Campus Reform, a college-news website, reports that a Northern Arizona University student was recently docked a point on an essay because she used the word “mankind.” Instead, her English professor told the student to use “gender-neutral” language.
Cailin Jeffers, an English major at NAU, told Campus Reform that she received an email from one of her professors, Dr. Anne Scott, informing her that she had been docked one point – giving her a total grade of 39 out of a possible 50 - on a recent paper for “problems with diction (word choice).” Specifically, Dr. Scott explained at length, the word “mankind” should not be used as a synonym for “humanity” because it is not "in the letter or spirit of this particular class, which is all about having you and other students looking beneath your assumptions and understanding that ‘mankind’ does not mean ‘all people’ to all people. It positively does not.”
Campus Reform, a project of the Leadership Institute, says it is "America's leading site for college news" and "exposes bias and abuse on the nation's college campuses."
The teacher further explained, “I would be negligent, as a professor who is running a class about the human condition and the assumptions we make about being ‘human,’ if I did not also raise this issue of gendered language and ask my students to respect the need for gender-neutral language."
Using teleogical doubletalk to explain herself, she continued, “The words we use matter very much, or else teachers would not be making an issue of this at all…"
The professor had previously given some examples of words not to be used, such as "mankind," which should be replaced by "humankind." The student decided to test the policy on her next paper by including two instances of the word “mankind,” leading to the deduction of a point.
Student Jeffers said that her teacher told her, "‘mankind’ does not refer to all people, only males. I refuted, stating that it does refer to all people, [but] she proceeded to tell me that I was wrong, ‘mankind’ is sexist, and I should make an effort to look beyond my preset positions and ideologies, as is the focus of the class.”
Jeffers was invited to speak about her loss of a point with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who asked her, "If a student wore a burka to Scott’s class because her family told her she wasn’t allowed to show her hair around men, would Scott declare that sexist, too?"
Jeffers confidently answered in the negative, and then added, "I have no idea why feminists are obsessing over tiny, little microaggressions such as issues like how the word ‘mankind’ is used when there are women living under Sharia law who are actually oppressed by an actual patriarchy.”