Vermont’s Department of Health has published a flyer advising people not to use the terms “daughter” or “son,” but “child” or “kid” instead as more “inclusive” terms.
The health agency considers the terms “child” and “kid” to be preferential because they are “gender-neutral” and “can describe a child who may not be someone’s legal son or daughter.”
The flyer also advises Vermont citizens to use the simple term “family” instead of “extended family,” since “often grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins are important parts of a core family unit.”
“When talking about family, it’s important to use terms that cover the many versions of what family can look like,” wrote the Vermont health department’s Facebook page on Wednesday when posting the flyer.
The post was “liked” and “loved” by many, but most reactions were of “laughing” at the absurdity of the advice.
Vermont’s Department of Health defended the post, saying that it “was intended to encourage using inclusive language when you don’t know someone’s family situation.”
The advisory continued to receive strong backlash, however, with one man, Luke Ortega, advising, “Maybe you should focus on health & not policing speech.”
The X account Bostonians Against Mayor Wu called the advisory “wokeism at its finest.”
Wayne Ocker denounced Vermont’s Department of Health as an “enemy of traditional families.”
The advisory was reposted by Not the Bee, which specializes in sharing news so outlandish that it can easily be mistaken for satire.
The advisory is significant not only because of its concessions to woke ideology, but also as a reaction to America’s departure from its former nuclear family standard for households. The Marxist dream of the dissolution of marriage and the nuclear family, which makes way for the state to “operate in loco parentis,” as David Solway has put it, is increasingly becoming a reality.