Gender Neutral Communication or Snowflake Generation Madness?

In recent years, there was an uproar discussion emerging if one should retain gender-neutral discussion in one’s speech and writing. In a recent press conference, the government proposed that teachers should use gender-neutral communication. This is quite a controversial issue and in fact this has risen a lot of for’s and against’s both on Facebook, Maltese discussion shows and everyday conversations. We all know that gender stereotypes are a reality and this is not something we should endorse as a society. Stereotypes are a prejudgment of one’s character, interests, and likes.  By conducting such judgment one acts on his natural thinking and doesn’t use critical thinking to question other people's believes and interests. This measure was proposed after there was a clear discrepancy seen in the ICT sector in Malta (as also seen in foreign countries). 

The proposal is part of a working document on guidelines to increase and retain women in the ICT sector by the eSkills foundation and endorsed by the Equality Ministry and the Parliamentary Secretariat for Digital Innovation.

Although the efforts being put into this to erase this gender gap are clearly evident and also youth initiatives are being taken place such as 'MissInTech', there are few to no results seen in the ICT sector. Stereotyping is sometimes one of the causes of this misshapen, that is why the government proposed a gender-neutral communication plan for teachers to endorse in when teaching. A lot of people led them to thinking that this is the first step to other extreme snowflake generation ‘offendedness’ madness. The question to ask next is; is this really true? Have we taken it a step too far in trying to be politically correct? Not to specify any gender it was recently released that the correct way on addressing someone is by calling them ‘they’ or simply by the name of the individual. Some arguing that ‘they’ is grammatically incorrect when it comes to word structuring as it’s not naturally said in the English language. People who don’t want to be gender labeled opposed this argument by saying that they don’t feel they are represented either by a he or a she and that is why this should be adapted in our English language just like any other word has. Have we really lost our way and we need to remain conservative to our language use or should we be more open-minded to new concepts? This is all a matter of one's perception and mind frame. Hello to the future or goodbye to the golden past?