The strain of male entitlement runs through most of transactivism. The pronoun debacle, is no exception.
A corollary to this notion of respect is the ‘don’t be a jerk’ angle. What’s the harm in playing along with someone’s wishes? Why offend them when it’s just a simple linguistic modification.
I’m a big fan of being polite. It makes society and civilization possible. Where is the limit though? Joining people in their respective delusions, whether it be gender or religion or rallying on about ‘big phrama’ should not be considered to be an extension of ‘politeness’. I am (nor is anyone else) not obliged to be a part of the desultory grand stage that another person is setting.
Men have had the privilege of defining society and reality as they see fit since its inception – this tendency does not go away with the application of nail polish and a pair of cute shoes.
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
2 comments
June 6, 2018 at 6:56 am
Steve Ruis
The problem here is that pronouns are shortcuts often as not (other times they are generic stand-ins). Once we establish we are tallking about William, we can switch to “he” with the full understanding we are talking about William. This saves us from saying “William did this and William did that and you know what William did next?” if everyone has their own set of pronouns, that means we will have to memorize who gets what which will be a lot of effort, so instead we will just refer to them by name and stop using pronouns altogether. It is called the law of unintended consequences. What the pronoun changers want, they will lose because we will stop using gender based pronouns altogether.
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June 6, 2018 at 10:50 am
The Arbourist
@Steve Ruis
We’ll have to see what happens, I’m hoping the current fad of identity politics will wane and we can start to move back toward fixing the problems that we all face in society.
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