Thank you! When people ask me to introduce myself with my pronouns I decline to say them. It is akin to being pressured to participate in a ritual for a religion to which I am not a member. I am also happy to sit quietly while someone prays before a meal. But I will decline if someone expects me to say the prayer with them, not that any religious person has, or would, ever do that.
I am saving and sharing this for anyone who wants to know why I think this preferred pronoun crapola is, well crapola. Thank you for your thoughtful piece. As a gay woman, who came out in the early Sixties, had to hide and tell lies about myself because by 1967, I was a public high school teacher, when back then being gay was criminal. Finally in 1976 being gay was deemed a mental illness, so you wouldn’t have to be imprisoned if found out, just sent to a shrink. Fast forward to 2008 when I could legally marry my partner in CA and then in 2013 legally be married federally, it’s been a wild ride just trying to be myself and happy.
You are AWESOME! Thank you for this excellent post! We need to get you on every news channel out there! I’m with you! I will not believe the ridiculous lies. We deserve respect, too. When more like minded people find the courage to join us. If we get fired, we’ll file a class action!
I think there absolutely is a path with a class action. It is going to take a very brave employee, probably one with a university, to get it started though.
I remember adding pronouns to my IG profile after my daughter suggested it, way early on in our particular shit-show, acquiescing in order to signal my "alliance" and open mindedness just like you describe. It didn't last long. It felt so contrived and forced. I felt manipulated and like my skepticism was invalid. I wonder how many people around our age cringe at their own pronoun use when it wasn't even a thing a minute ago. But unlike you and me, gender ideology doesn't impact these "kindness is everything" dupes personally so they remain shallow and willfully ignorant in order to avoid conflict. What does it take to turn the tide for them? And how do you stay as sane as you do among all those ridiculous bulletin boards? 😱
It isn’t that kindness is everything. It is the performance of kindness that is everything. Feeling kind and looking kind are more important than being kind.
My nephew who works at an every high price Wall Street law firm post pronouns. Why? Cheap virtue signaling for him, a partner who charged God only knows what per hour. All cynical bullshit. I love my nephew but this is crap.
Thanks for sharing this. The only advantage of pronoun bios is that you know who is a member of the Party. You can also work out - for now - who isn’t.
(The concept of a private grammar is fascinating. “My grammar is…” )
There was a band I loved who helped create “industrial music” called “Cabaret Voltaire” in the 80’s who among many albums had one called “Micro-phonies” (I prefer “Red Mecca”). It was a prominent poster in the bedroom of “Ferris Bueller”.
I can’t help but think Micro-phonies and Micro-Aggressions are interrelated 😈
This reminds me of an email I received from a "they/them" with a made-up name that requires searching for an obscure character in the nether reaches of the keyboard. I looked "THEM" up online to find that "they" chose this name because "I want my name to be uncomfortable on your tongue." Add to this that THEIR request was written in such a way I could not discern what this person wanted from me, especially since it is tacitly forbidden for one professor to tell another professor what to assign in their class (which is what "uncomfortable on your tongue" seemed to be requesting regarding a student we shared).
I'll put it country simple: When I see or hear preferred pronouns -- and even worse -- PLURAL PRONOUNS FOR AN INDIVIDUAL -- I think: What a screaming narcissistic red flag. Stay away from this person. This person is TROUBLE.
And that the "PREFERRED PRONOUN" person holds power over everyone else in terms of getting someone fired or sent to the gulag for forgetting to use their narcissistic pronouns is, in effect, OFFENSIVE. It creates an overt power differential, ironically in the guise of EQUALITY. Add to this that it's a lie.
I so want nothing to do with this that I am seeking employment someplace where this does not exist. I, too, feel nauseated by gas lighting and that this gas lighting is institutionalized to create a HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT is the worst part of it. No. A thousand times. NO.
Gary, you have a special gift for getting to the heart of the matter and expressing it in a way that is clear, logical and incontrovertible. For example:
“…despite assurances that ‘everyone belongs’ and an emphasis on DEI, the messages are hollow. The company does not have a clear understanding of what it is endorsing, and—worse—does not even care. It is just blindly virtue-signaling a trend. This does not inspire confidence in the future of the business, or my future with the company.
