O gender neutrality
illustration by Alex Martin
AS IT TURNS out, Canadians are quite reasonable people after all. The proposed amendment to our national anthem was promptly rebuked by the Prime Minister’s office March 5 following what has been called a “mass outcry” by citizens in strong opposition to any change at all—even if it were to make the song “less gender-specific.” Officially, a spokesman (or spokesperson?) of the Prime Minister’s office released a statement the same day saying that they “offered to hear from Canadians on this issue and they have already spoken loud and clear. They overwhelmingly do not want to open the issue.”
All of this came within only two days of the throne speech delivered on March 3, in which the Governor General announced that Parliament would be asked to review the “original gender-neutral wording of the national anthem.” Specifically, this referred to replacing the phrase “in all thy sons command” with the supposedly more appropriate “thou dost in us command.”
This is, of course, a textbook case of political correctness gone mad. It seems like the sort of issue that would arise if one disgruntled, middle-aged woman with too much time on her hands decided to take issue with a hundred-year-old lyric whose author would probably be driven out of the country, were he alive today, for composing such “insensitive” lines.
But apparently, all this controversy may not necessarily have sprung up as a result of one angry letter addressed to “Mr. Prime Minister” from “a concerned citizen.” It has been suggested that the planned anthem modification was Harper’s own doing—a political move intended to resonate with women voters, whom the Tories believe tend to vote Liberal. If the latter is true, I believe I would not be alone in giving a wag of my finger to the Prime Minister for such a shameless perversion of history, simply for political gain.
In any case, regardless of where the idea came from, my major concern is with the simple fact that such a proposition was even allowed to be written into the throne speech. Surely the Prime Minister and those around him must have anticipated the inevitable backlash? If there is one thing men and women will get up in arms over (and quite rightly so), it is the destruction of historical and long-standing works.
Yet even more important is the conservation of the inherent common sense that tells us when our language and our ability to express ourselves as we wish are being hindered—just so that we risk not offending a group that is mostly indifferent to the “issue” presented. In fact, if that was our mission, then our next step would be to remove any mention of “God” from the anthem—as many people have already mentioned—as we may risk doing harm to those other religious (or irreligious) groups who may not necessarily agree with the idea of the Judeo-Christian deity keeping our land “glorious and free.”
And then what about the French anthem? Surely the concept that Canada “sait porter la croix” (is ready to carry the cross) must be threatening to at least one person. In fact, there are many more “politically incorrect” lyrics in both versions, including “our home and native land” and “car ton bras sait porter l’épée” (“as is thy arm ready to wield the sword”), but all this is irrelevant. Of course the anthem is filled with archaic phrases and ideas that do not necessarily represent the values of the women’s rights movement or the concept of freedom of/from religion, or Canada’s mission to achieve peace in the world, and so on. It was written over a century ago, in a different time. The reason we keep it as it stands is not to swear by its every word, but to uphold our pride in what is beyond a doubt one of the finest and most honourable nations on Earth.
That being said, I would like to again give a tip of my hat to those who publicly objected to the proposal. In a world of political correctness gone mad, it’s all we can do to keep our sanity.
Why not change it to "in all the sun's command"--sounds the same and makes about as much sense.