FIRST a warning. This column contains offensive language. It includes terms such as "guys" and some really inflammatory stuff along the lines of "bossy", "shrill" and "feisty". At its most florid it features words such as "bitch", for which I apologise in advance.
I'm not sure how David Morrison coped with all the rambunctious workplace language he would have heard in his former job as head of the Australian Defence Force. 
"Now, fellas, I know we're all under a bit of stress over here but the next time I hear anyone using insensitive religious language to describe al-Qaida or ISIS, I'll do my block. Remember, these are passionate young men who share a common theological system, a fondness for amateur bomb-making, and an enthusiasm for boarding planes and interfering with the navigational equipment while affirming the greatness of their chosen deity. Can we drop all this mad Islamic sons-of-bitches stuff, please?" Australian of the Year Morrison is now in civvies and has turned his attention to the battle between the sexes in the modern workplace.
I've applauded Morrison in the past and remain a big fan of the powerful induction speech he gave to ADFA recruits, where he argued that when it comes to the treatment of women "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept". It struck me as a powerfully constructed sentence and a good test for men to live by.
To that end, it has been dispiriting to see Morrison throw in his lot so fully with the professional worrying classes, in becoming a paid-up advocate for this cringeworthy #words-atwork Twitter campaign.
It has all the woolly-minded hallmarks of the worst excesses of modern academe. Like some flimsy sociology course, it is predicated around a conviction that all behaviour exists on a continuum. This approach is inspired by a belief in what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called "hegemony", which holds that all behaviour is political and that every word, phrase and form of behaviour should be seen in a greater political context. To reduce this lofty thinking into the everyday, it basically means that if you're having a beer with your mates and innocently note in hushed tones that the barmaid is a spunk, you have placed yourself on the same spectrum as the sex offenders and wife-bashers.
Launching a video for the Diversity Council Australia this week, retired Lieutenant-General Morrison insisted that he was not trying to become the "language police", then set about to do exactly that with a list of forbidden terms in this new era of mandated tolerance.
"Exclusive language, gender-based language or inappropriate language has as much a deleterious or disadvantaged effect as something where you're saying something blatantly inappropriate to another human being," Morrison said.
He then proceeded to explain triumphantly that he had cleansed himself of ever referring to colleagues by that most inflammatory of terms, "guys".
"I have now removed that from my lexicon as best I can, and I think it's important." It isn't important at all. It's a testament to the modern propensity for posturing when it comes to matters of no consequence.
The word "guys" might have a gender-based origin but has become so generic in its usage that it excludes no one.
Where the #wordsatwork campaign gets sterner is on the more judgmental terms such as "bossy", "shrill" and "bitch".
I would accept the assertion that these terms are loaded and applied almost invariably to those of the feminine persuasion. But for every time they are used against a woman in the workplace, I can think of a corresponding and equally offensive term that would be used for male colleagues and bosses.
For every time a pushy or demanding female boss gets labelled a bitch, there would be dozens of men out there who are being described in the tearoom as a dope or a dickhead, an arsehole or a suck-hole and a brown-noser. In my times working as an editor, I'm sure that on any given day I ticked at least three of the above.
This debate is reminiscent of the campus-led campaign in the US against what are known by the excruciating term "micro-aggressions", whereby innocent and friendly questions to non-Anglo folks along the lines of "So, where are you originally from?" are now classified as hateful racial profiling.
There are clearly huge problems in workplaces when it comes to the representation of women. The worst of these from my experience is the exclusion of women from key decision-making moments within businesses. It manifests itself in the low representation of women at the senior levels of most companies, and the lower level of remuneration and reward women enjoy compared to their male counterparts.
These are real issues. The #wordsatwork stuff is the kind of tosh you'd expect in a first year women's studies course, wedged into the curriculum somewhere between Andrea Dworkin's cheery theory that marriage is a form of institutionalised sexual abuse, and the tute group about whether the word "women" itself is repressive because of its "men" suffix.
Don't sweat the small stuff is a handy maxim for life. By hitching his wagon to this silly campaign, Morrison has joined a weird crusade against some of the smallest stuff going around.@penbo