Shibboleths and euphemisms
She’s right.
From the start, a key tactic of the gender identitarians has been linguistic prescription, and it’s proved shockingly successful. Trans activists’ shibboleths and euphemisms have been allowed to penetrate the upper echelons of our culture with devastating consequences to freedom of speech and belief. Huge swathes of liberal media, the arts, academia and publishing have thrown themselves with gusto into the defence of a quasi-religious belief causing provable real world harm, and in their arrogance they’ve been outraged when people they assumed were part of their In Group have refused to march meekly along in lock step.
Time and again, I’ve seen and heard well-educated people who consider themselves critical thinkers and bold truth-tellers squirm when put on the spot. ‘Well, yes, maybe there’s something in what you’re saying, but it’s hateful/provocative/rude not to use the approved language/pretend people can literally change sex/keep drawing attention to medical malpractice or opportunistic sexual predators. Why can’t you be nice? Why won’t you pretend? We thought you were one of us! Don’t you realise we have sophisticated new words and phrases these days that obviate the necessity of thinking any of this through?’
I actually have an answer to these questions. Why can’t I be nice? I’ll tell you why. Because this whole campaign is so ridiculous, so insulting to our intelligence, so destructive to women’s rights, so stupid, that in its presence niceness shrivels and disappears in an instant, like a drop of water on a red-hot stove burner.
Either a man can be a woman, or he can’t. Either women deserve rights, or they don’t. Either there’s a provable medical benefit to transitioning children, or there isn’t. Either you’re on the side of a totalitarian ideology that seeks to impose falsehoods on society through the threat of ostracisation, shaming and violence, or you’re not. The alternative to being ‘blunt’ – using accurate, factual language to describe what was going on – was to surrender freedom of speech and espouse ideological jargon that obfuscated the issues and the harms caused. We’ve always needed blunt people, but we need them most of all when being asked to bow down to a naked emperor.
Corporal Blunt here, at your service.
They always go with ‘sophisticated’ to describe arguments that are anything but. We hear about the sophisticated language, the sophisticated theology – all of which is just restating in longer, often incomprehensible, words the same nonsense that we hear in the non-sophisticated arguments. Using longer words doesn’t make you more believable, at least not to people who are concerned with evidence, not noise. Using longer words can obfuscate your meaning, right up until you meet up with people who know what those longer words really mean.
And using she/her, he/him, they/them, or ze/zir is not sophisticated language. The whole thing is childish, really, and the fact that it identifies as sophisticated doesn’t change the silliness of the entire enterprise.
They flatter themselves that they’re the smart ones who can see and comprehend the truths beyond the ken of the unwashed masses, while hiding (perhaps even from themselves) the fact that they are bowing down to bullshit.
“Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.” – Toni Morrison.
To which we can now add TRA language.
All the ugly TRA jargon – “Birthing Person”, “Cotton Ceiling”, “Egg”, “Folx”, “Gender fluid”, “Genderqueer”, “Queerphobic”, “Trucsum”, – was used to stop new knowledge and prevent the mutual exchange of ideas.
That’s because thoughts follow the words you are forced to use, your actions then become prescribed, and belief follows action. In a minority of cases this means people become water carriers. In most cases people go into stasis, either mouthing the right words at the right time or remaining silent.
Actually acting out of step with mandated language takes a marked act of will and often courage as many of you have found out and most of us have observed.
Why can’t I be nice? First, you’re assuming that I’m not nice, and you’re wrong on that front. I’m actually very nice in person, not wanting to get hurt by big blokes with an axe to grind, nor trigger family estrangement for vulnerable young people.
However, why I can’t be nice is that doing so demands that I demonstrate excessive cruelty to women, girls, vulnerable people, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, religious people, especially religious women, people with different cultural backgrounds, the disabled and neurodiverse, as well as countless others. And I will not weigh their needs as less than the want for niceness to a group that is doing them harm.
Exactly. “Run along and play, the adults are talking.”