I keep waiting for any language with male and female nouns to be banished from civilization. That probably requires more brain power than those people can muster. These morons will eventually begin to bore themselves as much as they bore us.
That could happen with English. Many languages don't make a gender distinction in the pronouns as we do, and the change would be simple if we can ever get buy-in for some gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.
It looks like a singular "they" is the most likely candidate. We frequently use that already in the abstract case when we are talking about a hypothetical person that might be of either sex. Now we have "non-binaries" who claim not to identify with either sex assuming singular "they" as their personal pronoun. Coupled with pronoun chip-on-the-shoulder-ism, I suspect that people will be intimidated from using the "he" and "she" pronouns in the future, as "he" and "she" will become a minefield of possible misgendering, while "they" will become acceptable for anyone.
Languages like Spanish that grammatically gender all their nouns will be a tougher nut to crack, and will probably preserve the gender distinction.
If I could edit that list, I would put she/he, with explicit repudiation of "it", "they", and ze/zir/zim. As long as it's either he or she, they can use their own best judgement.
There's a direct line between the imposition of boutique pronouns as mandatory participation in obvious untruth, and the mass psychotic break of covidianism. Reality is not what you perceive, it's what you're told to perceive, and furthermore what you're told can change without a moment's notice. Today I'm a xe, tomorrow I'm a ze; today masks don't work, tomorrow they do. Each "my truth" is as valid as the other, and never mind the contradictions.
Disrupt and dismantle. Agitate, agitate, agitate. The contradictions are not merely a side effect you're supposed to ignore. True to Marxist religious practice, the contradictions are meant to be kindling. You're supposed to be confused, disheartened, angered, and made vulnerable - sentiments favorable for bloody revolution.
Indeed, contradictions are essential. By inhibiting the identification of a concrete, stable reality, they unbalance the psyche, leaving the subject disoriented and desperate to know what to do - and hence more likely to obey orders.
Indeed, and this is what grooming in education is for. Like sure, pedos are all for it, but queer and gender indoctrination is literally about resisting stable, objective identity.
This was perfect. I had an argument with someone who was insisting that using someone’s “preferred pronouns” was a sign of respect, and your essay beautifully explained that their desire to impose upon me the mandate to view them the way they view themselves is a violation of my autonomy and therefore disrespectful to me. Bravo!
In Canada the pronouns have been given protected grounds (Charter of Rights added "gender identity." Failure to do so can be career-ending. Having said that, given that Canadians have lost their mobility rights, the Charter appears worthless.
My feminine perspective as a nice suburban lady is that you hit the nail on the head except in one respect. For a certain percentage of the population, stating your pronouns is simply wearing-a-mask-level "being nice and not making waves." I'm not even talking about the Karens. I'm talking about pasting a smile on your face and approaching the white van to give directions to the group of creepy guys because attending to that nervous feeling and walking in the opposite direction might make you look impolite (or, worse and perhaps more directly comparable, racist).
I don't even pretend to understand the male equivalent-- the Piggotts of the world-- but my sense is that the misguided feminine sense of appeasement is being seized upon and radicalized by the gender zealouts...appeasement is a decent strategy sometimes, but right now it's time to call out Mama Bear. (And no, she's not wearing ridiculous toddler-style makeup and that thing she's carrying isn't a sign.)
I think you’re right on the money. I worry for my girls who wore masks way too long (even after we all recovered from Covid) so as not to appear rude. The social fear is strong with this generation.
One of the first things in covid mania that disturbed me greatly was seeing so many teens and college age students--I live within 15 minutes of two major universities--wearing masks everywhere even when they weren't being forced. This group of people is supposed to buck the system--why aren't they? I'm proud to say that I'm an ornery old fart and my kids--12 and 15--don't give much of a crap about what others think of them--maybe I've done something right!
I'm in VA and my school system was one of the hold-outs on making masks optional when our new governor mandated it. They didn't change it until the legislature passed a law that they had to--which was surprisingly headed by a democrat. My 10th grade daughter started home schooling after a week this year because of the masks but my 7th grade son is still in public school. His middle school has about 1000 students and many parents said their older kids were waiting to see what others were doing before deciding whether or not to mask. He could have been the only one--he didn't care--he did a shield for medical reasons--but that thing was going away no matter what any other person did.
My kids weren't used to masking because I fought it as much as I could. My son who was 10 when this started never wore one in public even when the state changed the age to 5.
I went into the Disney store back in November. I had my granddaughter with me and they said anyone above 2 had to wear a mask. I told the door nazi, she was under the age of 2. An outright obvious lie, she didn’t argue with me. If they can bend their gender, I can bend her age.
I won’t take my granddaughter into another Disney store, I won’t pay or attend Disney ever again. It’s a shame, I always shopped their sale racks. 😆
If you're in a blue state (and of course you would be, wouldn't you?) you should be good to go. Otherwise they're oppressing you, and you need to call the ACLU immediately.
You nailed it. I live in NYC 😢. Hadn't thought of calling the ACLU (since it's been worse than useless for a long time), but I'll append that to my response: "I identify as under 2 years old and if you question me I've got the ACLU on speed dial." 😂
My sig oth, a real card, will usually wear his mask under his chin. Against his neck it looks like gills, and he tells the door nazis with utmost seriousness that he self-identifies as a rainbow trout.
