Alas and Wo’

The tri-annual debate on the terminology of Calgary ward representatives has come and gone, with city council voting — once again — to retain the title of ‘alderman’ as opposed to the apparently more progressive ‘councilor’. I tend not to get drawn into these debates, as politically correct nomenclature is one of the more petty of the time-wasting preoccupations of elected governments of our society. However, I tend to see what the intelligentsia have to say about any given issue before I make any judgment of my own in order to ensure that all bases are covered. Thus, I go to the always cogent Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald to see her opinion — and take the exact opposite tract:

You go, girls. Yes, you — Druh, Diane and Linda — you aldermen. Thank you for upholding a Calgary tradition dating back more than 100 years, by voting down the idea of changing “alderman” to “councillor.”

And thank you for putting paid to the silly notion, promulgated by the Citizens for Calgary Councillors, that women are such timid little rabbits that the suffix “man” will scare them away from running for office. Let’s see. Today’s woman is considered gutsy, competent, smart and fearless — but she morphs into a wimp when a common three-letter suffix registers in her delicate ears? That is just plain insulting, if not hopelessly 19th-centuryish.

Thanks, Naomi. For being so shortsighted and wrong in almost every other issue which has been denigrated by her lacklustre pen, I am now convinced that city council got it wrong in their decision.

It is not that Lakritz was incorrect in criticizing women’s groups who campaign on behalf of benighted women politicians, who should be tough enough to repel the slings and arrows of outrageous misinterpretation in the political arena; If a woman can’t take the heat, she shouldn’t run for office, full stop. However, reacting to such a push by a woman’s advocacy group by rejecting their pleas out-of-hand because they are, well, a women’s advocacy group is nearly as stupid as suggesting that women do not run for office because of the prevailing conditions.

What’s missing in the argument is not the ‘man’ in alderman, but the ‘alder’. Derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for ‘elder man’, alderman is a misnomer. It has nothing to do with being an old person as much as it has nothing to do with being a man. More importantly, it is a confusing title, as convention has shifted in almost all cities in the country, and any citizen unfamiliar with the term might not understand to which organization an alderman might represent. In other words, any person who sits on a council ought to be called a councilor — because they sit on a council.

But governments, much like law societies, love their anachronisms. This goes especially for the leadership, who generally do everything in their own power to try to distance themselves from the unwashed masses by placing an emphasis on their high and mighty positions. The reasons why the term ‘alderman’ is retained is the same as why a sitting mayor is referred to as ‘his worship’, and why judges and solicitors are so eager to don their fancy-dan robes. None of these conventions have anything to do with their actual roles, and if any of them were suddenly obliterated, absolutely nothing would change with the outcome to government policy or legal rulings. (I mean obliterating the titles, not the people themselves — that’s another topic altogether.)

These high-falutin’ titles simply elevates them above the rest of us. And who doesn’t want to make themselves feel better than everyone else, especially if it is unearned?

I am a traditionalist and I understand that ceremony has value; yet there are times when tradition gets in the way of practicality, and in the case of the Name the Ward Representative contest this is especially so. I never expected Lakritz to understand this — I am not a cruel man — but perhaps there is an opportunity to compromise: instead of either alderman or councilor, maybe she would accept ‘councilman’ as an alternative.

After all, I would hate to insult her feminist sensibilities.