Why do my feelings not matter?”
and
"A hierarchy has been created, in which those who deny biological reality are at the top, and reap the reward of greater job satisfaction.” Precisely.
It's a lie that the rules and regulations of compelled speech, including pronouns, make the world a kinder and fairer place FOR ALL. On the contrary, they make the world more hostile, alienating, suffocating and disenfranchising for anyone who refuses to dip their paws into the identitarian grab bag of gender woo.
How can we possibly look forward to going to work, spending all day doing our best, feeling that we belong there and have something to contribute, and interact with our coworkers with an open heart, when our perceptions and feelings are ignored, or worse, labeled hateful and bigoted? When we're forced to lie and dissemble all day long?
What about my identity as a lesbian? As a woman? Where's the respect for MY diverse identity? What is that man doing in my bathroom? When did my job become a finishing school for the ideological obfuscation of my existence?
And what’s this about inclusivity and diversity? I need more succinct definitions, please, because I don’t understand.
In a pluralistic society like the one we claim to have, everyone supposedly has a seat at the table and is equally respected for our intrinsic worth. Isn’t that what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mandates? Otherwise, there is no table. There’s only a putrid sinkhole in the ground where the rights of truth tellers, terfs, gays and lesbians, go to die.
My pronouns are fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
This is an exceptional essay! The most intelligent, rational, clear-minded explanation about "preferred pronouns" I've ever read. It should be shared widely.
This is one of the sharpest, sanest critiques of preferred pronouns silliness that I have read. (And I have read a lot about it.)
Thank you! Subscribed.
Going back to the announcement on the bulletin board at your workplace, there's another another layer of micro aggression in this sentence: "Nothing may be more personal than the way in which people refer to us through our name and pronouns." Nothing more personal than pronouns?!?!
What an insult to women, gay men and lesbians (and everyone who isn't caught in this peculiar trendy cult) to assert that language is more personal than our physical experience of our bodies from the inside, especially those aspects of our bodies that we colloquially call "our private parts."
For women, our bodies and sexuality are intertwined with the female capacity for pregnancy and birth -- a physical reality that is simultaneously terrifying and beautiful for women, risky and desirable, and always the most serious life choice a woman can make, if she is lucky enough to live in a society that allows her to choose her reproductive destiny. Millions of women don't, and not only in sex dystopias like Iran and Afghanistan, but in Texas, Alabama, and many other states in the USA. Trying telling a woman forced to give birth against her will that pronouns are more important than the pain, and possible death, she experiences as she endures the immense physical stress of labor.
As any paleoanthropologist will tell you, language is a) what makes us human, with the capacity for human cognition, and b) language is always social. The purpose of language is to communicate with other people. As you point out, the purpose of demanding preferred pronouns is to confuse and silence people who think differently.
"I will recognize that you are (knowingly or not) endorsing a belief system that is misogynist and homophobic." YES! Wow...this stack is an insightful compendium of experiences, thoughts, feelings, reasoning and logic that is spot on. Thank you. Pronoun Police Religion=Ultimate, Life altering, Mutilating, Conversion Therapy. I speak as a mother of a gay male. If he had been born 15 years later, would someone in the schools have taken him away from me and lopped off his parts? Or, given him drugs that would have ruined his natural development? Shiver...shiver. Thank you so much for this. Your perspective and that of other gay men and women who feel this goes above and beyond reasoning and logic is so important. Thank you.
This makes it clear that homosexuality, although once regarded as essentially perverse, is a normal and acceptable branch of human behavior. If we compare homosexuality to these other perversions, the 'Woke' business and the TRANS activism b.s., the hating the awful rural white folks and so on homosexuality comes out looking Um---normal.
Well done, and so appreciated by this lesbian! Shared this on my fb profile this morning…we shall see! Slowly losing the social justice fundamentalists and virtue signalers from my friend group…a couple close friends who were brainwashed by the trans religion are still hanging on, but I don’t know for how long. This ideology is tearing us apart. It’s sad and shocking that people can’t see the harm and actually think it’s us, the people in this comment section and in conservative areas, or anyone who doesn’t wholly buy into the ideology— they think we are actually perpetrating *genocide* against trans people. How did we get to such a place of utter madness??
