The District’s governing body is set to consider a bill that would alter all the language in the D.C. Code and the home rule charter (the law that established D.C.’s local government in 1973) to be gender neutral.

At-large Councilmember David Grosso introduced the bill, which he said would ensure that the language of the city’s laws “is modernized and reflective of our values.”

“Currently, our older laws show outdated thinking about gender, with a default to masculine pronouns or to masculinized forms of nouns,” Grosso said on the dais Tuesday just before introducing the law. “Other laws fail to embody the gender diversity of our community, instead using binary language. Our values in the District of Columbia have evolved and the language of our laws should too.”

The bill is relatively long at 43 pages, delineating dozens of words and phrases that would be eliminated and enumerating their replacements. Among the antiquated terms to go is “chairman,” which would be changed to “chairperson” (the council, its committees, and several other bodies in the government are currently headed by a “chairman,” regardless of that person’s gender).

References to certain professions, too, would be altered: “Bondsman” would become “bondsperson,” “fireman” would become “firefighter,” and “policeman” would become “police officer.” The word “ombudsman” would become “ombudsperson.”

In a move that set the internet alight when it happened in Berkeley, the bill would remove all references to “manholes,” instead calling them “maintenance holes.” Any reference to something “manmade” would be changed to “humanmade,” and “manpower” would be replaced with “workforce.”

The legislation would also strike the words “he,” “him,” and “his” in nearly all cases in the D.C. Code, replacing them with “the individual” or “their” “theirs” or “they.” The words “woman” and “man” would be struck and replaced with “individual” or “human.”

Any references to members of a family unit (father, mother, brother, sister) would be changed to be gender neutral (parent, sibling).

The bill does provide carve outs, however, for bills that specifically need to refer to gender in order to achieve their goal. That includes the Minority and Women-Owned Business Assessment Act of 2008, for example, and The Commission on Fathers, Men, and Boys Establishment Act of 2014.

“The bill is quite simple in concept—that our laws ought to reflect our modern understanding, where male is not the default and people of all genders are supported,” Grosso said.