a dog-handler and that this included a stamina and endurance element. Although the PCP, on the face of it, was neutral, it put women at a disadvantage.
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The female candidate in the test admitted that, whilst she could pick up the dog assigned her in the test, she could not carry it any distance. Carrying an injured dog was asserted to be a key requirement of the post.
 
Haggisman said:
Which i absolutely disagree with (which you'll see from my post in the thread about it)
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In which case we agree. If you pass the physical then it doesn't matter what your gender is.

But it seems in this era of inclusivity, there are simply going to be dual standards. Or the bar is going to be lowered for both men and women, such that the mythical aim of 50/50 in all job roles can be attained.

In the example of the dog handler, the strength and stamina requirements were dropped entirely, and the tribunal ruled that only a basic "bleep test" result could be used to determine eligibility.

Thus the force had to drop its strength and stamina requirements entirely.
 
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