Social fear exists in every generation but it’s particularly strong in the young, who are just figuring out what’s what. We all look around us to see what everyone else thinks. And instinctively we know we’re safest in the middle of the pack. There’s also the need to be agreeable and get along. In the middle years, getting along means getting ahead. I’m grateful that I’ve reached the fuck you years. I have less to lose by going along now, and the bullshit seems especially deep these days. I suspect every generation has to go through a similar process to realize ‘the way it is’ isn’t how it has to be.
I think another reason that wasn't mentioned was because they think it helps reduce the stigma on people who might need pronouns because nobody can tell what they are. It's a stupid and misguided reason but not exactly authoritarian.
It's stupid because if a person passes for what they want to be called pronouns are not necessary.. and if they don't, the stigma around pronouns is the least of their problems because they probably come across as a dangerous lunatic anyway.
Yes, the rationale of the pronouns in the bio is that we are accepting that nobody should assume another persons gender identity until that are specifically told. Proper etiquette when introducing yourself is to say both your name and you pronouns. Assuming a gender is rude. I’m guessing that this would be similar to the feeling around using Miss, Ms. or Mrs. in the past. It would be rude to assume a marriage status.
I agree. Nobody 'has' pronouns. They are used when the person being mentioned isn't there. If you have concerns about this, there's something wrong with you which means this pronoun thing shouldn't be encouraged.
Yes - pronouns are a property of the speaker, not the subject. "My" pronouns are the words I use to describe other people, and vary depending on who I am referring to.
For my part, there’s a very low probability that I’ll ever have reason to refer to any individual pronoun person at all, let alone in the third person in their absence. Therefore I can’t be bothered to care what they’ve decided their pronouns are, and I surely won’t be expending any effort trying to remember them.
Yeah, I’m trying to be generous to the pronoun people because many of the people and businesses I work with fall into that mindset. I do have to say that you are not going to be cancelled or publicly humiliated for not putting your pronouns in your email signature. And we no longer use Mr, Ms., Miss, or Ms. in email introductions, partially so that we don’t have to worry about marriage status or gender. We can just ignore the pronoun people, just like we ignore the older etiquette of “Dear Ms. Jones.”
To be clear, I agree with the description underlying mentality for the pronoun people that El Gato gives. I just think there is a rational basis for why a dude might feel the need to let other people know he is a dude despite the fact that nobody would ever assume or even be convinced that he was not a dude.
Well I do have to say that Jordan Peterson was shamed and had to self cancel over not wanting to join the pronoun brigade. Ironically it made him famous and got his ideas out to many more people.
He also directly attacked their ideology rather than just ignoring them. And, like you said, he benefited from it. I would say the hate speech laws around misgendering are far more egregious than listing your pronouns. And not everybody who lost their pronouns thinks we should have public shaming over misgendering. So I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t give anybody who lists their pronouns on Twitter the benefit of the doubt. That is mostly due to the fact that I don’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt on Twitter since they voluntarily chose to participate in such a toxic site.
Some government depts and major corporations are strongly 'suggesting' that people put their pronouns in their signature block. They don't have to be told outright to do it. I can't follow your reasoning about the dude issue.
The dude issue was related to the example that El Gato was using. Obviously male presenting people have no reason to put their pronouns in their bio other than as a vain attempt to be included in the woke club. Everyone assumes they are male, and since they are obviously male they are not part of the gender groups that are supposedly being protected by the listing of the pronouns. If this dude decided to put female or other pronouns in his bio, he would probably be shunned by the woke groups because they would view him as trying to. claim a victim status that he doesn’t deserve because he is obviously male. Therefore, his putting his pronouns in his bio is only done to signify his fealty to an ideology.
If I get an email from somebody in a company and I see pronouns, I generally assume that the company culture itself is encouraging pronouns rather than the employee that I am emailing.
On the other hand, I can use my status(?) as a grey haired older woman to wave away some of the nonsense and have only been challenged once for not wearing a mask.
Well said, as always. I too feel that people are free to find their center, whatever that may be — and I expect this is true for all but a tiny proportion of the US population. But wile I empathize with their body dysmorphia, as I do with people who must amputate a perfectly healthy limb to feel whole, I will not participate in their psychosis. We must not let a small number of very loud mentally ill activists dominate the conversation. Until recently, school-age children exhibited transgender tendencies at a rate of 1 - 2%; now it’s 20 - 30% (as best I recall). This nonsense must end, and denying the pronoun lunacy is a good place to start.
Language matters, and the left has been perverting meaning for far too long. Time for the rest of us to buy a spine and vigorously oppose the repurposing of language and the redefinition of word meaning.
Smaller and smaller group is "protected" by these loonies. We will reach the point where some minority group will be so small that it doesn't even exist but the world must align to it and "be respectful". Basically this is communism. In the name of a nonexistent minority everyone will be suppressed.
As a teen girl in the 90s in an affluent Southern private school, I knew plenty of girls with eating disorders. Most of them received treatment when it got to a certain point, and in no case was the treatment to affirm their delusions that they were fat. Anorexia/bulemia were correctly recognized as mental/perceptual/control disorders, and no one “played along” to “be kind.” That’s not how you treat mental illness.
My neice/nephew's wife tries to pull the pronouns and "my truth". My husband, the brutal- mocker- of- all -things- foolish man that he is cured her of that nonsense (at least for three days during Thanksgiving).
Turns out they/them are very fragile and skate on the thin ice of sanity.
