 |
| If You Think This Is A Lot Of New Pronouns, This Is Only SOME Of Them. |
What's The Problem Here?
The problem here has three basic dimensions:
- Vulnerable people wanting to not be forcibly associated with a gender they do not identify with.
- Assholes or special snowflakes language policing you--sometimes with the force of the law or academic faculty behind them.
- A CRISIS OF REALITY BROUGHT ON BY LANGUAGE!! ZOMG.
Let's look.
1. Vulnerable People
While modern "mythology" has given us the image of the transgendered person or the person with a non-conforming gender identity as the empowered social justice warrior who terrorizes you and gets you fired / expelled for kicks, The Omnivore is here to tell you it is NOT TRUE.
The vast majority of people for whom the mainline culture does not work are mostly painfully marginalized, discriminated against, and feel an unusual degree of fear or harassment just riding on the subway. Think applying for a new job is stressful? A Trump-voter proudly told The Omnivore of a transgender person who applied for a job at their firm and they were able to come to grips with the whole weird thing.
That's acceptance, right? The Omnivore had to explain to this guy that the transgendered person's apparent liking for Trump (as well!) was more likely a survival strategy than their honest opinion--as their entire employment was a barely successful "working out" of their offensive oddity and weakness.
The Trump-voter bravely allowed it might be true.
The Omnivore will tell you a true thing: EVEN THIS WEAK LEVEL OF INTROSPECTION IS ABNORMAL.
2. The SJW Language Police
If the vast majority of the people who might want a "preferred gender pronoun" are, in fact, the people who society regularly beats up and bullies, that doesn't mean there aren't also some SJW assholes out there too (social justice warrior--The Omnivore defines as a person more interested in fighting and using "social justice concepts" as a weapon, than in making anything really better--which they, themselves, could do just by shutting up)
Firstly, yeah: you can run afoul of campus codes of conduct in a brand new way. And you can maybe get fired if you work for a pretty progressive company or you, uhm, constantly harass a person who doesn't want the pronoun you want to use on them to describe them in California (The Omnivore is not sure this is true--and cannot be arsed to google it).
In any event, YES--there is some bullshit in the dialog.
Until you can literally get beaten within an inch of your life on Tumblr, though, The Omnivore calls this a pretty small problem.
3. THE REALITY BREAKING HORROR
If there's an even smaller problem, though, it's the "thinking man's" opposition to using PGPs. Let's go to . . . The Federalist:
We use he/him/his for a male, she/her/hers for a female, and they/them/theirs to refer to more than one person. This is a simple, well-established, and entirely uncontroversial system, because sex is the only viable candidate for what to attach personal pronouns to: it represents the whole of a person’s body, it cannot change, and it exists independent of our mind. In other words, it is the only anchor by which we can secure the relationship between language and people.
And . . .
You don’t need to be a psychology professor to realize than an attempt to transplant pronouns from the body to the mind is an attempt to destroy our ability to communicate. Consider: John can choose from infinite gender identities, with no fixed link between any one gender identity and any one set of pronouns.
And . . .
Nothing illustrates this nihilism better than the push to convert “they” into a singular pronoun. (A note to any nit-pickers: here, we are not debating the validity of using “they” when a person’s sex is unknown. Rather, we are concerned with an emerging trend wherein a person insists on being referred to as “they” rather than by his or her correct pronouns.)This is, of course, top-drawer raving nonsense. If The Omnivore were a 19th century doctor, and the author's gender was unknown, The Omnivore would recommend removing xir uterus because they are definitely overcome by hysteria.
However, it is not the 19th century and The Omnivore can say with a certainty that The Federalist has gotten its well deserved reputation as a nazi-friendly publication because of shit like this.
HOWEVER: rather than just dismissing this and moving along, keep this bullshit in mind. We're gonna come back to it.
What Does The Omnivore Think?
As The Omnivore is always right(TM) The Omnivore is going to tell you what you should think about all of this . . . and why.
1. Unless You Are Trying To Be Rude, Use Their Damn Pronouns
It is said that a gentleman is a person never insults someone unintentionally. That doesn't mean a gentleman is always polite--far from it. It just means they're never crass or thoughtless. We can expand this to Xentlebeings and it still applies: UNLESS YOU ARE TRYING TO INSULT SOMEONE USE THEIR DAMN PRONOUNS.
