Well, the Sacramento, California, City Council, after due consideration, has come up with a 'non-sexist' 'non-discriminatory' term for the blatantly offensive phrase 'man-hole cover'. Will you open the envelope, please. The winner is— 'maintenance hole cover'! My chest has swelled  to almost twice its normal size— not from congenital cardio-pulmonary hypertrophy, as the casual reader might assume— but from out and out pride in those right-thinking public servants  willing to go beyond the 'cosmetic' issues of drugs and homelessness to spend taxpayers' money on the great moral concern of our day: being personipulated by language abusers.

The problem is not as easy as it looks. Sure, we eliminated the offensive 'chairman' by substituting '-person', but 'personhole cover' would not only have been clumsy, but clearly would have discriminated against many of those disgusting hairy scurrying creatures of the night who use the same passageways as we do  to get in and out of sewers. 'Disgusting hairy scurrying creature hole cover' was a possibility, I understand, but it , too, had problems. It is not clear if we are talking about a 'hole for creatures which are disgusting hairy and scurrying' or 'a creature hole cover which, itself,  is disgusting hairy and scurrying'— you know, metal that moves and has hair and yuck growing out of it. The term also excludes some of the human beings who might use the device, or at least I'd sleep easier at night thinking it did. 'Mammal hole cover', another possibility, won't do either. Although it fair-mindedly solves the problem by including most things which might make use of the opening in the street, it creates another problem by too broadly including an awful lot of warm-blooded vertebrates who might view the term as an invitation. Bears. Whales. Just what you want kibbitzing over your shoulder while you try to fix a broken water
main.

But 'maintenance hole cover'? I dunno. My spontaneous reaction to the problem was: "Say, they must mean 'a closing or protective metal seal or covering for openings into underground conduits, removeable for purposes of allowing passage', and I submitted that to the City Council. If you ask me, it has just that clear and snappy ring which garners council prize money, and I could hear it being intoned over patriotic music on the sound track of some misty-eyed documentary about all of us marching into a new future, a future where all City Council members everywhere, regardless of race, creed,  sex, age or shoe size have broccoli instead of brains inside their skulls. So, I'm holding out for eventual acceptance of my suggestion.

I suggest that you all send in your ideas,too.While you're at it, there are a number of other phrases just crying to be put right (or 'put ambidextrous', if you're worried about offending left-handed people— and why wouldn't you be?). How do you think women managers fee? Or female manatees? Or women residents of Manhattan ? Or women soldiers forced to say that they are going on maneuvers ?  Or women maniacs ? —those poor souls can't even commit manslaughter with an axe anymore without being condescended to.  And how can a proclamation on The Rights of Women be called a manifesto ?

I encourage you all to jot down the telephone number of your local Language Abuse Hot Line and keep it near the phone at all times. Hallelujah!  Apersons.