I will say broadly (because there is a chance someone from Thanksgiving will read the comments since, among the unvaxxed, we talk cat stat). If someone chooses for themselves a title, or something which they in all seriousness wish to addressed as they will be treated as such. That goes for the more serious sort of thing like living and wanting to be called man. As an uncle, if the "man" is acting as if he is a woman there is a consequence that uncle will spell out for him before he goes out in the real world and gets his arse kicked. Or is married and fails to do the things the leader of the family must do. Hard things. But that wasn't what I was talking about in the comment (but it was a conversation with his transitioning, married to a woman niece). In a nice way.
BUT her wife is oh so woke. And the family is oh so not woke. So husband and granddad told the wife that if she was going to act like it was a breach of human decency if one of the family called her a "her" instead of the preferred "they/them" then they were going to utterly embrace it. They them can say, clear up the dishes, put the chairs and tables away, get firewood and go to town to look for cream for grandma (which would be ridiculous for a she/her to have to do). And then there was general ridicule, using they them in ways most of the men found funny. Some of the joking was a little rough, but my niece I think at least saw the foolishness in the pronoun bossipants nature of her wife. Even though she is living as a man, she is not woke. At least not to her aunty.
Husband wanted me to clarify. He only went down this road because the wife was demanding they/them. When he said "how about I just call you by your given name?" She said "No. Whatever she says at the moment is her truth and she said it should be respected." He thinks it is a form of bipolar cry for attention and a way to air emotions. He also said that if someone requested politely to be referred to as something they are not and it was a real word and he respected them, he would do it (as we do with our niece - who we love and respect). To be clear, we both call her by the God given gender to each other and when talking to her parents. Not disrespectfully, but because it is too hard to talk about things in the past without talking truthfully. So you see where I am going. Lie for the sake of politeness and mental health and tell the bully attention seekers to go jump in a lake.
So they/them wanted you to call them by they/them instead of say, Melissa (or whatever her real name is)? So in other words, "hey "they" can you pass the salt please"?
I think it was the exclusive use of "Melissa" she objected to. We weren't quite sure. But you have the right idea. No referencing to her as a her or exclusively as the given name in order to avoid what she wants. It's a childish game. She thought we were disgusting Nazi racists and we all thought our relative married several crying idiots.
I feel ya. It's almost this bad with my own son. He thinks we're racists and I'm pretty sure he's a lefty lunatic. Still love him tho. At least he hasn't taken to listing his pronouns. So there is that
Husband sez saying her name in lieu of the pronoun was like saying your sorry when you don't mean it. Or saying sorry with a tone. NOT ALLOWED. At least that is manimpression. I think it was more of "I will force you to say it".
There’s a community garden in my neighborhood that I was interested in participating in. One of the questions in the application was, “What pronouns should we use for you?” I’m now growing my vegetables in five gallon buckets on my back porch.
I actually did that. I work for a company that’s into all that. On a conference call we were asked about “pronouns”. I said something to the effect of: 3rd person references to me are entirely the prerogative of the interlocutors; as far as I am concerned they are free to use whatever they feel best fits the case.
There was silence. I suspect that the simple practicality of that caught them off-guard.
Slightly off topic, but why do “trans women” (I always forget which way it goes; I’m referring to men pretending to be women) seem to so frequently make themselves up and dress themselves in a way that’s a almost a cartoonish caricature of the western patriarchal view of feminine appearance?
The activists have a highly specific, superficial view of femininity and are damn near universally highly aggressive. It is also extremely common for them to maintain facial hair or other obviously male characteristics.
The pathologies are so obvious as to be almost comical.
Three possible issues here. First, transgendered people are people who emphatically want to BE of the opposite sex to what their body is, and if they choose to make that transition, it is an enormous investment that they take very seriously. (Think something like the cost of a house.) For many decades, they have been classed as mentally ill, and the only way they are allowed to get their sex change is to play ball with psychologists and prove to them that they really are that brand of crazy, so that the operation can be classed as a palliative that is needed to calm down their dysphoria. This redounds to the financial benefit of their psychologists, who may string them along for years, always ready to set them back if they show any sign of not being like the gender they say they are.
In Canada, they used to have a socialized health program that gave sex-changes for free provided the applicant went through their institution. Required were first the "real life" test, in which they had to live and dress as the target sex 24-7-365 for two full years without hormones, followed by the same thing plus hormones for two more years, before they could get their operation. One horror story was of an MtF person who had nearly completed the program when she was caught by her psychologist going into a store while wearing jeans rather than a skirt, on a -20 degree day, and was sent back to the beginning. So for a trans person to get the operation they want, they may have to cater to their psychologist's cartoonish caricature of the appearance and behavior of the target sex.
Second, there are other groups that may want to get in on the recent loosening of restrictions on transgendered people. Notably, there are the transvestites, who are males that want to remain males, but who get a strong kick out of dressing themselves up as women. These people may flirt with the idea that they are transgendered, then rethink and decide that they are "non-binary" or "gender-fluid". Ideal for them might be to have the liberty to go around in public as well made-up women, but to keep their male parts. These may be the "trans women" your friend is thinking about.
Third, your friend should keep in mind the sad fact that a minority group is best known by the most obnoxious of its members. There may be many trans women who cross over quietly, but the ones that he notices are the ones that stand out for loud behavior.
Yes, trans women can be either lesbians or feminists, and many identify as such. There is also a significant sub-faction of feminists who abhore them.