Fantastic piece. You took the words right out of my mouth. Pronouns is an active response to gender ideology, I will not be compelled to have them, I refuse. I do not believe in this fiction. I first came across pronouns when working at a university, we had a non binary person head up rainbow support, we all scratched our heads as she was introduced as a they. I remember myself and another college constantly tripping up and becoming confused as to what this meant. I always struggled with a plural when referring to a singular person just doesn’t linguistically make sense. I then had a couple of undergrad students who decided they no longer agreed with their biological sex and I had to use their pronouns and use their new names. So let me describe the setting, I was told the next student who was waiting to see me like’s to be called by her new name which was a boys name. I was like sure ok, thinking that I was about to see a butch looking girl who was trying to transition. When I called out their name in reception I was greeted by a girl with long flowing hair, breasts. So the confusion I had at the moment meant I was not able to clear my head and try to reconcile what I was seeing with her new name. In fact when I called out her new name in reception other students looked up just as confused as me!!! So I carried on working at the uni for a few more years until I realised I just didn’t agree with their values and what they were adopting by way of student support. Helping students to socially transition, so soaking up money and time when some departments were cash strapped , however rainbow support started to receive more money to throw welcome parties to the alphabet crew with pizza. I left tertiary I could no longer work in that woke driven culture. I see pronouns every day in emails signature and they send shivers down my spine for the sender has no real idea as to why they have included them. I’m tempted one day to email back and say hey I know you are female or male there’s no need to remind me or teach me how to refer to you in language I’m 56 not 3 !!!
But the new cult that has its tentacles far and wide in societies and government departments will keep going until they totally dismantle sex.
It’s up to people to stand up, stand firm and say no I do not believe in gender ideology, I believe and understand biology and will not support this rubbish..No one can compel you to use pronouns, we live in the free world don’t we ??
Thank you! When people ask me to introduce myself with my pronouns I decline to say them. It is akin to being pressured to participate in a ritual for a religion to which I am not a member. I am also happy to sit quietly while someone prays before a meal. But I will decline if someone expects me to say the prayer with them, not that any religious person has, or would, ever do that.
That was the most clear description of the negative effects of this religion, a religion many are expected to swear allegiance to.
I am saving and sharing this for anyone who wants to know why I think this preferred pronoun crapola is, well crapola. Thank you for your thoughtful piece. As a gay woman, who came out in the early Sixties, had to hide and tell lies about myself because by 1967, I was a public high school teacher, when back then being gay was criminal. Finally in 1976 being gay was deemed a mental illness, so you wouldn’t have to be imprisoned if found out, just sent to a shrink. Fast forward to 2008 when I could legally marry my partner in CA and then in 2013 legally be married federally, it’s been a wild ride just trying to be myself and happy.
You are AWESOME! Thank you for this excellent post! We need to get you on every news channel out there! I’m with you! I will not believe the ridiculous lies. We deserve respect, too. When more like minded people find the courage to join us. If we get fired, we’ll file a class action!
I think there absolutely is a path with a class action. It is going to take a very brave employee, probably one with a university, to get it started though.
I remember adding pronouns to my IG profile after my daughter suggested it, way early on in our particular shit-show, acquiescing in order to signal my "alliance" and open mindedness just like you describe. It didn't last long. It felt so contrived and forced. I felt manipulated and like my skepticism was invalid. I wonder how many people around our age cringe at their own pronoun use when it wasn't even a thing a minute ago. But unlike you and me, gender ideology doesn't impact these "kindness is everything" dupes personally so they remain shallow and willfully ignorant in order to avoid conflict. What does it take to turn the tide for them? And how do you stay as sane as you do among all those ridiculous bulletin boards? 😱
It isn’t that kindness is everything. It is the performance of kindness that is everything. Feeling kind and looking kind are more important than being kind.
Which is why it's printed on lawn signs 🪧
Yeah, I fantasize about owning a flame thrower with which to take out all those yard signs.
My nephew who works at an every high price Wall Street law firm post pronouns. Why? Cheap virtue signaling for him, a partner who charged God only knows what per hour. All cynical bullshit. I love my nephew but this is crap.
If he's a partner, he should have zero fucks to give. We need, more than ever, courageous men. They seem to be in short supply.
Thanks for sharing this. The only advantage of pronoun bios is that you know who is a member of the Party. You can also work out - for now - who isn’t.
