No we don’t
LP keeps revealing herself to be…how shall I put this…not all that bright.
Like that. It’s not just that it’s wrong, it’s that it’s dim. Clumsy, inaccurate, clunky, backassward – just dim.
We’re not notable for windbaggery. We don’t talk more than other people. It’s just a sloppy label, that falls off because it doesn’t fit.
And then telling ourselves not using luxury pronouns makes us cool and edgy??? Could not be more wrong, or more absurd. She might as well say we think saying 2+3=5 makes us cool and edgy. Of course we don’t think that. It’s the other way around. We think their furious efforts to force us to use the specialty pronouns make them too “edgy” for their own or anyone else’s good. We think it’s fashion run amok. We think it’s a trend, and a stupid one, and a complete dead end.
As for childish and tiresome – well it’s too obvious so I won’t spell it out.
As for anti-intellectual – pull the other one. Trans ideology is not intellectual. It’s emotional, psychological, pseudo-political, but it’s not intellectual.
It is true that in some ways we feel threatened by the “ideas” of people like her, because they are doing damage and will continue to do damage. We do worry about women who need women-only refuges and rape crisis centers, about women in sports, about women’s prizes and promotions and jobs, about women’s representation in government and politics and education. We do worry about women being displaced by men who identify as women. But we (naturally) think the LPs are the ones who get it wrong, and we don’t think it’s all a matter of “the next generation” shoving us overboard because it’s so much more “progressive” than we are.
Woke windbags tell theyselves that using people’s preferred pronouns makes them cool and edgy. Actually, it just makes them morons. It’s childish, it’s tiresome, it’s anti-intellectual- and it shows how threatened they are by the ideas of a more progressive previous generation.
FTFY You’re welcome.
Having spasmodically followed Laurie Penny’s career since she was the Voice of Youth, and, astonishingly, a contributing editor to the New Statesman, all I can say is, Oh do grow up, or else, in totally non progressive speak, What a Little Madam, or reverting to early adulthood, Get Over Yourself, or to my teenage years, What are you?
What a great sensitivity reader I am. Hey Laurie, that one’s on the house. Hereafter you will be charged out the ying yang. Have a nice day. :)
I like “What a Little Madam.” Kathleen Stock said on Twit that a lot of the censors come across as affronted Edwardians. Ha!
A lot of wokery does come across as a bunch of Mrs Grundies, with publishers employing sensitivity readers in case their books bring a blush to the cheeks of a young person, and readers scanning for impieties that the respectable will not allow in their homes. They swoon, they faint, their sensibilities are lacerated.
And this insisting on being addressed properly. “I am Lady Lucinda Falkington, not Lady Falkington. I am the daughter of an earl, not the wife of a knight or baronet.”
Penny is pushing 36 years old – soon to be forty, soon to be fifty. Doesn’t she realize she is past her prime even now according to most of the people she grovels to? She has got to know that throwing other women to the crocodiles only means the crocodiles get to kill her last. If I am lucky, I will live long enough to see this toadie’s fall and I won’t feel a bit sorry for her.
“Penny is pushing 36 years old – soon to be forty, soon to be fifty. Doesn’t she realize she is past her prime even now according to most of the people she grovels to?”
Reminds me of Penny’s friend Owen Jones, another Voice Of Da Youff who’s also rushing towards middle age.
Also, this whole “I’m non-binary and my pronouns are they/them” business always struck me as a way for privileged people to play at being oppressed minorities.
Funny you should mention it. She just solemnly informed me that she changed her pronouns and came out as genderqueer. I informed her it was all made-up bullshit.
Have you seen this? Julie Bindel has assembled several blurbs for Penny’s work, which all refer to Penny as a “she”:
https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1485652433548288003?s=20
Of the blurbs: Emily Nussbaum is an idiot, but I’m disappointed to see Cory Doctorow, who I admire, praise Penny.
Also- Penny owes her screenwriting career to being championed by the now-disgraced sexist bully Joss Whedon. Oh the irony!
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/talking-to-laurie-penny-about-the-switch-from-british-politics-to-hollywood/
I did see that.
Is Emily Nussbaum an idiot? I’ve liked some of her tv criticism in the New Yorker. Is she an ideologue?
Emily Nussbaum is a very strong supporter of Judith Butler , and also retweets Julia Serano. Quite the ideologue, in my opinion:
https://twitter.com/emilynussbaum/status/607334847259013120
https://twitter.com/emilynussbaum/status/494594212927508480
If I want to read a Nussbaum I’ll stick to Martha.
Soon enough–and time does fly, doesn’t it?–she’ll get to enjoy being marginalized as “old” by the people she thinks that she’s courting right now. I may be a nobody, who has done nothing of note, but here I am at age 55, and I don’t regret my actions when I was in my 30’s. I bet that Penny is going to have a hard time saying the same.
Cloudy,
I was disappointed to see Doctorow on the list, too. He is tremendously admirable in many ways but I don’t think he’s thought further than “be kind” on this matter. It’s a shame, because he’s ordinarily a clear thinker.
I’m always caught between laughter and injurious eye-rolling whenever someone ‘comes out’ as non-binary, having changed nothing other than ‘their’ pronouns. Penny’s own ‘coming out’ certainly was politically expedient.
Another point of interest is that while Penny was posting pictures of herself looking sad at her mis-pronouning, her own LinkedIn profile listed her as “she”.