My friend is still a little confused. Our new SC justice was lauded for her brilliance in dodging the question of the definition of a woman by claiming she can’t say because she’s not a biologist. What particular skill would she assume a biologist might have to make that determination? I have read some very good books written by physicists that made Einstein’s theory of relativity quite tractable. Do you think it would be at all possible to get a biologist to write a treatise for the layman (and for the Supreme Court) on what a woman is? Would this not bring some clarity to the issue?
I think our new SC justice copped out on a question that properly belongs to members of her profession. Defining a category like "woman" is done for the sake of laws or rules that discriminate by sex. A biologist is a scientist, who studies the real world for what it is, and for whom a word like "woman" is only a useful approximate reference term. A biologist worth listening to would probably refuse such an assignment.
In practice, we need to choose our words carefully to get our message across, but putting a rigorous, arbitrarily chosen definition on a common word, and then using that word to project prejudicial assumptions by confusing the contrived definition with the common image of the word, is cheating. Thus, the CDC may arbitrarily define "vaccinated" as "more than two weeks out from the second mRNA shot", and "unvaccinated" as "not 'vaccinated'". But when they use those words publicly, in a polemical way, to condemn the "unvaccinated" for getting covid, they are being deceptive, because they are relying on their audience to assume that "unvaccinated" means only those who have never been injected at all.
Biological categories like species, sex, and age grade, are protean and gradational. There is no sharp distinction between "child" and "adult". Evolutionarily, there is no criterion for a breaking point between an australopithecine mother and a human child, though certain secular humanists, who require a well-defined humanity in contrast to other life forms, have tried to imagine one.
Even between the sexes, intermediate conditions can and do occur. LGBT people are examples of this. There is no single trait that makes all the difference between men and women, but rather a galaxy of distinct traits that are one thing for men and something different for women. Natural selection works to favor a system that causes all traits to develop in their male form, or else all traits to develop in their female form, at the flip of an original "sex" switch. Potentially, though, these traits can all be mixed and matched, and this will happen now and then when the system flubs up.
The claim that gender is a "social construct" is wildly mistaken. Masculinity and femininity are suites of traits involving fundamental brain wiring that is part of sexual diffentiation, and are present innately. Men and women, normatively, do not think and feel the same. Put a male brain in a female body, or a female brain in a male body, and the result is a very awkward, confused, and frustrated person, who may tend to behave erratically. This is essentially what a transgendered person is.
Your friend should consider his purpose in getting a definition of "woman", or of "man". These terms can be used polemically in much the way the CDC does with "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated", by imputing all male traits to a "man, pretending to be a woman." The reality is more like: "a largely female brain, born and raised in a male body, who couldn't stand pretending to be a man, and therefore underwent a great deal of pain, expense and public humiliation to switch to a modified quasi-female body and a female public presentation, who now pretends to be a woman."
Isn’t it an attempt to normalise the concept that pronouns are self-determined rather than a universal language rule, with the eventual aim that the rules become defunct. At the same time affirming that sex is self-determined, not a ‘rule’ of biology.
All conquerors in history, as a matter of priority, impose their language and customs on the newly conquered and forbid the use of their own. It’s about control and subjugation.
We must use Wokespeak and believe the Woke dogma as a sign of our subjection to Wokerule.
I keep wanting to use She/him/its as my pronouns. Why? I like to express my female in the subjective and male in the objective. Possessive case supports capitalist ownership society, rendering a person more an it than a gendered person.
But I'm afraid it would be seen as trolling, rather than pointing out idiocy.
If you really want to set that group off, put (Child of God) as your "pronoun".
I keep waiting for any language with male and female nouns to be banished from civilization. That probably requires more brain power than those people can muster. These morons will eventually begin to bore themselves as much as they bore us.
Just observing how "Latinx" has failed should tell you enough. Virtually every person in the Latin community loathes that shit.
They don't need brain power ~ they'll just make something up.
That could happen with English. Many languages don't make a gender distinction in the pronouns as we do, and the change would be simple if we can ever get buy-in for some gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.
It looks like a singular "they" is the most likely candidate. We frequently use that already in the abstract case when we are talking about a hypothetical person that might be of either sex. Now we have "non-binaries" who claim not to identify with either sex assuming singular "they" as their personal pronoun. Coupled with pronoun chip-on-the-shoulder-ism, I suspect that people will be intimidated from using the "he" and "she" pronouns in the future, as "he" and "she" will become a minefield of possible misgendering, while "they" will become acceptable for anyone.
Languages like Spanish that grammatically gender all their nouns will be a tougher nut to crack, and will probably preserve the gender distinction.
The catalyst for “Latinx” 🙄
"Child of God Made in His Image". They will burst into flames.
Best line yet😺
I/Me/Mine works well too.
I quite like that. It should confuse them enough that they might see that it is all nonsense.
As Biden labeled himself the other day while promoting the murder of the unborn….
If I could edit that list, I would put she/he, with explicit repudiation of "it", "they", and ze/zir/zim. As long as it's either he or she, they can use their own best judgement.
I like that. I have a verse in mind as well.
Philippians 4:6-7
Do you want to share it with us? Dibs on Exodus 22:18!
1 Kings 22:38. Just to confuse people.
Can I get an "Amen"?
😂
Brilliant. Think about passing that idea on to the Babylon Bee.
There's a direct line between the imposition of boutique pronouns as mandatory participation in obvious untruth, and the mass psychotic break of covidianism. Reality is not what you perceive, it's what you're told to perceive, and furthermore what you're told can change without a moment's notice. Today I'm a xe, tomorrow I'm a ze; today masks don't work, tomorrow they do. Each "my truth" is as valid as the other, and never mind the contradictions.
