Gender Neutrality….Are We Over Thinking This a Little Bit?

In Washington state, they're slowly changing over traditional terms that refer to groups of people to more gender neutral words.

For example, firemen becomes firefighters. Policemen become police officers. Ombudsman is now ombuds. My spell check doesn't even recognize that word. I had to override auto-correct just to use it!

The task is daunting and there are literally thousands of words that need to be changed. At what cost? For what reason? Most of us know when to use gender neutral terms without having to refer to official documents, don't we? There are so many bigger worries in these times we live in than than the minutia of gender reference in official documents. Am I wrong?

Ok, please excuse while I figure out how to add "ombuds" to my iPad dictionary.