Some people have created a self image that is fundamentally incongruous with reality. In order to maintain this unstable self image social reenforcement is required, otherwise the individuals with it will suffer a great deal of cognitive dissonance (dismorphia in their words). For some reason the mental health profession has decided that this particular set of delusions should be reinforced, unlike other types of body dismorphia like anorexia. It has been decided that the public at large is responsible for delivering this care and thus media organizations are retroactively editing old content (Bill Nye and Mr. Rogers are two other examples) to make it appear as if this has always been so. They target children's media in particular in hopes to influence them towards this new way of thinking. So far this has been successful in increasing the number of individuals with this condition, particularly among young women on the autistic spectrum.

>For some reason the mental health profession has decided that this particular set of delusions should be reinforced, unlike other types of body dismorphia like anorexia.

I think the reason here is pretty simple: Turning someone into patient for life is profitable.

Well said. We live in strange times.

Offensive is probably too strong a word.

The reason to replace an aggregate ‘brothers and sisters’ with ‘siblings’, ‘mothers and fathers’ with ‘parents’, or ‘boys and girls’ with ‘children’ is because for all of these the replacement suffices without calling attention to gender when it’s not necessary to do so.

There’s also an argument that the ‘X and Y’ phrasing makes the ‘X’ seem more important than the ‘Y’, or makes it seem like the ‘default’ - just a little, but with repetition the impression is reinforced. If there’s an alternative collective word to use, it avoids this ‘ordering’ issue with no real downside.

Note that all these arguments make sense in even if you consider gender to be a binary thing.

The words siblings, parents and children all existed when Dahl wrote these books, yet he chose to use brothers and sisters, mom and dad, and boys and girls. He specifically used these words, because he's the author and wanted to convey a specific meaning.

I wasn’t trying to make a value judgement about replacing the existing words in Dahl’s already-written books. The parent comment wanted an explanation to _why_ someone might select ‘siblings’ over ‘brothers and sisters’ and I answered with my understanding.

I do now attempt to use the single-word non-gendered collective nouns in speech myself for the reasons I gave, and I think it’s a good idea to do so.

To discuss the edits to Dahl’s work: I would argue that for these ‘Xs and Ys’ examples he was probably just using the popular idioms of the time rather than choosing them to convey a specific meaning as you say. That would certainly be what I would’ve done, without much consideration, 20 years ago!

But that’s obviously not the case for all the edits that are reportedly being made.

The edits in aggregate do make me uneasy. I’m not sure how I’d feel if they were more limited.

> I do now attempt to use the single-word non-gendered collective nouns in speech myself for the reasons I gave

I hate to be the guy that cries “1984,” but do we really have to completely neuter our language to avoid every imagined offense? Are there people out there’s who egos are so fragile that they can’t handle “gentlemen” coming after “ladies?”

No, it’s not the same thing. Parents it’s plural of parent, “10 fathers” are “10 parents”, so are “10 mothers”. When you want to convey the important point that it’s both mothers and fathers, there is no alternative. Similarly for everything else.

Regarding the first occurrence being conceived as more important, it’s the reason usually females appear named first, a sign of courtesy to them. That was sorted out neatly long ago.

I think you’re assuming some sort of extreme militancy about non-gendered language that I don’t have.

Yes, of course you’d need to be specific if it was important. I’d use ‘10 parents’ only if it wasn’t important.

Your example isn’t great though. Even if you assume binary gender for all parents in the group, you couldn’t replace ‘10 parents’ with ‘10 mothers and fathers’ because it’s unclear whether there are 20 people or 10. You’d need to be specific (‘6 mothers and 4 fathers’ or the like).

I don’t think your second paragraph refutes mine at all. I obviously don’t agree that it was ‘sorted out neatly long ago’. You could assume that from the fact that I’ve rethought my own behavior. This world would be a much worse place than it is if people never reconsidered whether the status quo from long ago was optimal.

[Edit: I see now that this comment was not on the same branch as the one where I said I’d rethought my own behavior from a default of e.g. ‘boys and girls’ to ‘children’, so I take back the sentence about you not seeing that. The rest stands though.]

Step-brothers, step-sisters, step-mothers and step-fathers exist, as do foster parents, foster sibling, legal guardians, etc. Some kids' mother or father died, or they're divorced, estranged, etc.

Using the perspective from the OP, it's a kids' book, using a couple of different synonyms might help them better understand what they're reading and not walk away believing that there's something wrong with their family or themselves.

It’s more interesting to see the word ‘woman’ being canceled in subtle ways at once respectable institutes like The Atlantic.