This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

A friend of mine told a story the other day – I forget the exact context of why the subject came up – but he said he got in a bit of trouble a few years ago when he called a group of “persons” girls.

Surely, they were of that gender, but the question then was what appropriate term to use – girls, women, ladies, or whatever.  It remains a question today, though, as I report below, not for me.

When I was a manager in Oregon state government many years ago, I faced the same challenge.  At that time, I used the term “woman,” believing it was the best term, one without, for me, a tinge of discrimination or humiliation as I related to “women” with whom I worked.

As a person who loves words (more than, say, numbers, charts and graphs), all of this came back to me this morning as I read a column in the Wall Street Journal by Nicole Ault, an assistant editorial page writer at the newspaper.

Her work appeared under this headline:

The ACLU Decides ‘Woman’ Is a Bad Word

The group bowdlerizes a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote to refer to a ‘person’s’ pregnancy.

She reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has now apologized for excluding the word “woman” from a Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice) quotation in a tweet the organization posted on September 18:

‘“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity,” as the organization rendered the statement.  

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told the New York Times that in the future the group “won’t be altering people’s quotes.”  In this case, he meant restoring the use of the term “woman.”

“But,” Ault wrote, “the ACLU will surely find ways to hedge the word, because doing so has become a progressive point of order.  House Democrats qualified the word ‘woman’ in a September bill by saying the term reflects ‘the identity of the majority of people’ who might seek an abortion.

“This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy — cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others.”

Say what?

This is only another instance of what so-called “progressives” have found enough time to pronounce.  Use “they,” not “him” or “her,” they say.

Use “person” instead of “woman.”

Well, forgive me, if you must, but I refuse to cater to the ACLU or left-wing directives. 

I intend to continue to use word “woman” to describe my wife, my daughter, my grand-daughters, and my friends.  For that is what they are – women.

And guess what?

The Wall Street Journal’s Ault agrees with me.  She wrote this as a conclusion to her column:

“A meaningful feminism would promote the dignity of women and recognize that the word ‘woman’ connotes a reality that transcends — but isn’t separate from — a female reproductive system.  The word should remain part of our language and hold its original meaning.”

Ditto.