IN A bus terminal here in Negros, one would read "Give priority to disable persons and senior citizens." The public relations officers of the company could have checked this... or at least could have noticed what should be improved or corrected.
We are promoting our tourism in this One Island Region. We have to be certain on what should be politically correct (or incorrect) and what words and concepts should be avoided or discarded.
What is hurting and socially acceptable should be avoided. What is offensive should be corrected. There are unexceptionable equivalents that are pleasing to the ears.
A tourist who is black doesn't want to be called Negro or nigger. We can be more diplomatic if we call him African-American. A reformed prisoner may bleed if you call him ex-convict. I would rather call him a client of the correctional system. A fat office partner may hate her body structure but she will hate it more to be called obese. Try calling her someone possessing an alternate body image.
Someone old is a senior citizen and he should be introduced as somebody who is chronologically gifted. You don't want to tell your friends that your supervisor is an alcoholic. He could be a person of differing sobriety, "a substance abuse survivor." If someone is bald, it is cute to consider him as the guy who is follicularly challenged.
The blind man giving us body massage for a fee is our best friend. For us, he is a partner who is visually inconvenienced. We are honest in telling our other friend with body odor (Mabolo scent) as one with nondiscretionary fragrance. We call a boring lecturer in tourism as a resource person who is differently interesting.
Our car washer in the motor pool is all smiles because he is our vehicle appearance specialist. When someone is crazy and he alters our program. We simply smile and say, "There goes a partner who is emotionally different." Persons with disability (PWD) are not crippled. They are simply differently abled or physically challenged.
Some doctors call dead persons as metabolically different; deaf-mute as aurally-orally challenged; and a disruptive child as child with an attention deficiency order. Our veterinarian calls his dogcatcher as animal welfare officer. I address the dishwasher in the restaurant with honor by calling him a utensil sanitizer; the janitor as environmental hygienist.
The beautiful on-the-job trainee approached me after my lecture. "Sir, the hotel owner...that dirty old man always looks at me with his penetrating eyes. How would you consider him?" My answer is short, "He is sexually focused chronologically gifted individual." Two days later this OJT resigned. This DOM is really ethically disoriented.
For the under housed, we don't call them homeless. They could be houseless but not homeless. Home is wherever you are. "I am very much at home in my office." My friend calls his "stay-at-home-wife" as domestic artist or human ecologist. It could be not so funny but a wife who stays at home all the time is a domestic incarceration survivor. Bless her husband!
Foreigners who are in our industry without proper papers are not illegal aliens. We call them undocumented workers. The Chinese who illegally seized our islands and bully our fishermen are the illegal aliens. Many feminist linguists suggest that when a woman accedes to the throne (from a king), the term should be Queendom, not Kingdom anymore.
When the woman manages the company, she should be womager, not manager. When the hole belongs to a woman, it should be femhole, not manhole. To be fair with women, manpower should be called human resources. Men do not menstruate only women. It should be femstruate or womanstruate.
A shoplifter is a nontraditional shopper; while a stupid person is a cerebrally challenged individual. When you are ugly, you are cosmetically different... when you are wrong, you can be differently logical. When you are not worst, you are least best. When you learn from this article, we enjoy the fun.