Disrupt and dismantle. Agitate, agitate, agitate. The contradictions are not merely a side effect you're supposed to ignore. True to Marxist religious practice, the contradictions are meant to be kindling. You're supposed to be confused, disheartened, angered, and made vulnerable - sentiments favorable for bloody revolution.
Indeed, contradictions are essential. By inhibiting the identification of a concrete, stable reality, they unbalance the psyche, leaving the subject disoriented and desperate to know what to do - and hence more likely to obey orders.
Indeed, and this is what grooming in education is for. Like sure, pedos are all for it, but queer and gender indoctrination is literally about resisting stable, objective identity.
This was perfect. I had an argument with someone who was insisting that using someone’s “preferred pronouns” was a sign of respect, and your essay beautifully explained that their desire to impose upon me the mandate to view them the way they view themselves is a violation of my autonomy and therefore disrespectful to me. Bravo!
In Canada the pronouns have been given protected grounds (Charter of Rights added "gender identity." Failure to do so can be career-ending. Having said that, given that Canadians have lost their mobility rights, the Charter appears worthless.
Our lords and masters have long since determined that the 'Charter of Rights' does not apply to the peons, the great unwashed.
I’ve never been so embarrassed to be Canadian
My feminine perspective as a nice suburban lady is that you hit the nail on the head except in one respect. For a certain percentage of the population, stating your pronouns is simply wearing-a-mask-level "being nice and not making waves." I'm not even talking about the Karens. I'm talking about pasting a smile on your face and approaching the white van to give directions to the group of creepy guys because attending to that nervous feeling and walking in the opposite direction might make you look impolite (or, worse and perhaps more directly comparable, racist).
I don't even pretend to understand the male equivalent-- the Piggotts of the world-- but my sense is that the misguided feminine sense of appeasement is being seized upon and radicalized by the gender zealouts...appeasement is a decent strategy sometimes, but right now it's time to call out Mama Bear. (And no, she's not wearing ridiculous toddler-style makeup and that thing she's carrying isn't a sign.)
I think you’re right on the money. I worry for my girls who wore masks way too long (even after we all recovered from Covid) so as not to appear rude. The social fear is strong with this generation.
One of the first things in covid mania that disturbed me greatly was seeing so many teens and college age students--I live within 15 minutes of two major universities--wearing masks everywhere even when they weren't being forced. This group of people is supposed to buck the system--why aren't they? I'm proud to say that I'm an ornery old fart and my kids--12 and 15--don't give much of a crap about what others think of them--maybe I've done something right!
My daughter cut all the straps of every one she could find and said "I am never wearing those to school again!" I was so relieved.
I'm in VA and my school system was one of the hold-outs on making masks optional when our new governor mandated it. They didn't change it until the legislature passed a law that they had to--which was surprisingly headed by a democrat. My 10th grade daughter started home schooling after a week this year because of the masks but my 7th grade son is still in public school. His middle school has about 1000 students and many parents said their older kids were waiting to see what others were doing before deciding whether or not to mask. He could have been the only one--he didn't care--he did a shield for medical reasons--but that thing was going away no matter what any other person did.
My kids weren't used to masking because I fought it as much as I could. My son who was 10 when this started never wore one in public even when the state changed the age to 5.
Sounds like you have. Great job!
See above.... they’re being nice and considerate
Central Sq in Cambridge?
I'm actually in SW VA in the US.
I went into the Disney store back in November. I had my granddaughter with me and they said anyone above 2 had to wear a mask. I told the door nazi, she was under the age of 2. An outright obvious lie, she didn’t argue with me. If they can bend their gender, I can bend her age.
I won’t take my granddaughter into another Disney store, I won’t pay or attend Disney ever again. It’s a shame, I always shopped their sale racks. 😆
You've given me an idea. Next time I'm faced with a mask nazi, I'll tell them I identify as under two years old.
If you're in a blue state (and of course you would be, wouldn't you?) you should be good to go. Otherwise they're oppressing you, and you need to call the ACLU immediately.
You nailed it. I live in NYC 😢. Hadn't thought of calling the ACLU (since it's been worse than useless for a long time), but I'll append that to my response: "I identify as under 2 years old and if you question me I've got the ACLU on speed dial." 😂
Now you're talkin'.
My sig oth, a real card, will usually wear his mask under his chin. Against his neck it looks like gills, and he tells the door nazis with utmost seriousness that he self-identifies as a rainbow trout.
Read this to her 5 minutes ago - My wife is still giggling!
Awesome!
Awesome! Best response!
In that scenario, we should all choose to be, "identify as," "under two." I'm under two meters, for example.
By golly, so am I! How dare they require me to wear a mask!! Thanks, Dr. Colleen. And your writings look wonderful, btw, I'll check 'em out.
Social fear exists in every generation but it’s particularly strong in the young, who are just figuring out what’s what. We all look around us to see what everyone else thinks. And instinctively we know we’re safest in the middle of the pack. There’s also the need to be agreeable and get along. In the middle years, getting along means getting ahead. I’m grateful that I’ve reached the fuck you years. I have less to lose by going along now, and the bullshit seems especially deep these days. I suspect every generation has to go through a similar process to realize ‘the way it is’ isn’t how it has to be.
I’m also in the FU stage…I pity the people under us in age!
