Pronouns are like so over!!

I've read that "ze" and "sie" are gender neutral pronouns that some people use to be gender neutral.

See for example uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/

Ok if you are monolingual English and oblivious to 2 of the languages spoken by our western European neighbours where both of those mean "she" i.e. 3rd person form referring to a female person aka woman or girl.

It's such a load of crap.

It is like chasing a mirage.

Absolutely.

There may be a bit of that but I think it is much more that by applying the term 'woman' to themselves they have rendered it meaningless so they are trying a word which still appears to have meaning. It is like chasing a mirage. .

Yep they do. As an academic, going round the student group inviting everyone to share their pronouns at the start of semester is a suggested ice breaker activity these days.

Huh

Spending your teenage and early twenties soaked in gender identity and queer theory leads to adolescent behaviour persisting beyond the age most people have grown out of it, a penchant for narcissistic navel gazing and a need to make other people think you’re special.

who’d a thought?

Dr Em has a piece somewhere about exactly this. I think. I can't find it since she lost her twitter account but it made so much sense. I'll look again.

Which reminded me of those first days at work, when my new co-workers would ask for my pronouns before they asked where I was from, what school I went to, where I was living in New York, or what my ambitions were as a journalist.

Christopher, who presents as femme and used to work in a job where they had to deal with the public all day long, told me the bombardment of pronoun questions sometimes made them feel even more uncomfortable than a misgendering. “I go to work. I’m wearing a miniskirt. Everyone asks me for my pronouns. To me, what that means is ‘I see that you’re a man. And I see that you’re dressed in a woman’s costume. And I would like to know whether or not you want me to participate in the fantasy you’re having,’ ” they said. “I don’t think my answer should fundamentally change anything about how we’re interacting right now. And the fact that you’re so desperate to know is weird.

• Yeah, well exactly whose fault is that?!

I like the way he/she/they reduce Judith Butler's Gender Trouble to "In other words, gender is a construct, yadda yadda yadda, and gender is a performance" - a big improvement on the original!

I didn't like this article very much because unfortunately I've had too much experience with narcissists like Brock, and it gave me that horrible sensation like I'm walking on eggshells. They are such bullies.

Donald Trump is a rather good example of this. My experiences with narcissists is that they skip from best-friends-forever if you have been normally polite with them to you-are-demon-spawn if, say, you disagree with something they say at a meeting.

And then they never, ever forgive you. It doesn't matter if you apologize for something that actually wasn't even an insult; you will not be absolved, and what is called "narcissistic rage" will not end until some other target for it is found.

That's what I have often witnessed in Twitter cancellations, so it's possible that a good percentage of the holier-than-thou warriors are somewhat narcissistic. Abject apologies by the focus of the cancellation make no difference and do not stop the yelling.

And yes, dealing with one in real life is like walking on egg shells, and those will crush.

I read most of that, skimming the simply autobiographical stuff. I wanted to get to the end because it really felt like he was starting to get it, in places. But then at the end he just demands to be called by his name! Surely the logical conclusion would have been to say he didn’t mind what pronouns people used for him, like the kid he quoted near the beginning?

Made me think of addiction, how the body gets used to the drug. So being called 'woman' doesn't bring the euphoria it one did, so go for 'female' to keep chasing that first high.

I'm speculating, I rarely try anything stronger than tea.

you’d ask what pronouns I use

No I wouldn't.

Goodness me - I'm astonished anyone can write that much about pronouns and themselves. They can rest assured that no one really cares

Why is that so funny?

Christ, how can one person go on and on for that long about bloody pronouns? I also think Brock wildly overestimates how much other People care for their pronouns - who gives a fuck?!

Do young people really say their pronouns to each other when meeting each other for the first time? Gaaaaaah!

Does anyone remember the article by the non-binary goth bemoaning how hard it was because goths all dressed similarly and wore makeup.

On another thread on here a teacher said non-binary was becoming a ‘year 7 thing’ at her school and so ultimately Not Cool.

This long navel gazing piece is basically saying the same thing.

This is the part that nails it for me:

These days, it feels as if an identity that, not long ago, felt unique to me in most rooms I entered has gone mass. Yes, part of what I’m personally upset about is the fact that this thing I loved isn’t so alt anymore. But more than that, it feels as if pronoun culture has contributed to nonbinary becoming just the third gender after male and female, more static and concrete than its original fluid intentions. The same nonbinary person who complained about nonbinary stereotypes lamented to me, “I don’t want to be a homogeneous normcore mashing of the two genders".

It's just so... teenage faddy.

I did find one little point quite telling, in the opening paragraph:

"And so you’d ask what pronouns I use because it’s considered the polite thing to do now — an accepted part of our perilous new social-justice social contract — and you don’t want to offend me with your ignorance and you do want to flatter yourself with your deft ally-ness, all the while probably thinking, especially if you’re over 30, Oh goodness, the world is so different now."

"... you do want to flatter yourself with your deft ally-ness ..."

He is basically showing such DISRESPECT to those willing allies, looking down his nose at them. And yet - I agree, those people who are so willing to fawn over pronouns are doing it to make themselves feel better about themselves, not to make the person they're asking more comfortable of at ease.

It is the fatal flaw of transgender ideology - when it becomes mainstream it fails.

Which is why they hate us acting as their mums and/or teachers, and asking "what if everyone did that?"

It is the fatal flaw of transgender ideology - when it becomes mainstream it fails.

Trans athletes don't want to compete against other trans atheletes

Men identifying as women don't want to be locked up with other men in 'women's' prisons

When the word 'women' ceases to mean women then it is no use

When they are also expected to remember pronouns it becomes hassle for then too that they don't want.

Even kink loses its allure when no one turns a hair.

... although I have a feeling they'd tell me anyways ...

It's no longer special, so they don't want to do it any more. Just like everyone declaring themselves "queer", or bisexual people calling themselves pansexual because it's more unique.

But on a serious note, anyone who puts pronouns in their social media profile is more likely than not to be a not very nice person.

"If you met me, you'd probably ask what pronouns I use".

Err, nope.

Gave the first bit a read then skipped to the end, because it was a lot of meeee meeeee meeeeee.

We all became nonbinary to escape gendered expectations

Well duh.