Straw Person

Being new to the business world, I have learned that "straw man" is a filler name for an unassigned placeholder to represent a person in a workplan. I work in a firm of mostly women, so our IT consultant, a guy, recently felt obliged to change the placeholder name to "straw person." Once the phrase turned androgynus, I knew the answer to a question that has haunted me since I was five years old: the title straw person is most likely the real species name of Dorothy's friend in the Wizard of Oz! Most likely Scare Crow was a cruel and xenophobic nickname for an underrepresented species that had been forced into hard labor in the fields of Kansas. Who's to say he didn't have a brain all along, just because we called him an unfortunate title that acted as a negative verb instead of a not-threatening descriptive noun? It has been many years since that film - I must assume that he has gone on to the other side. RIP, Mr. Straw Person.