Making hideous headway in California. They're rejecting their parents for the Fatherland. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/story/2022-05-05/bill-allowing-preteen-vaccines-without-parental-ok-advances
It's literally fascism (corporatism.)
Criminal
They did that in Ontario a year ago. :( But apparently I'm crazy for disagreeing with it.
I think another reason that wasn't mentioned was because they think it helps reduce the stigma on people who might need pronouns because nobody can tell what they are. It's a stupid and misguided reason but not exactly authoritarian.
It's stupid because if a person passes for what they want to be called pronouns are not necessary.. and if they don't, the stigma around pronouns is the least of their problems because they probably come across as a dangerous lunatic anyway.
Yes, the rationale of the pronouns in the bio is that we are accepting that nobody should assume another persons gender identity until that are specifically told. Proper etiquette when introducing yourself is to say both your name and you pronouns. Assuming a gender is rude. I’m guessing that this would be similar to the feeling around using Miss, Ms. or Mrs. in the past. It would be rude to assume a marriage status.
This is a generous interpretation. But if a mrs were called a miss or vice versa it would not be occasion for public humiliation and cancellation.
I agree. Nobody 'has' pronouns. They are used when the person being mentioned isn't there. If you have concerns about this, there's something wrong with you which means this pronoun thing shouldn't be encouraged.
Yes - pronouns are a property of the speaker, not the subject. "My" pronouns are the words I use to describe other people, and vary depending on who I am referring to.
For my part, there’s a very low probability that I’ll ever have reason to refer to any individual pronoun person at all, let alone in the third person in their absence. Therefore I can’t be bothered to care what they’ve decided their pronouns are, and I surely won’t be expending any effort trying to remember them.
Yeah, I’m trying to be generous to the pronoun people because many of the people and businesses I work with fall into that mindset. I do have to say that you are not going to be cancelled or publicly humiliated for not putting your pronouns in your email signature. And we no longer use Mr, Ms., Miss, or Ms. in email introductions, partially so that we don’t have to worry about marriage status or gender. We can just ignore the pronoun people, just like we ignore the older etiquette of “Dear Ms. Jones.”
To be clear, I agree with the description underlying mentality for the pronoun people that El Gato gives. I just think there is a rational basis for why a dude might feel the need to let other people know he is a dude despite the fact that nobody would ever assume or even be convinced that he was not a dude.
Well I do have to say that Jordan Peterson was shamed and had to self cancel over not wanting to join the pronoun brigade. Ironically it made him famous and got his ideas out to many more people.
He also directly attacked their ideology rather than just ignoring them. And, like you said, he benefited from it. I would say the hate speech laws around misgendering are far more egregious than listing your pronouns. And not everybody who lost their pronouns thinks we should have public shaming over misgendering. So I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t give anybody who lists their pronouns on Twitter the benefit of the doubt. That is mostly due to the fact that I don’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt on Twitter since they voluntarily chose to participate in such a toxic site.
“I do have to say that you are not going to be cancelled or publicly humiliated for not putting your pronouns in your email signature.”
Yet.
Some government depts and major corporations are strongly 'suggesting' that people put their pronouns in their signature block. They don't have to be told outright to do it. I can't follow your reasoning about the dude issue.
The dude issue was related to the example that El Gato was using. Obviously male presenting people have no reason to put their pronouns in their bio other than as a vain attempt to be included in the woke club. Everyone assumes they are male, and since they are obviously male they are not part of the gender groups that are supposedly being protected by the listing of the pronouns. If this dude decided to put female or other pronouns in his bio, he would probably be shunned by the woke groups because they would view him as trying to. claim a victim status that he doesn’t deserve because he is obviously male. Therefore, his putting his pronouns in his bio is only done to signify his fealty to an ideology.
If I get an email from somebody in a company and I see pronouns, I generally assume that the company culture itself is encouraging pronouns rather than the employee that I am emailing.
Male presenting people? Stop caving to their nonsense language.
On the other hand, I can use my status(?) as a grey haired older woman to wave away some of the nonsense and have only been challenged once for not wearing a mask.
That is sooo true. My daughter is completely captured by be nice and don’t make anyone uncomfortable.
Well said, as always. I too feel that people are free to find their center, whatever that may be — and I expect this is true for all but a tiny proportion of the US population. But wile I empathize with their body dysmorphia, as I do with people who must amputate a perfectly healthy limb to feel whole, I will not participate in their psychosis. We must not let a small number of very loud mentally ill activists dominate the conversation. Until recently, school-age children exhibited transgender tendencies at a rate of 1 - 2%; now it’s 20 - 30% (as best I recall). This nonsense must end, and denying the pronoun lunacy is a good place to start.
Language matters, and the left has been perverting meaning for far too long. Time for the rest of us to buy a spine and vigorously oppose the repurposing of language and the redefinition of word meaning.
Smaller and smaller group is "protected" by these loonies. We will reach the point where some minority group will be so small that it doesn't even exist but the world must align to it and "be respectful". Basically this is communism. In the name of a nonexistent minority everyone will be suppressed.
Exactly. Great comment.
As a teen girl in the 90s in an affluent Southern private school, I knew plenty of girls with eating disorders. Most of them received treatment when it got to a certain point, and in no case was the treatment to affirm their delusions that they were fat. Anorexia/bulemia were correctly recognized as mental/perceptual/control disorders, and no one “played along” to “be kind.” That’s not how you treat mental illness.
