Book Review: Shon Faye & Helen Joyce

My Finnish colleague told me that Finnish has always been gender neutral and the Trans community have made up special pronouns just for themselves that you have to comply with.

I would be delighted to learn about both parts of this (the gender neutral pronouns in Finnish and the newly created special pronouns).

On "third genders" Helen Joyce talks interestingly about these in the latest Radical Notion, in an interview with Jane Clare Jones. She says it's often a way for rigid patriarchal societies to accommodate feminine gay men, or with women it can be a way to manage property relations, so daughters can inherit, or allow women to break off marriages without sparking a blood feud.

Twirls

MrsMao 😂😂😂

MrsMaosfrillyFrenchundies

😂

Good piece. Thank you so much for the share token, saw this mentioned on Twitter and was hoping I’d be able to read it. Much obliged

There you go. I should imagine shon sees themselves as Mrs Mao, whilst the rest of us work ourselves to death.

"Wasn't abolishing gender completely trialed in maoist China? Everyone had to wear the same grey outfit..."

Not everyone. Mrs Mao and her chums had their undies made in Paris and shipped in the diplomatic bag.

Wasn't abolishing gender completely trialed in maoist China? Everyone had to wear the same grey outfit and have the same haircut, no differences in expression between male and female at all?

..... and funnily enough, it was still clear which was which?

Communism is a very popular concept amongst children at the moment, who are all dead keen on the idea of sharing the wealth and pooling assets one minute, then the next want to buy £200 Kenzo jumpers and be famous play rights. I smile. I try to point out what would really happen under a communist regime, and why it didn't work in Russia. I also tell them bluntly that they won't be the ones making the decisions or policies should the government and the monarchy fall, rather, they will be immediately put to work in the fields and factories as the young and fit.

... But when faced with 16yr olds with a passion, what do I know?

If the Police are abolished who will force us nasty wimmin to comply?

I'm not keen to read Faye's book, but if anyone takes one for the team, does it cover what, if anything, would be done about murderers, rapists and other dangerous people most of the rest of us want to see locked up

• for the protection of the community
• as a deterrent for others
• as a form of punishment/retribution, which may give some assurance to the victims and their loved ones that most people care what happened to them and take their part?

The very idea of living in a society where there are no police and courts to enforce the laws makes me feel unwell. I suppose the answer of the playing-at-communism crew is that in their ideal world there wouldn't be any crime.

BTW, is it a coincidence that Faye's surname is so like fae/Fae/faeself etc? Nominative determinism, if it's Faye's original surname.

@irresistibleoverwhelm, you can PM me if you like

I wish @mirandayardley would write a book!

medium.com/@mirandayardley/why-i-disavow-woman-and-am-no-longer-gender-critical-8352586e7aab

Essay linked at bottom of blog post.

“ “the neat binary” of male/female is, in any case, “a western way of thinking about gender variance”.

What?!?!

There's an extreme article Miranda Yardley links to on his page where the whole world is de gendered and the only difference is that those with bodies that can birth and feed the babies do just that.

It's an interesting ideal, and along the lines of non binary, but much more actual equality than blue hair and tik tok rants about language, but I read it with a knot in my stomach as you can see how far from reality it is due to endemic male violence and sexism.

Although radical means root so essentially "the basis."

Yes! It's the common sense, most people think this, position.

They don’t seek to get you sacked or criminalised if you don’t convert though.

They would, if they could. Fortunately, we don't give such believers any kind of power or importance and would happily tell them to piss off. I do wish gender missionaries would be treated with the same levels of secular contempt.

I definitely get the feeling this is another of those arguments that has to be welded in place in the heat created by the intense friction from cognitive dissonance.

That is an exquisite description, AnyOldPrion. ❤️

(Not “they” though, too confusing vs the plural for more than occasional use)

She started saying that everyone should just refer to each other as 'they' and do away with all other pronouns - cue the rest of us in the conversation doing the smile, nod, edge away dance....

Actually I’m quite in favour of universal adoption of one of the neo-pronouns like xe as a general pronoun that anyone can use without offence to refer to anyone else. De-gendering language other than when the sex of the individual is relevant seems like a good thing. Sadly that doesn’t seem to be an option.