or more specifically in France “livreuse” or livreur if male 
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I’m leaving the fray… it’s too much for my poor frazzled brain…
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Of course.
The difficulty - the reason people object to changes like this - are twofold.
Firstly, it’s political. Like all of the stuff that’s characterised as “woke”, it’s based on Marx’s idea that every group is either oppressed or oppressor, and each of these conflicts is a zero-sum game. If you think about it further, is this really an example of women being oppressed? I can’t see how you could.
It’s a bit like the Halifax crowing about putting people’s pronouns on their name badges. Put someone trans on your board of directors: that would be something tangible to crow about. But no: it’s just a scheme dreamed up by middle-aged white heterosexual men to advertise their bs. They can’t even manage more than one woman on the board (1).
Secondly, it’s empty and performative. “Look at me, I’m making a difference.” Argos don’t - or didn’t, until recently - pay their workers the SMIC and they still pay women, on average, less than men (2). (Whether that is significant is, of course, a different matter: there may be good reasons why women earn less than men, but it’s a measure which campaigners always refer to.) Empty gestures like this one persuade some people that they’re doing a good thing, whereas all that’s happened is they’ve shouted about something that is irrelevant, not a problem and which has cost them nothing.
I’m not quite as cynical as that, because at the moment we’re seeing a particularly nasty version of the Nasty Party: there are decent Tories, just as there are nasty Labour Party people. I am sure you’re right in one respect: some Tories would like to reduce workers’ rights, etc., and pointing to examples of woke silliness is a great distraction technique.
I wonder if Argos did it deliberately to distract.
1 HALIFAX PLC people - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
2 https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/Employer/1scMkun9/2021
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I disagree with the general tenet of your response, though I find some sympathy with the observation that putting minorities on the board would be making a much more positive step than putting pronouns on name badges - which might well be seen as purely performative.
However, it is important to start somewhere.
Your Argos example is interesting - this point, I admit, does not work as well in French perhaps but, psychologically people can feel justified in paying a woman less than a man for the position of “delivery man” - obviously (though subconsciously) she does not have the necessary qualifications (namely, being a man).
But paying a female delivery person less than a male delivery person is a bit harder to justify psychologically - using a gender non-specific pronoun here definitely evens up the playing field.
In the right circumstances societies can change direction on a sixpence but it frequently takes years of sustained effort - smoking rates are down in the UK but it has taken years of information on the negative effects of smoking, with the gradual introduction of making it harder to buy cigarettes, and harder to smoke them. France is behind the UK in this respect.
Similarly women still lag behind men in terms of remuneration, if you continue to use phrases which entrench the division psychologically, you will entrench the limitations (low pay and “glass ceilings”) in reality.
Language matters
Leave understood this - they spoke of “EU red tape”, not “EU standards protections”, the Tories attack “woke lefty diversity officers” not “people tasked with giving equal access to employment for all”.
And you, and NotALot seem to have fallen for the trap.
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Oh, completely! That’s why the Left is so keen on using the correct (pro)nouns, for example. While the Right simply encourages the natural response most people have, and - this is the important bit - nothing changes.
That was what I was getting at by my reference to the Halifax.
Where is the evidence for this proposition?
I think you need a new topic for this (and I’m afraid you’ve made an assumption - which too many of us on this Forum are wont to do ).
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The real question is why is the political right obsessed with their ‘woke’ fantasy?
It’s use as a distraction from what’s really going on- as Porridge says - is part of the answer. That’s the old ‘divide and rule’ strategy. But there is a deeper reason: fear.
To the right-wing mindset all change is threatening and frightening - they see other people asserting their own identity and place in the world as a challenge to their own privilege - especially of course if those people look a bit different from themselves.
I’ve moved in many left-wing circles over many years - for us, there’s nothing controversial in adapting language use so that everybody is comfortable with it. It’s nothing to do with politics, but a lot to do with politeness and consideration for others.
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When she rang to check the address she called herself “le livreur”. I’m happy with that!
Obviously that is possible, it is difficult in a purely written medium of exchange with people that one does not know personally to know their personal beliefs and motivations. Many hide them or deliberately obfuscate them. But if you want to disabuse me of this particular assumption you need to state it explicitly - I’m not a mind reader.
Well, OK but changing attitudes takes time and needs a broad front. There was a time when the assumption was that women could simply not do a range of jobs or manage their own money - don’t forget, 200 years ago women could not own property, just over a century ago they could not vote, fifty years ago they could not have a credit card without a male guarantor. Significant change takes time.
That’s up to her, isn’t it.
I agree with you: it’s a matter of kindness. If someone wants me to use particular pronouns, which do not match what I see, then I will do. Not to do it would be unkind (and the person probably has problems enough already) and, also, to be “making a point”. And my perception may have been wrong in the first place.
But having control of language is, as @billybutcher pointed out
as important to the Right as to the Left!
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except where - perhaps - an employer has to consider physiology aspects in a case where a single male could be expected to lift or manœuvre a heavy/awkward article single handedly but a single handed female operator might not be for reasons of health and safety.
minefield, of course.
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If an item is too big for a single woman to handle on their own safely - it is probably too big for an average *man* to handle safely on their own as well, especially when multiplied by several items per day
?? Le pénis, le testicule… (OK, la bite, la couille)
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HSE would appear to disagree.
Safe manual handling limit for an adult male is 25kg and 16kg for an adult female, so a U.K. employer would be in breach of HSE guidelines if they allowed an average woman to lift the same as an average man.
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OK, point somewhat taken but I’m not quite talking about single, well behaved, items, or well behaved people for that matter.
16kg is officially the maximum a female can safely lift - but that weight is only “safe” in three zones for a man, and only if it can be easily grasped. If it is bulky or awkward it is still going to need two people. Especially if the need to lift such objects is repetitive.
Also - I wonder how the above figure was reached, can you be certain that there wasn’t a male bias?
The thing is, I did not say “a woman can lift as much as a man”, I said (rephrased slightly) “if an object needs two women to pick it up and manoeuvre it safely, it is probably the case that it will need two men as well”.
This is an impossible dream. Languages are organic - attempts at political control have tended to have very unpredictable results (the Académie Française’s long misguided fight to protect the purity of the French language has probably succeeded only in forking it into formal and street dialects).
But look again at Billy’s examples:
“EU red tape” or “EU standards protections”
“woke lefty diversity officers” or “people tasked with giving equal access to employment for all”
Not the language of right vs. left, are they?
More propaganda vs. truth.
True - though the right is more likely to be using propaganda (at least in the UK, at the moment).
It would be interesting to ask someone who is female that is employed to make deliveries - what their job is - would a female reply by saying they are a Delivery Man?
Maybe just a ‘deliverer’ - sounds rather grand!
There’s an art world term I first encountered about thirty years ago thatstill irritates me -
‘artists of colour’.
Painters?