I love you
My neice/nephew's wife tries to pull the pronouns and "my truth". My husband, the brutal- mocker- of- all -things- foolish man that he is cured her of that nonsense (at least for three days during Thanksgiving).
Turns out they/them are very fragile and skate on the thin ice of sanity.
Share his technique?
I will say broadly (because there is a chance someone from Thanksgiving will read the comments since, among the unvaxxed, we talk cat stat). If someone chooses for themselves a title, or something which they in all seriousness wish to addressed as they will be treated as such. That goes for the more serious sort of thing like living and wanting to be called man. As an uncle, if the "man" is acting as if he is a woman there is a consequence that uncle will spell out for him before he goes out in the real world and gets his arse kicked. Or is married and fails to do the things the leader of the family must do. Hard things. But that wasn't what I was talking about in the comment (but it was a conversation with his transitioning, married to a woman niece). In a nice way.
BUT her wife is oh so woke. And the family is oh so not woke. So husband and granddad told the wife that if she was going to act like it was a breach of human decency if one of the family called her a "her" instead of the preferred "they/them" then they were going to utterly embrace it. They them can say, clear up the dishes, put the chairs and tables away, get firewood and go to town to look for cream for grandma (which would be ridiculous for a she/her to have to do). And then there was general ridicule, using they them in ways most of the men found funny. Some of the joking was a little rough, but my niece I think at least saw the foolishness in the pronoun bossipants nature of her wife. Even though she is living as a man, she is not woke. At least not to her aunty.
Husband wanted me to clarify. He only went down this road because the wife was demanding they/them. When he said "how about I just call you by your given name?" She said "No. Whatever she says at the moment is her truth and she said it should be respected." He thinks it is a form of bipolar cry for attention and a way to air emotions. He also said that if someone requested politely to be referred to as something they are not and it was a real word and he respected them, he would do it (as we do with our niece - who we love and respect). To be clear, we both call her by the God given gender to each other and when talking to her parents. Not disrespectfully, but because it is too hard to talk about things in the past without talking truthfully. So you see where I am going. Lie for the sake of politeness and mental health and tell the bully attention seekers to go jump in a lake.
So they/them wanted you to call them by they/them instead of say, Melissa (or whatever her real name is)? So in other words, "hey "they" can you pass the salt please"?
I think it was the exclusive use of "Melissa" she objected to. We weren't quite sure. But you have the right idea. No referencing to her as a her or exclusively as the given name in order to avoid what she wants. It's a childish game. She thought we were disgusting Nazi racists and we all thought our relative married several crying idiots.
I feel ya. It's almost this bad with my own son. He thinks we're racists and I'm pretty sure he's a lefty lunatic. Still love him tho. At least he hasn't taken to listing his pronouns. So there is that
Husband sez saying her name in lieu of the pronoun was like saying your sorry when you don't mean it. Or saying sorry with a tone. NOT ALLOWED. At least that is manimpression. I think it was more of "I will force you to say it".
That's crazy. How would she know what you were saying when she wasn't there? Sorry when 'they' weren't there. See it screws up the grammar!!
I was confused too.
I’m shocked 😱
“I support the current thing loyalty card” meme is one of the best I have seen in a long time! Well done
There’s a community garden in my neighborhood that I was interested in participating in. One of the questions in the application was, “What pronouns should we use for you?” I’m now growing my vegetables in five gallon buckets on my back porch.
I haven’t been confronted with this scenario. What happens when you tell them to call you whatever they want?
I actually did that. I work for a company that’s into all that. On a conference call we were asked about “pronouns”. I said something to the effect of: 3rd person references to me are entirely the prerogative of the interlocutors; as far as I am concerned they are free to use whatever they feel best fits the case.
There was silence. I suspect that the simple practicality of that caught them off-guard.
This is basically what I have planned to say if the situation ever comes up. It hasn't.
Good call
I wish I had the cash and associated attorneys to plaster this in every social media space, every day ,for the indeterminate lifespan of Cthulu...
( honestly...the use of the elder God of insanity as a device was a stroke of shear genius. )
Indeed, the blood of my eldritch ancestors sang in my veins. For years I told people my housemate, never seen, was the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
I too am a clutterer 🤣
Great idea for a TV series. The Hoarders team takes on Innsmouth...
Lol
My pronouns are hee/haw. Am I bad?
Slightly off topic, but why do “trans women” (I always forget which way it goes; I’m referring to men pretending to be women) seem to so frequently make themselves up and dress themselves in a way that’s a almost a cartoonish caricature of the western patriarchal view of feminine appearance?
I mean, can they ever be feminists? Or lesbians?
I’m asking for a friend.
I sincerely believe that the trans movement is homophobic and anti-women.
The activists have a highly specific, superficial view of femininity and are damn near universally highly aggressive. It is also extremely common for them to maintain facial hair or other obviously male characteristics.
The pathologies are so obvious as to be almost comical.
It's a sexual fetish.
Three possible issues here. First, transgendered people are people who emphatically want to BE of the opposite sex to what their body is, and if they choose to make that transition, it is an enormous investment that they take very seriously. (Think something like the cost of a house.) For many decades, they have been classed as mentally ill, and the only way they are allowed to get their sex change is to play ball with psychologists and prove to them that they really are that brand of crazy, so that the operation can be classed as a palliative that is needed to calm down their dysphoria. This redounds to the financial benefit of their psychologists, who may string them along for years, always ready to set them back if they show any sign of not being like the gender they say they are.
