And announced they are non-binary
Oh no, I’m not anything as tedious and old hat as a woman – I’m special.
The musician and poet formerly named Kate Tempest has changed their name to Kae Tempest, and announced they are non-binary.
Which means…what? Nothing, apart from a new nickname.
In the announcement on Instagram, Tempest said they were changing the pronouns they use, from she and her to they and them. Their new name is pronounced like the letter K.
Wow!
They wrote: I’ve been struggling to accept myself as I am for a long time. I have tried to be what I thought others wanted me to be so as not to risk rejection. This hiding from myself has led to all kinds of difficulties in my life. And this is a first step towards knowing and respecting myself better. I’ve loved Kate. But I am beginning a process and I hope you’ll come with me … This is a time of great reckoning. Privately, locally, globally. For me, the question is no longer ‘when will this change’ but ‘how far am I willing to go to meet the changes and bring them about in myself.’ I want to live with integrity. And this is a step towards that. Sending LOVE always.
A bit heavy-breathing for a new nickname, but whatever.
In an interview with Notion in August 2019, they discussed their queer identity: “It took me a long time to be able to stand with my own queerness and where I sit on the gender spectrum. That journey, for me, has been a challenging journey … to be able to just stand on stage and just be in my presence, and in my body, and the fact that I’m even there at all — that’s powerful for somebody in the audience going through their own journey with their sexuality or gender.”
Etc etc etc – but seriously, though, I think it’s chickenshit. I think it’s turning your back on women, and it’s also buying into the idea that a woman who isn’t “feminine” is doing it wrong. I also think it’s self-important and self-involved. “I don’t feel like everyone else” – yeah great, and neither does anyone else, so let’s talk about something that matters now.
And this differs from everyone else in what way? Seriously, this is part of being a member of a social species, a species that lives in large communities with other members of the species. We all have expectations; we are all aware of the expectations of us, and we struggle to maintain our own identity while still being what others want us to be.
And being non-binary is just a new way to fit in. Because it is cool. .Because it is a fad. Because it allows you to give long pretentious speeches and orations on why you are not she, you are they. Because you want to give them what they expect, which, in the woke world, is new names, new pronouns, and lots of self-important navel gazing.
Yeah, I get this. Because we all do this. We hide from ourselves because we don’t like who we are, or we don’t like who other people think we are, or we are just plain scared. I deal with this every day…every minute of every day. I have trouble sleeping, I have suffered an eating disorder, and frankly, sheltering in place has enabled me to avoid others the way my instincts have always told me to. Not good for the depression and anxiety. But if I were to announce I was now “they”, I would be showered with love by the woke. But I would not feel genuine, because it is not genuine to be what you are not.
Reality bites. For everyone, not just for “Kae”…they needs therapy, or something. Maybe just a big dose of “It’s not all about me”, repeated endlessly in a loop until they understand that. Maybe 7.6 billion times, one for each other person that is not “they’.
This is so tedious. You don’t refer to yourself as she, her, they or them, because those are not first person pronouns. Rather, this is a command for other people to change their language when referring to her. And just imagine having some large social event with these people, and their bespoke pronoun commands. They’d need to wear colour coded clothes, and everyone would need to carry around a legend/key for the group. I wonder how quickly they’d drop that shit.
k.
@iknklast BPD here, staying in has been awful for me too. But I would like to shower you with love just for being you.
We are closing to reaching a bizarre nadir where femininity is reserved for men, masculinity is reserved for men and women don’t exist. Which is ironic because eventually, without us, neither will they.
I’m so un-Woke that this comandeering of our common language still rankles. If K’ is going to expect us all to remember to refer to her as “they”, and “her” identity (and her dog and her car) must hereafter be “their”, why does she get to still effortlessly refer to herself (er, themself?) as “I” and “me” and “my” dog? Surely the least “they” could do is write We’ve been struggling to accept ourself as we am for a long time. We have tried to be what we thought others wanted us to be…” Surely that would be more consistent. And it’s only fair.
And I’m sorry, if she’s a “they”, they don’t get to demand that they has suddenly become plural. They is still only one person. I refuse to be out-voted that way.
Claire, thank you for the shower of love. I am sending one right back at you. And you don’t even need to change your pronouns.
I recently read something written by a lesbian who had been out of the loop for awhile, but signed on to help with some sort of “Queerness” festival. She was flummoxed to discover that almost all the “queers” involved were straight. She wondered what had happened to the gay pride movement she’d once been a part of, figured it out, and peaked.
