Please be less inclusive
Be more inclusive by never mentioning mothers or fathers.
Schools and sporting groups in Victoria will be told to avoid terms like “mum”, “dad”, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” as part of a push to curb the dropout and suicide rates of LGBTQI+ young people.
Here’s a surprising fact: lesbians and gay men can have mothers and fathers. I don’t think lesbians and gay men object to the words “mother” and “father.” (I don’t know why schools are talking about “mum” and “dad” instead of “mother” and “father”; mum and dad are personal names, which schools shouldn’t be using for anyone, because it’s intrusive and weird. “Mum” and “dad” are not nouns, they’re family nicknames.)
The North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network has set up the #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign which will bring in unisex bathrooms, non-gendered playing teams and rainbow flags in a bid to be more inclusive.
But that’s not more inclusive, it’s vastly less inclusive. It excludes girls from school. Girls aren’t going to want to go to a school where they have to share the toilets with boys. And the sports thing, as we know to the point of tedium, excludes girls from sports.
Oh well, just girls.
What will the TRA-MRAs say when a story comes out that a teenage girl has committed suicide “because” a guidance counselor wouldn’t let her say “my mother” or “my father”? Given that argumentum ex suicidio is their most sacred argument, how are they going to dismiss that?
Yep, and the last time I looked they could also have boyfriends or girlfriends. Even more surprising is the fact that trans people can have mothers and fathers, can even be mothers and fathers (even if they do distort the terms somewhat), and can have or be boyfriends or girlfriends (again, some distortion required) and husbands or wives (distortion needed, obvs.). Oddly, phrases I’ve never heard from the trans are trans-boyfriend/girlfriend or trans-mother/father or trans-husband/wife. Not even an ‘enbiefriend’.
If a trans x is an x as they claim, then why should there be a problem with the traditional terms, and if they really are so problematic then why don’t they just tag ‘trans’ in front where required? I honestly don’t know who is most confused over acceptable terminology, the trans or us ordinary people.
But it’s totally not a cargo cult.
Because if we just call them women, there is no differentiation that marks them as better, specialer, uniquer. They don’t actually want to be women, they want to be special women.