In Canada, they used to have a socialized health program that gave sex-changes for free provided the applicant went through their institution. Required were first the "real life" test, in which they had to live and dress as the target sex 24-7-365 for two full years without hormones, followed by the same thing plus hormones for two more years, before they could get their operation. One horror story was of an MtF person who had nearly completed the program when she was caught by her psychologist going into a store while wearing jeans rather than a skirt, on a -20 degree day, and was sent back to the beginning. So for a trans person to get the operation they want, they may have to cater to their psychologist's cartoonish caricature of the appearance and behavior of the target sex.
Second, there are other groups that may want to get in on the recent loosening of restrictions on transgendered people. Notably, there are the transvestites, who are males that want to remain males, but who get a strong kick out of dressing themselves up as women. These people may flirt with the idea that they are transgendered, then rethink and decide that they are "non-binary" or "gender-fluid". Ideal for them might be to have the liberty to go around in public as well made-up women, but to keep their male parts. These may be the "trans women" your friend is thinking about.
Third, your friend should keep in mind the sad fact that a minority group is best known by the most obnoxious of its members. There may be many trans women who cross over quietly, but the ones that he notices are the ones that stand out for loud behavior.
Yes, trans women can be either lesbians or feminists, and many identify as such. There is also a significant sub-faction of feminists who abhore them.
Thank you for this detailed information.
My friend is still a little confused. Our new SC justice was lauded for her brilliance in dodging the question of the definition of a woman by claiming she can’t say because she’s not a biologist. What particular skill would she assume a biologist might have to make that determination? I have read some very good books written by physicists that made Einstein’s theory of relativity quite tractable. Do you think it would be at all possible to get a biologist to write a treatise for the layman (and for the Supreme Court) on what a woman is? Would this not bring some clarity to the issue?
I think our new SC justice copped out on a question that properly belongs to members of her profession. Defining a category like "woman" is done for the sake of laws or rules that discriminate by sex. A biologist is a scientist, who studies the real world for what it is, and for whom a word like "woman" is only a useful approximate reference term. A biologist worth listening to would probably refuse such an assignment.
In practice, we need to choose our words carefully to get our message across, but putting a rigorous, arbitrarily chosen definition on a common word, and then using that word to project prejudicial assumptions by confusing the contrived definition with the common image of the word, is cheating. Thus, the CDC may arbitrarily define "vaccinated" as "more than two weeks out from the second mRNA shot", and "unvaccinated" as "not 'vaccinated'". But when they use those words publicly, in a polemical way, to condemn the "unvaccinated" for getting covid, they are being deceptive, because they are relying on their audience to assume that "unvaccinated" means only those who have never been injected at all.
Biological categories like species, sex, and age grade, are protean and gradational. There is no sharp distinction between "child" and "adult". Evolutionarily, there is no criterion for a breaking point between an australopithecine mother and a human child, though certain secular humanists, who require a well-defined humanity in contrast to other life forms, have tried to imagine one.
Even between the sexes, intermediate conditions can and do occur. LGBT people are examples of this. There is no single trait that makes all the difference between men and women, but rather a galaxy of distinct traits that are one thing for men and something different for women. Natural selection works to favor a system that causes all traits to develop in their male form, or else all traits to develop in their female form, at the flip of an original "sex" switch. Potentially, though, these traits can all be mixed and matched, and this will happen now and then when the system flubs up.
The claim that gender is a "social construct" is wildly mistaken. Masculinity and femininity are suites of traits involving fundamental brain wiring that is part of sexual diffentiation, and are present innately. Men and women, normatively, do not think and feel the same. Put a male brain in a female body, or a female brain in a male body, and the result is a very awkward, confused, and frustrated person, who may tend to behave erratically. This is essentially what a transgendered person is.
Your friend should consider his purpose in getting a definition of "woman", or of "man". These terms can be used polemically in much the way the CDC does with "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated", by imputing all male traits to a "man, pretending to be a woman." The reality is more like: "a largely female brain, born and raised in a male body, who couldn't stand pretending to be a man, and therefore underwent a great deal of pain, expense and public humiliation to switch to a modified quasi-female body and a female public presentation, who now pretends to be a woman."
"I'll make up my own mind, thanks. And since we're here, it's 'asshole' until you demonstrate otherwise. Nice to meet you."
This comment made my day!🤣🤣😍
I love you
Trudeau's pronouns are He/Hid
I thought his pronouns were Bitch/Ass? Ah well, let me update my pronoun list.
😂
Isn’t it an attempt to normalise the concept that pronouns are self-determined rather than a universal language rule, with the eventual aim that the rules become defunct. At the same time affirming that sex is self-determined, not a ‘rule’ of biology.
All conquerors in history, as a matter of priority, impose their language and customs on the newly conquered and forbid the use of their own. It’s about control and subjugation.
We must use Wokespeak and believe the Woke dogma as a sign of our subjection to Wokerule.
Yes. Well said
Yes
I keep wanting to use She/him/its as my pronouns. Why? I like to express my female in the subjective and male in the objective. Possessive case supports capitalist ownership society, rendering a person more an it than a gendered person.
But I'm afraid it would be seen as trolling, rather than pointing out idiocy.
Your idea is amazing, duckie! What a way to de-objectify women! I gotta hand it to you, boy: you go girl!
"pronouns in bio are the stigmata of authoritarian impulse masquerading as martyrdom."
What a great sentence.
Do you ever feel like maybe our fearless leader was Goethe in a past life? Me too.