Okay, if there’s going to be a Shower of Love I’m in.
LOVE TO ALL
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
One for All and All for One my online besties.
That image is straight up terrifying
You want terrifying? There you go.
I can empathize, because I, too, have been struggling to accept myself as I am for a long time.
I have finally accepted how super awesome I am. In recognition of this, and to avoid being cancelled, please refer to me as “starself” from now on. Thank you.
Starself sometimes hits different keys than normal because starself is unique and special. If only the commenting system didn’t commit literal violence by placing the uniquely addressed comment in moderation.
Hahaha yes I was just checking to see if you’d spelled your address Differently.
iknklast
Indeed. So much of this movement amounts to identifying normal, inescapable aspects of existence and “problematizing” them.
As for:
and Claire
To this I offer my own SAD commiseration and a tentative wave. Because it’s one thing to have very little social contact. It’s another thing entirely to have exactly zero.
So it’s pronounced the same as Kay, which is typically a female name. Spelling it ‘Kae’ doesn’t make it a non-binary or ungendered name because one doesn’t hear the unconventional spelling.
Such special little darlings, these non-binary sorts, so very complicated and interesting – or just boringly self-centred and confused.
I’m at work right now, so a Shower is out of the question. All I can really accept here is the Hand Sanitizer of Love. Perhaps a Moist Towelette of High Regard?
And that comlicatedness and interestingness is dependent upon everyone else being slaves to the gender binary which they have oh-so-daringly transcended, gone beyond, or whatever. If GC feminists were to successfully abolish gender, Kae’s precious specialness would simply be subsumed under “personality.” Everybody has one of those. What fun is that? If they let everyone into heaven, then being one of the “Elect” doesn’t mean very much. How then does one lord it over all those who are Damned?
If you don’t pause between “Kate” and “Tempest” it sounds like “Kay Tempest” anyway, so it’s probably just laziness. Spell it Kae though, gotta have that special feeling of people not knowing how to spell your name.
Catwhisperer, have you seen Michael McIntyre’s* stand-up routine on name spellings. He imagines introducing people to each other at a party, pronouncing each name to highlight their different spellings, such as Sarah:Sara, Stewart:Stuart: Ian:Iain, Neil:Neal, and so on. It’s a good routine, one of the few things he’s done that made me laugh.
Anyway, to have that special feeling that nobody knows how to spell your name you just need a Celtic or Irish moniker. I mean, who on Earth would spell ‘Shavaun’ as ‘Siobhan’? Or ‘Ashleen’ as ‘Aisling’? And I won’t even start on the multitude of spellings they have for ‘Naomi’!
*Not really my cup of tea; he is funny at times but his voice grates on me after a while, and that head-wobble thing he does is simply annoying.
I get so tired of people saying heterosexual people are boring. People who talk about sex all the time, and their own sexual orientation, are boring. Just…be what you are, okay? You don’t need to tell me about it 300 times a day. That is boooooring. Talk about…I don’t know…philosophy, science, religion, art, music, politics, literature….anything but how special your sexual preferences are (and that goes for those heterosexual juvenile men trapped in their high school locker room mentality that want to talk about sex all the time, too).
AoS, I google some of those Irish names whenever I come across them, and then promptly forget how to pronounced them. It makes no sense, so it won’t stick in my brain. I like to imagine that some Celtic tribes had a massive falling out a very long time ago and decided to go their their separate ways. One tribe took all the vowels for their language, the other took the consonants, and that’s how we we got Irish and Welsh.
(Same here with Michael McIntyre. 10 seconds of his flapping and squawking and I’m done, I’ve never found out if I find him funny)
Re spelling and pronouncing Irish names, here’s an amusing video. Be sure to catch the very end.
https://youtu.be/aVaHvRLlHr0
AoS and catwisperer – where I grew up is close to the Scottish border so sometimes we could pick up Scottish TV signals. Watching Postman Pat or the Magic Roundabout in Scots Gaelic (with subtitles) was a trippy experience. Well, in the case of Magic Roundabout, trippier.
But if you want to enjoy the beauty of the Irish language and see some asshole racist get owned, I give you:
https://thegeekygaeilgeoir.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/even-racists-got-the-blues/
About that “Even Racists Get the Blues” blog entry. The reason we say, is fear gorm é rather than, is fear dubh é is kinda funny. At least, I think it is. Although dubh means black, an fear dubh (lit. “the black man”) is the Devil. So we picked another color: blue. So black people are blue as Gaeilge.