Washington: A Gender-Neutral State

Washington governor Jay Inslee signed a bill earlier this week that will change all the state's statutes, dating back to 1854, to gender-neutral descriptions.

Terms like "Firemen" have also already been changed to "firefighters," but the new law will go further, adjusting words like "ombudsmen" to "ombuds," and "watchmen" to "security guards."

"It brings us to modern times, to contemporary times," the bill's sponsor Sen. Jeannie Kohl-Welles said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Why should we have in statute anything that could be viewed as biased or stereotypical or reflecting any discrimination?"