Your instructions
Bossy little shits at another university order everyone to be more twanz-incloosivv more of the time.
Students and staff at Leeds University have called on their vice-chancellor and senior employees to include gender pronouns when introducing themselves in meetings.
I call on those students and staff to sit down and shut up.
They also said that the vice-chancellor, Simone Buitendijk, should state her preferred gender pronouns in her email signature. Both measures are designed to show support for the transgender community.
The university was accused of having “a deeply entrenched culture of transphobia” in a letter signed by LGBT staff and student groups, as well as by the Leeds branch of the University and College Union (UCU).
Because people don’t “state” “their” pronouns. The stupidity is becoming overpowering.
I remember when fervent social justice students talked about farm workers, strikes, wars, the CIA, nuclear weapons, ecology, capitalism, women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights, prisoners, voting rights, city planning – real issues. Now their children are throwing endless tantrums over fucking pronouns. It’s beyond pathetic.
Among the other demands, the letter called for “an effective and fit-for-purpose pronouns policy to be enacted, to include our VC showing her support for the trans community by using pronouns in her email signature, and a culture which encourages the sharing of pronouns when, for example, in meetings and seminars”.
The world is cooking like a dinner, despots are swallowing country after country, the number of homeless people keeps rising – and we’re being lectured on fucking pronouns.
A number of universities have introduced training and guidance on transgender issues. Edinburgh University lecturers have been given a list of “micro-insults” to avoid, such as “I wanted to be a boy when I was a child”, it was reported last week.
So we’re not even allowed to talk about our own childhood fantasies about being the other sex. How does that work? How do these young Stalinists know we’re not just as gendery as they are? Why does their kind count while our kind doesn’t?
Why are people so traumatized by misgendering? As a female who has been working in a male dominated profession within a male dominated industry for more than three decades, it’s happened to me many times over the years. I was also “Uncle Beth” for a while to a niece who hadn’t quite figured out the aunt/uncle details. It’s never been a problem and in some cases, was likely a benefit to me in getting my work taken seriously.
Show of support? Bullshit. This is intended as a demonstration of obedience, compliance, and submission. They want to see who they can bend to their will, who will kowtow, who will bow, who will blink. They want to seperate the Good Dogs from the Bad Dogs. Good Dogs aren’t so much rewarded as put on perpetual probation, monitored for continued obedience. Good Dogs are always only one slip-up away from being Bad Dogs. Bad Dogs are put down.
My pronouns? Fuck/you.
I googled the words “my pronouns are fuck/you”, and came across this. Oh dear. “The definition R.e.g.a.l+ or the regal sexuality means to be straight but avoids the controversy between the pride community and super straight cult and u just have a neutral opinion but u dont support either groups; and you approve of attack Helicopters.”
When I was in 8th grade, I worked on the fundraisers for our class trip to Washington D.C. This occasionally involved phone calls to businesses (vendors, etc.) My voice hadn’t dropped yet, so the people on the other end of the call commonly assumed that I was a woman (adult female). I rolled with it.
More to the point, it was obvious to me that where was no upside and lots of potential downside to correcting them. It would delay/disrupt the call, they might be embarrassed, they might not want to deal with a child, and for all that all I wanted to do was ask whether the pamphlets (or whatever) were ready.
But does that apply across the board, or only within the Faculty of Bullshit Studies?
‘using pronouns in her email signature’
Looks like you already know, or have assumed (blasphemy) ‘her’ pronouns, so why does she have to ‘use’ them?
Pronouns are a litmus test precisely because it can be argued that it costs nothing for a non-believer to use them, while their spiritual primacy has been inculcated amongst the followers of the religion. It is comparable to the honorific “peace be upon him” which Muslims reflexively employ upon the very mention of the founder of their strain of Abrahamism.
Come to think of it, with the still-growing weaponisation of “hurt religious sentiments” among the believers of the classical world religions to recodify blasphemy even where it has been decriminalised, I would not be surprised if progressives begin cheering for non-Muslims to add (PBUH) after written mentions of Mohammed, especially if they are victorious in this battle to force ideological compliance on the pronoun issue.
@6 Yes, because they are the only ones who know how to use pronouns correctly, and assume the rest of us are stupid. People who are not stupid know that compelled speech doesn’t fix stupid.
I was a research fellow at Leeds University for a while. It was years ago and I’m sure it wasn’t so mad then but I can’t help but feel a spike of embarrassment anyway.
The idea of the university having a ‘culture’ of anything is absurd, though. The place is vast. You need a packed lunch to make it across the campus. My work was mostly between two different departments in different faculties and the difference in attitudes and practice of the staff and students was remarkable. I appreciate that a lot of individuality has been squashed out of universities these days, but I still have a hard time believing that the place has a a ‘culture’ of anything in particular.
Fun fact: I was told that the university has or had the longest corridor in Europe, at the time. It was definitely long.
Nina Paley’s gig at a festival was canceled again, and a TA on her timeline said she deserved it because she has stated that she will misgender people on purpose. It’s that traumatizing.
The funny thing is, the same people who draw Muhammad on Blasphemy Day say they will Punch a Terf for misgendering. Okay, it’s not funny. It’s ironic, and very sad.,
Okay, Boomer.
Seriously, there are so many issues…I tend to pick only a couple to work on and just give money to the rest for other experts to work on. I suppose it is to my sorrow that I chose environment and feminism, the two problems we seem the furthest away from dealing with in any realistic way. We have come up with all the wrong solutions, asked all the wrong questions, and get all the wrong answers.
And the wrongest of the wrong answers in feminism is “TWAW” or “my pronouns are…”
latsot, I was intrigued (my mother was born in Leeds) so I looked up information concerning the corridor. I found a most intriguing website, which seems to have got itself stuck in the noughties. An audio recording plus photographs to print off and look at whilst listening? Wow! Enjoy a trip back in time…
http://performancefootprint.co.uk/projects/red-route/
Christ.
At least I can confirm that the corridor is as depressing in real life as it looks in those pictures.
I can just make out the sign at the far end. It says “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Beth Clarkson #1 wrote:
I can grant that the transgender are indeed traumatized, but not that this is the natural outcome of Dysphoria, or of “feeling like your insides don’t match your outsides.” What might normally be expected when referred to be a “she” instead of “he” is a sense of sadness, or mild frustration. What occurs instead seems to be something akin to a panic attack, or perhaps the sort of outrage someone might feel encountering a bully kicking their grandmother.
That’s culture, I think. It’s a socially-induced reaction following a template of expectations, and in extreme forms close to what’s been called “social media induced psychosis” — “ a connection … between the gradual development and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms, including delusions, anxiety, confusion and intensified use of computer communications.” It started percolating on corners of the internet like Tumblr and Deviant Art. Now it’s gone mainstream, through the schools, a kind of feedback loop between those who react to being misgendered (or the thought of being misgendered) and those who respond with concern (or the facsimile of concern.)
The more traumatized you are, the more obvious it is that you really, really are trans. Preferred pronouns may not be as validating as the unpreferred kind.
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Which means what, precisely? What purpose?
(Lord, how I hate the phrase “fit-for-purpose” at the best of times…)