Two very different and conflicting articles appeared online recently regarding the new evolving rules on gender pronouns. Both are very much worth your attention.
The first was written by Dr. Leor Sapir, a new adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. It appeared in the Institute’s City Journal under the boldly direct headline “Don’t Say ‘They’”. It is important and wise advice to be an intentional conscientious objector from the dictates of the new gender pronoun madness.
And madness it is, as demonstrated in the second piece.
Published in HuffPost, it is the extreme opposite of Dr. Sapir’s with an equally bold and absolute title: “If You Think My Pronouns Are Optional, We Can’t Keep Being Friends”. It’s an excessive effort to shame you into playing along with the new gender illusion: “See my new identity the way I do, or we can’t be friends!”
This author (an admitted biological female) is saying that your love for her is singularly demonstrated through the pronouns you are willing (or unwilling) to use. Every other outreach of love and concern you share for her as a person is negated by your failure to follow her newly developed dictates on language. Reducing a friendship to that, regardless of motivation, is not an appeal to kindness or tolerance. Quite the opposite, the very definition of unhealthy. It is narcissism.
Kelsey Smoot, the author of the HuffPo piece, admits as much in this statement about reactions from her loving family members and closest friends to her new gender demands, “Inversely, I’ve been told that spending time with me feels more cumbersome now. I sense the unease that some of my most cherished counterparts feel regarding the necessary intentionality that goes into rewiring their perceptions of me.”
Kelsey revealed a great deal about herself there. She also tells the story of another friends’ warning to a new would-be friend who was to be soon introduced to Kelsey.
…[S]he forewarned her friend with surprising accuracy, “You have about 2 or 3 hangouts with Kels where they will be fairly understanding of that mistake [of not using “they”]. Beyond that, they’re pretty unlikely to pursue a friendship with you.”
Kelsey continues,
Aghast, the friend responded, “Wait, you mean to tell me that if we’ve spent time together on five separate occasions, gotten along otherwise, and I misgender [Kelsey], they won’t want to see me again?”
“Correct,” my friend replied.
“That’s ridiculous,” her friend countered. “If that’s true, Kels is going to live one lonely life.”
I took a moment to contemplate her prediction.
She is not referring to inconsiderate, close-minded strangers.
Kelsey admits she is willing to permanently de-friend anyone who refuses to utter the words she demands, even those who have loved her most dearly for the longest time, “The idea of having to lose some of the people closest to me, the folks who have helped to shape me into the person I am, is devastating.”
Yes, she actually said that.
Kelsey ends, “However, I consider having access to me, my time and my company to be a gift, not a given, for anyone in my sphere.” And those who have long loved her most must play by her newly changed rules of self-identity in order to maintain that access. That’s relational hostage-taking.
Kels is creating her own lonely life and totally fails to see it is of her own making. That is truly sad.
Do Not Be Bullied
It certainly is interesting how the whole LGBT discussion went from a libertarian live-and-let-live “How will my same-sex marriage harm your hetero marriage?” openness just a few short years ago to the wholly authoritarian “We will now dictate what words you will use!” position of today. But this is exactly where queer gender politics have taken us. You no longer have the right to hold onto your own personal values about what it means to be male and female. Others are now determining that for you!
Dr. Sapir further explains how important it is to refuse to play along with this madness in his City Journal article. Submitting to the demand that we use pronouns that are contrary to biological fact is nothing short of showing subservience to the new artificial and contra-scientific gender ideology. We must never be compelled to speak things we know to be untrue.
Dr. Sapir makes a dramatic cultural comparison on this point,
In practice, however, progressive elites are demanding public approval for the profoundly subversive and nihilistic ideology of queer theory. We should treat demands around “preferred pronouns,” when these depart from the conventions of the English language (to say nothing of science and common sense), as no different from how we treat public professions of religious piety.
Sapir adds, with a provocative twist,
If a faction of devout Christians began lobbying the government to require all Americans to introduce themselves with “I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior,” the progressive Left rightly would go ballistic.
No one should be compelled to confess fidelity to a belief system. As such, Dr. Sapir is precisely correct in declaring, “No one should be required to express fidelity to academic queer theory.” He adds, “Those of us who care about actual pluralism should resist this form of narcissism-fueled political theater.”
Refusing to play the new pronoun game is not an act of unkindness and no one should be emotionally bullied into using so-called “preferred pronouns.” Refusing to submit to ideological pronoun politics is nothing more than the refusal to confess allegiance to a false new philosophy about what it actually means to be male and female.
If anyone tries to control your speech by withholding friendship or accusing you of being unkind, that is adequate evidence the individual is not dealing with you in good faith. They are trying to bully you.
Sapir ends his article with this very true observation that all of us would be wise to remember, “Of course, queer theory itself tells us that liberal principles of tolerance and civility are themselves masks for power and oppression, so we should not hold out much hope for compromise on this issue.”
Only speak what you know to be true, and no healthy person will ever demand you do otherwise. Refuse to be bullied by gender pronoun police.
Additional Resources
See The Daily Citizen’s Series on Why Resisting New Gender Pronoun Use is Actually Compassionate.
Part I – Navigating Gender Pronouns at School and Work
Part 2 – Required Personal Pronoun Use at School and Work Leads to Crazy-making, Literally
