The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Language Project, a group of researchers based in the United States and Canada, made some strange recommendations about the vocabulary used in scientific literature. They suggest that the words ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘male’, and ‘female’, some of the most commonly used ones in the English language, should be avoided in scientific texts in the future.
Instead, they are offering the words ‘egg donor’ for the replacement of ‘mother’ and ‘sperm donor’ for ‘father’.
In a press release published in the Trends in Ecology and Evolution journal, the scientific activist group explains that their aim is to make language ‘more inclusive and precise’ in academic circles. They go on to say that their movement grew out of Twitter conversations leftist professors and researchers have had over the years. The EEB is ready to use its resources and activism to get institutions to ‘reconsider harmful terminology’. They do not go into details about how they go about acquiring said resources.
Neo-Marxist Ideologues in Action
Evidently, this activist group is very much carrying the banner of neo-Marxist ideologies. This is made very clear in their communiqué published in the scientific journal. Among other things, it reads, ‘Much of Western science is rooted in colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy, and these power structures continue to permeate our scientific culture’, as quoted by The New York Post.
It is troubling to see that there is a concerted effort to take these controversial doctrines beyond the world of gender and critical race theory studies, and infiltrate traditional STEM fields with them as well.
The EBB is currently asking everyone to submit suggestions of other problematic phrases in science to be weeded out. Internet users can do so by filling out a Google form posted on the organisation’s website. Their exact call to action is:
‘The purpose of this form is to crowdsource terminology in ecology and evolutionary biology that may be harmful or offensive. We also hope to identify potential replacement terms and provide space for additional comments, explanations, or context regarding the terms provided.’
The collective efforts have so far led to a top 24 list of harmful phrases, which they proudly share on another webpage. This page also has their Google form. Their ‘best of’ list features such gems as the words ‘alien, non-native, exotic, invasive’, in the context of plant and animal species, being ‘xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and militaristic’; or ‘survival of the fittest’ being too closely tied to ‘eugenics, ablelism [sic!], and social Darwinism’ and thus should be replaced with ‘survival differences’—which, by the way, does not seem to make much sense at first glance.
Meanwhile, according to the guide, the words ‘male and female’ should be replaced with sperm-producing/egg-producing individual.
This is not the first time news breaks about leftist activists censoring seemingly mundane phrases even this month. A few weeks ago, as Hungarian Conservative also reported, the British publishing house Puffin Books, a longstanding children’s imprint of Penguin, has come under heavy scrutiny in the international press for releasing new editions of books by 20th-century children’s novelist Roald Dahl with changes to the texts suggested by so-called ‘sensitivity readers’. In that case, words like ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ were removed from the description of characters.
