Gender neutral language

After reading a little into the discussion of using gender neutral language, I would have to say that I tend to agree with some of the participants on the flickr post. If we worry too much about making something gender neutral or politically correct, in the end we won't have very many words left in the dictionary to say. I do agree that we should be careful about what we say and how we say it. Even when writing on the internet how something is written can make me cringe, kind of like how "eye eye eye" uses texting language when writing his or her posts. It is important to know what words to avoid when preparing a speech, since one does not want to upset the audience especially when trying to persuade the audience to his or her opinion. But we don't have enough time in our life to be able to worry too much about making sure everyone says police officer instead of saying police man or woman. And about calling a woman a girl, I don't really see too many situations where that would be inappropriate. I don't think complete strangers should call a woman that they dont know a girl, but there are several situations where the people that we know very well will call us a girl. For instance, women call their friends "the girls" sometimes. There are instances where a guy friend might greet his female friends with "hey girl!" I think for the most part what I'm trying to say is, I don't think that we should worry too much about gender neutrality or political correctness, but in a speaking setting, it probably wouldn't hurt to make sure our language is less likely to offend someone.