Today you are not required to ask (it may be overly polite--which is fine--but as of TODAY, The Omnivore tells you it is not required.)--but once you are told, if you are not in a social war with the person, just use the pronouns. It will not hurt you--The Omnivore promises.
[ NOTE: Claiming it will hurt you--because it is a lie or whatever--is bullshit and is proof you are the asshole--not anyone else. Yes: The Omnivore sees you coming. ]
2. Language Complaints Need To Be Made By Linguists
Concern about what is/isn't a real word or whether Xir is made-up bullshit or not is not your lane unless you study how language evolves. We lost thee, thy, and thou--did it kill us? No. Is "They" just for two or more people . . . or only in cases where gender is not known? Ask an expert--no, you're not an expert.
They say it's okay (they do)--then it's okay. Grab your genitals and give up on your vacuous moral superiority kick. If you can't be a bigger person than that, maybe you should run for congress on the GOP ticket or something--they seem to want spineless racists these days.
Also: YOU have a preferred pronoun. Or is it okay if I call you she? (yeah, yeah--the one or two women who read this think they have a clever comeback--they don't). Is "He" really gender-neutral for "all mankind?" -- Tell that to Mr. Federalist--that kind of thing is DESTROYING US!! Plus, back when that was established, The Omnivore is pretty sure all the genders that "counted" were, uhm, 'he's.
Is gender really a key part of our language with regards to pronouns. Well, yes--in a lexical sense--but that's because we speak fucking English. If you speak Spanish then computers are female. Put that in your Federalist and smoke it.
So, no--if you have a linguistic argument to make, make it at the next big Grammar-Con or whatever they fucking have for those guys. Don't make it in normal society where it's just an attempt to self-aggrandize.
How does The Omnivore get away with it? What part of Always Right(TM) do you not understand??
3. The Real Problem - Trump
If you are going "Haw Haw Haw!! Of Course He Brought It To Trump--How Predictable!" the idiot here is really you for reading this. But nevertheless, The Omnivore is going to explain ximself xnyway. XOR something.
Trump represents the right-wing culture warriors getting EVERYTHING THEY WANTED. The government, culture--the phantom of "respect" that comes from not respecting anyone else one little bit but still winning an election.
They got bigotry in the electorate, racists in the White House, and brown kids in cages. They get to think they're saving America while attacking our allies and sucking our enemies dicks. They get a president who gets to bad-mouth the FBI and they'll go along with it--because until something changes in government, this is Asshole Fantasy Land.
It turns out that this is kind of a package deal when it comes to stuff like transgendered people serving in the military or using people's preferred pronouns as a courtesy to them trying to fit into everyday life.
In other words: We now see what all of this looks like, packaged and ready for prime-time--and it's abysmal.
Right now: if you are fighting the culture wars, you are forwarding the Trump-social agenda. There's no way around it--and if you are doing that, well, The Omnivore hopes a star you don't like grabs you by the pussy . . . because you might just learn a little lesson there. Right?
(I'm gonna go full honesty here, and probably show that I am a Gen Xer and not a Millennial in the process)
ReplyDeleteThere's a hidden middle ground here, too. I've met at least one person who wanted to identify as It, and I was all for using language as it wished, but it was painful to do so....not because of harm to me, or even because of some desire to disrespect it's wishes, but because everything in my lexicon of understanding states internally that calling a person who is biogendered a woman (or man) "it" is a fucking insult to them and their telling me I am not doing so doesn't change the fact that my internal sense of language says I'm basically treading in the same zone as any number of other insults.
Our language would benefit from a third gender neutral pronoun that's not grouped with plurals, but in my corner of the universe this issue has happened exactly once so far, and we all accommodated as best we could despite the fact that it felt like someone had just told me that the proper address for their identity was an insult.
Yeah--it sounds like you got through it, though. Change *can be* hard--but sac'ing up and doing it is what makes us real xen.
