Kate Tempest - new name, new pronouns and a haircut

Posted too soon.
I meant to add that I think adolescence is going on well into the 30s for a lot of young people.

I have a friend who is a teacher. She is 30. Extremely intelligent, lovely person. She was extolling the bravery and general wonderfulness of one of her 6th form girls who has come out as non-binary. How much support she was getting etc etc. I was just baffled.
I think it is general desperation/pressure to conform to current fads, just as teenagers have always done.

being a woman- a karen- is not cool.

she sold out.

I can't begin to describe how annoyed I am that this "news" was imparted to me via my own Facebook feed. I thought to myself - funny, I don't know this person, they must be a friend of a friend. So I scrolled through the comments to see if anyone I know had commented, but no.

I make no secret of my feelings on the sex/gender subject on Facebook so it seriously gets on my nerves that this story was dished up to me without my permission.

As a pp said - why is this happening to so many young lesbians? It's almost as if being a woman just isn't good enough ...

i think gender non binary is artificial identity.
man and woman are binary?
why?
why do i have to practice binary gender role?

@MrsJamin

So disappointed in her them. What a let down to kt's female fans who love that kt doesn't conform to stereotypes and was just herself... Now she is just themselves?! The pronoun thing makes so hard to write anything... We're asked to suspend our senses that she's a woman and not multiple people...? Argh.

Quote from Wikipedia: "They toured internationally with their band Sound of Rum until they disbanded in 2012 before being commissioned to write their first play".

This really highlights the problem: using they for Tempest and they for Tempest's band.

Thank you @ChattyLion. Irony indeed.

What ChattyLion said!

Ppl like KT are only interested in themselves.its tedious in the extreme

Well done dear, you’re now ‘not like the other girls’ but soooo much cooler 🙄

if KT thinks they will stop being regarded as magically not being a woman they’re in for a shock - but you know at 34 KT knows this. What this does is enable KT to join in the LGBTQ sparkle umbrella whilst not having to do anything but have a hair cut

How more LGB ppl aren’t furious about the appropriation of all the struggle people went through to have their sexuality accepted only for self centred overly indulged naval gazing wokesters to appropriated by ppl whose biggest struggle seems to be whether to dye their hair pink or blue baffles me

Text link - good poem and more than a little ironic to read considering this announcement
www.panmacmillan.com/blog/march-2016/friday-poem-thirteen

'Thirteen'
From Kate Tempest's first full-length poetry collection Hold Your Own.

The boys have football and skate ramps.
They can ride BMX
and play basketball in the courts by the flats until midnight.
The girls have shame.
One day,
when we are grown and we have minds of our own,
we will be kind women, with nice smiles and families and jobs.
And we will sit,
with the weight of our lives and our pain
pushing our bodies down into the bus seats,
and we will see thirteen-year-old girls for what will seem like the first time since we’ve been them,
and they will be sitting in front of us, laughing
into their hands at our shoes or our jackets,
and rolling their eyes at each other.
While out of the window, in the sunshine,
the boys will be cheering each other on,
and daring each other to jump higher and higher.

It’s not cool or progressive whatsoever to say you are special and not like other girls. It’s just man-pleasingly fiddling while Rome burns. It challenges precisely fuck all and it helps no one but yourself. It’s definitely not an effective solution to misogyny (which can’t be identified out of) but even if it were, its only an individualistic solution. Everyone needs to think much bigger and with greater solidarity.

Too long spent surrounded by people blowing smoke up their arse. You become convinced that you really are that special little four leaf clover, and not just another common or garden pretentious tit.

Kate’s poem 13 is wonderful. I read it to teenagers I teach all the time,

The point of the point is that it's pointy.

So disappointed in her them. What a let down to kt's female fans who love that kt doesn't conform to stereotypes and was just herself... Now she is just themselves?!
The pronoun thing makes so hard to write anything... We're asked to suspend our senses that she's a woman and not multiple people...? Argh.

Why does calling yourself "Kae" and cutting your hair make you nonbinary? What is nonbinary about fake names and fashion?

Of course if they is into some sort of dualist or platonist philosophy, or into eastern religions etc they may disagree.

Goose, I'm sorry if that was unclear. I don't think human beings have an "essential being", as in some sort of noun possessed by an individual, like a soul or a spirit, but I am referring to the experience of being, a kind of 'am'-ness, as ourselves, moment to moment, which is experienced irrespective of our sexed bodies, free of any notion of gender (and any other signifier), as awareness.

Don’t get Prince wrong now, or there may some conflict on here not seen since the bananas and Weetabix scandal of 2019.

I’m still fuming from Twitter suggestions that he would be trans/non binary.

Second thought - if I were doing a job like that.... Perhaps non binary is a way of trying to be left alone

Good point.

Although I it’s sad and regressive to feel so restricted by sex.

The hair looks great. And I like the name Kae.

I'm afraid I find her politics embarrassingly sentimental, simplistic and self righteous. Not my cup of tea (or tempest therein.)

She is really young, though, and has had to do a lot of growing up in public.

KT has a new book coming out in a few months, and all publicity is good publicity...

@MindTheMinotaur I shaved my head in early 2002 ish, in my early 20s when I could still be arsed faffing about with my appearance..... I suspect if I was that age now I wouldn't bother because of all the gender and identy politics. Likewise blue hair and DMs in the 90s.... ah, those were the days.