(The concept of a private grammar is fascinating. “My grammar is…” )
There was a band I loved who helped create “industrial music” called “Cabaret Voltaire” in the 80’s who among many albums had one called “Micro-phonies” (I prefer “Red Mecca”). It was a prominent poster in the bedroom of “Ferris Bueller”.
I can’t help but think Micro-phonies and Micro-Aggressions are interrelated 😈
This reminds me of an email I received from a "they/them" with a made-up name that requires searching for an obscure character in the nether reaches of the keyboard. I looked "THEM" up online to find that "they" chose this name because "I want my name to be uncomfortable on your tongue." Add to this that THEIR request was written in such a way I could not discern what this person wanted from me, especially since it is tacitly forbidden for one professor to tell another professor what to assign in their class (which is what "uncomfortable on your tongue" seemed to be requesting regarding a student we shared).
I'll put it country simple: When I see or hear preferred pronouns -- and even worse -- PLURAL PRONOUNS FOR AN INDIVIDUAL -- I think: What a screaming narcissistic red flag. Stay away from this person. This person is TROUBLE.
And that the "PREFERRED PRONOUN" person holds power over everyone else in terms of getting someone fired or sent to the gulag for forgetting to use their narcissistic pronouns is, in effect, OFFENSIVE. It creates an overt power differential, ironically in the guise of EQUALITY. Add to this that it's a lie.
I so want nothing to do with this that I am seeking employment someplace where this does not exist. I, too, feel nauseated by gas lighting and that this gas lighting is institutionalized to create a HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT is the worst part of it. No. A thousand times. NO.
Gary, you have a special gift for getting to the heart of the matter and expressing it in a way that is clear, logical and incontrovertible. For example:
“…despite assurances that ‘everyone belongs’ and an emphasis on DEI, the messages are hollow. The company does not have a clear understanding of what it is endorsing, and—worse—does not even care. It is just blindly virtue-signaling a trend. This does not inspire confidence in the future of the business, or my future with the company.
Why do my feelings not matter?”
and
"A hierarchy has been created, in which those who deny biological reality are at the top, and reap the reward of greater job satisfaction.” Precisely.
It's a lie that the rules and regulations of compelled speech, including pronouns, make the world a kinder and fairer place FOR ALL. On the contrary, they make the world more hostile, alienating, suffocating and disenfranchising for anyone who refuses to dip their paws into the identitarian grab bag of gender woo.
How can we possibly look forward to going to work, spending all day doing our best, feeling that we belong there and have something to contribute, and interact with our coworkers with an open heart, when our perceptions and feelings are ignored, or worse, labeled hateful and bigoted? When we're forced to lie and dissemble all day long?
What about my identity as a lesbian? As a woman? Where's the respect for MY diverse identity? What is that man doing in my bathroom? When did my job become a finishing school for the ideological obfuscation of my existence?
And what’s this about inclusivity and diversity? I need more succinct definitions, please, because I don’t understand.
In a pluralistic society like the one we claim to have, everyone supposedly has a seat at the table and is equally respected for our intrinsic worth. Isn’t that what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mandates? Otherwise, there is no table. There’s only a putrid sinkhole in the ground where the rights of truth tellers, terfs, gays and lesbians, go to die.
My pronouns are fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
This is an exceptional essay! The most intelligent, rational, clear-minded explanation about "preferred pronouns" I've ever read. It should be shared widely.
Brilliant essay! I am going to share widely! I liked many lines. Here are a few of my favorites:
"We should call the practice of ‘preferred pronouns’ just what it is: a bullying tactic."
"Why are biology deniers receiving special status in the workplace?"
"‘Preferred pronouns’ are not about ‘being kind’, they are about authoritarianism, manipulation, and control."
Thank you for writing this essay! It needed to be said and now it needs to be circulated far and wide!
This is one of the sharpest, sanest critiques of preferred pronouns silliness that I have read. (And I have read a lot about it.)
Thank you! Subscribed.
Going back to the announcement on the bulletin board at your workplace, there's another another layer of micro aggression in this sentence: "Nothing may be more personal than the way in which people refer to us through our name and pronouns." Nothing more personal than pronouns?!?!
