I like carpaccio.

My understanding of what it is conforms to Wikipedia’s definition:

Carpaccio … is a dish of raw meat or fish (such as beef, veal, venison, salmon or tuna) generally thinly sliced or pounded thin and served as an appetizer.

According to Arrigo Cipriani, the present-day owner of Harry’s Bar, Carpaccio was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice, where it was first served to the countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo in 1950 when she informed the bar’s owner that her doctor had recommended she eat only raw meat.

What, then, does the Hyatt in Collins Street, Melbourne, mean by the following (found in their events menus)?

• Carpaccio of roast beetroot, goat cheese, fine herbs, citrus dressing
• Seared tuna carpaccio, dill, capers, aioli and baby herbs

From Annabelle Crabb’s WikiLeaks and the ‘Handy Heel’ manoeuvre at ABC’s The Drum:

[Talking about Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi:]

One hopes they also share clothes; an advantageous arrangement, seeing as Mr Putin is frequently shirtless, and Mr Berlusconi rarely in need of trousers.

Yesterday, Julia Gillard was elected parliamentary leader of the Labor Party and sworn in as Australia’s newest Prime Minister.

The media has made much of her sex. There have been lots of “first female prime minister” stories. SBS, which ought know better, described the idea of “having a woman leader” as a “novelty”.

I’m interested in the way we seem squeamish about the W word. It’s OK to refer to Gillard as the “first female prime minister”, but I feel like I have yet to read that she’s the “first woman prime minister”.

So I went Googling. And I’m not impressed.

Searches on Google News reveal the following results:

• gillard female: 1,491 results
• gillard woman: 721 results

Based on what I’ve read, that’s not surprising. Roughly 2:1 using ‘female’ rather than ‘woman’. Next test:

• gillard first female: 1,552 results
• gillard first woman: 697 results

How can that be? How can a more restrictive search (‘gillard first female’) return more results than a less restrictive search (‘gillard female’)? Let’s try something else:

• gillard first female: 1,529 results
• gillard female first: 1,465 results

This is getting silly. I’m beginning to think that the number of results that Google says it finds is just a made-up random number.

But this does not detract from my quest: Why are we so afraid of calling someone a woman?

Are children people? Not according to journalist and author Joel Kotkin. Mr Kotkin recently wrote, about New York:

An analysis by the city controller’s office in 2005 found that people leaving the city were three times more likely to have children than those arriving.

Let me read that again: “people … have children”. Children did not leave the city; people did. Children, it seems, are not people.

We all know what Mr Kotkin meant. That’s not the point. It’s sloppy writing, from a professional writer. But that’s probably not the point, either.

I’m troubled by this language not on behalf of kids, but entirely out of self-interest: I want other people, individuals and groups of individuals (governments, businesses, organizations), to respect me. I want people to respect my life, and not to murder me in the street. I want the freedom to hold opinions contrary to others’ tastes, and not be compelled to conform to the religious or political beliefs of a ruling group. I want to be treated fairly by businesses, not ripped off. I want to live in a world of democratic law-and-order, not subject to capricious edicts of government.

The only claim I have for that respect is that I’m a human being. The only way I’ll get that respect is if we all agree to respect one another. Lots of individuals, religious organizations and governments run around murdering people. But most don’t. Lots of businesses rip off their customers. But most don’t. Lots of societies require their people to hold certain religious or political beliefs. At least in the Western world, in the 21st century, most don’t.

The just-let’s-all-respect-one-another system is imperfect. But it works most of the time.

The system relies on complete reciprocity for all people. If we agree that some humans are excluded, then, logically, others may also be excluded. If we exclude children from the group called ‘people’, then we might also one day exclude 52 year olds. If we exclude 52 year olds, we might exclude short people. Or Australians. Or geeks.

There are some that think that children are grubby things that don’t have much to say for themselves and should not be allowed on grown-ups’ long-haul flights. But kids are still people. We are all diminished if we decide that some people aren’t people.