Kulturkampf

[Potato]

https://theconversation.com/male-and-female-plugs-and-connectors-gendered-language-for-the-ends-of-garden-hoses-electrical-cords-and-pipe-fittings-sparks-debate-270142

Professionals in some industries, including audiovisual, theater and IT, have argued that these terms are, at best, inappropriate as direct analogs to sexual intercourse and, at worst, exclusionary in their assumption of binary gender.

Further, when people use male and female, they tend to refer to the two types of connector ends as genders. The Wikipedia entry on male and female connectors is one example. But as research over the past few decades has made clear, gender and sex are not synonymous.

Anti-diversity, equity and inclusion executive orders from the White House that aim to ban words like “inclusion” might stem the already slow movement toward nongendered terms like plug and socket.

But if history is any precedent, English speakers of the future will think the use of male and female for connector ends as odd as people today consider long-ago typical usages of “nice” to mean “ignorant” and “garbage” to mean “guts.”