What an insult to women, gay men and lesbians (and everyone who isn't caught in this peculiar trendy cult) to assert that language is more personal than our physical experience of our bodies from the inside, especially those aspects of our bodies that we colloquially call "our private parts."
For women, our bodies and sexuality are intertwined with the female capacity for pregnancy and birth -- a physical reality that is simultaneously terrifying and beautiful for women, risky and desirable, and always the most serious life choice a woman can make, if she is lucky enough to live in a society that allows her to choose her reproductive destiny. Millions of women don't, and not only in sex dystopias like Iran and Afghanistan, but in Texas, Alabama, and many other states in the USA. Trying telling a woman forced to give birth against her will that pronouns are more important than the pain, and possible death, she experiences as she endures the immense physical stress of labor.
As any paleoanthropologist will tell you, language is a) what makes us human, with the capacity for human cognition, and b) language is always social. The purpose of language is to communicate with other people. As you point out, the purpose of demanding preferred pronouns is to confuse and silence people who think differently.
"I will recognize that you are (knowingly or not) endorsing a belief system that is misogynist and homophobic." YES! Wow...this stack is an insightful compendium of experiences, thoughts, feelings, reasoning and logic that is spot on. Thank you. Pronoun Police Religion=Ultimate, Life altering, Mutilating, Conversion Therapy. I speak as a mother of a gay male. If he had been born 15 years later, would someone in the schools have taken him away from me and lopped off his parts? Or, given him drugs that would have ruined his natural development? Shiver...shiver. Thank you so much for this. Your perspective and that of other gay men and women who feel this goes above and beyond reasoning and logic is so important. Thank you.
This makes it clear that homosexuality, although once regarded as essentially perverse, is a normal and acceptable branch of human behavior. If we compare homosexuality to these other perversions, the 'Woke' business and the TRANS activism b.s., the hating the awful rural white folks and so on homosexuality comes out looking Um---normal.
This is so well articulated. Thank you!
Well done, and so appreciated by this lesbian! Shared this on my fb profile this morning…we shall see! Slowly losing the social justice fundamentalists and virtue signalers from my friend group…a couple close friends who were brainwashed by the trans religion are still hanging on, but I don’t know for how long. This ideology is tearing us apart. It’s sad and shocking that people can’t see the harm and actually think it’s us, the people in this comment section and in conservative areas, or anyone who doesn’t wholly buy into the ideology— they think we are actually perpetrating *genocide* against trans people. How did we get to such a place of utter madness??
Fantastic piece. You took the words right out of my mouth. Pronouns is an active response to gender ideology, I will not be compelled to have them, I refuse. I do not believe in this fiction. I first came across pronouns when working at a university, we had a non binary person head up rainbow support, we all scratched our heads as she was introduced as a they. I remember myself and another college constantly tripping up and becoming confused as to what this meant. I always struggled with a plural when referring to a singular person just doesn’t linguistically make sense. I then had a couple of undergrad students who decided they no longer agreed with their biological sex and I had to use their pronouns and use their new names. So let me describe the setting, I was told the next student who was waiting to see me like’s to be called by her new name which was a boys name. I was like sure ok, thinking that I was about to see a butch looking girl who was trying to transition. When I called out their name in reception I was greeted by a girl with long flowing hair, breasts. So the confusion I had at the moment meant I was not able to clear my head and try to reconcile what I was seeing with her new name. In fact when I called out her new name in reception other students looked up just as confused as me!!! So I carried on working at the uni for a few more years until I realised I just didn’t agree with their values and what they were adopting by way of student support. Helping students to socially transition, so soaking up money and time when some departments were cash strapped , however rainbow support started to receive more money to throw welcome parties to the alphabet crew with pizza. I left tertiary I could no longer work in that woke driven culture. I see pronouns every day in emails signature and they send shivers down my spine for the sender has no real idea as to why they have included them. I’m tempted one day to email back and say hey I know you are female or male there’s no need to remind me or teach me how to refer to you in language I’m 56 not 3 !!!
But the new cult that has its tentacles far and wide in societies and government departments will keep going until they totally dismantle sex.
It’s up to people to stand up, stand firm and say no I do not believe in gender ideology, I believe and understand biology and will not support this rubbish..No one can compel you to use pronouns, we live in the free world don’t we ??