Delete-The Omnivore
And worth noting that while this is an interesting experience for one of my generation, my son (who's not quite 7) won't even be able to fathom how anything was ever different.
Delete5+ new classes of synthetic pronouns - that doesn't strike you as special pleading?
ReplyDeleteThough I have no desire to (unintentionally) offend anyone, these neologisms seem like a lot to keep track of. For instance, if a masculine-looking person asked me to refer to them with feminine pronouns, I would certainly try my best to honor their wishes. However, we are highly visual creatures, so it's likely that I would get it wrong occasionally. That's neither intentional nor any sort of "gendered violence" or anything like that. That said, I'd be OK with this precisely because the requested accomodation on my part isn't asking all that much; I'm being asked to substitute terms which are already part of my mother tongue. But this Xe/Ze/Xir stuff is a different matter. The way I see it, people feel however they feel and want what they want and that's none of my business, but demanding these non-"organic" referents is akin to a native English speaker insisting upon being addressed in Klingon. It does feel like a weaponized form of political correctness and, despite what SJW types may say, there's a great deal of middle ground between complete capitulation to their desires and being gratuitously offensive.
It's perfectly possible (fairly likely, in fact) to have about equal loathing for both political correctness and the frightened bigots supporting Donald Trump.
I can't stand the more virulent strains of P.C. because sometimes people need to talk about difficult things, and that can't happen when people have to walk on eggshells around each other all the time. Language isn't just language - it shapes thought, and the infantilization of discourse serves no good purpose.
When, as seems increasingly likely, our civilization crumbles into some sort of apocalyptic Mad Max scenario, I predict that "progressives" will be horrified by how rapidly things like traditional gender roles reassert themselves. PGPs, and many other similar notions, will then be revealed as an affectation of a decadent and affluent society. As such, they will likely be jettisoned once we can no longer afford them.
You've heard it all before, I know. But aren't you tired of jumping through other people's hoops, particularly when they clearly don't give a damn about yours?
You're never wrong, after all.
1. The Mad Max scenario, if it comes, won't look like you think it will. Don't fantasize about it--if it comes, you'll regret having done it. If it doesn't, you will just have had everyone think less of you.
DeleteThe only person I know who uses a gender not connected to their birth absolutely gives a damn about my hoops. But then, I'm not in a battle with any PC SJW types--and, if I were, I wouldn't care much about their pronouns.
See how that works?
-The Omnivore
As to the Mad Max scenario not looking like I think it will - that's pretty presumptuous, even for someone who's never wrong. You know this... how?
DeleteNor do you have much of an idea, absent three sentences, what I think that future will look like. If you must know, I suspect it will be strongly locale-dependent. Some mash-up of The Road Warrior, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Book of Eli, let's say. Maybe even something along the lines of The Road in the more resource-deprived areas.
And, for what it's worth, no sane person would fantasize about a literal apocalypse in which about ninety percent of humanity would perish. I certainly don't, but I'll agree with you that anyone who does is either nuts or hasn't thought things through. There certainly is no shortage of juvenile people who relish the idea of something like a zombie apocalypse, in which a total societal breakdown enables them to (they think) live out their most violent and sociopathic fantasies, free from all consequences. And, sadly, there are also quite a few companies whose entire business model appears to be pandering to that demographic. You know the ones I mean.
To clarify: my comment about hoop-jumping was not meant to refer specifically to the pronoun controversy at hand. It was more a general statement about the sort of behavior which often characterizes the current crop of hypersensitive people: the so-called "snowflakes" who seem to go looking for trouble, but achieve little more than playing right into the hands of the deplorable jerkwads who are primed to hate them anyway.
See how that works?
If a future "collapse" occurs it won't look like any of the movies. It will be boring and dismal. people will not cling-together in historical gender roles.
DeleteIt'll just be a lot of people having a hard time getting food and health care and anyone dissenting being clubbed to death by police and everyone else turning a blind eye.
-The Omnivore
Also: you are allowed to ignore horrible people making unreasonable demands on you. But make sure they are actually horrible people first--and figure out if the demand reaches a level where you're willing to be the equally small guy.
Delete-The Omnivore
Thank you for sharing this useful information.
ReplyDeleteTop Political Survey