Women have to signal obedience
Good question.
I answered it by, basically, expanding on the “women have to signal obedience to the patriarchy” point, but there are probably further reasons (which is not to say that any of them are good reasons). The VP has more room for experiment, I think. If Biden did it it would look flaky and pathetic, like trying to be down with the kids. Partly it’s probably as simple as “Harris is young enough to get away with it.”
But why doesn’t she recognize it as obedience to the patriarchy? Now that’s something I would love to know.
Transgenderism is being successfully framed as Gender Nonconformity on Steroids. It’s even more radical than being gay, or defying stereotypes. Why, break down sexual barriers completely and how could anyone insist women must be meek or men must be brave? Being a “woman” or a “ man” is a choice! You pick!
They don’t seem to notice that it’s still coming down to variations on women are meek and men are brave. Even the “gender-nonconforming transgender folx “ require firmly placed genders.
So true. And by their insistence that they are gender nonconforming, they identify the rest of us into boxes we do not accept. Because without the box, they can’t be outside the box. Because if it is acknowledged that “gender nonconforming” describes nearly everyone, they can’t be special.
Maybe I’ll declare myself a non-binary trans-man that identifies as a woman on every other Wednesday; on the alternate Wednesdays, I’ll be a binary cis woman. As for the rest of the days of the week, I will refuse to let anyone know what I am; they will have to figure it out, and woe to them if they get it wrong!
I note her pronouns are “she/her”. As those are the correct pronouns, why the need to specify them?
I wonder how she would respond if I referred to her as “they/them”? Would I be misgendering her, erasing her existence, and leading her to thoughts of self harm?
Maybe we should drop all the old pronouns and just use “they/them for everyone. How much simpler would life be? Only they/them can play on the women’s team. Only they/them can use the womens bathrooms. Only they/them can access women’s shelters. Oh what a lovely nightmare.
@Roj Blake,
That’s pretty much the case for most of the world’s languages. Not that they use plural pronouns, but that they don’t have gendered pronouns (or at least not sex-based gendered pronouns). Turkish, for example, uses “o” for all third person singular references.
It’s mostly Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages that have sex-based gendered pronouns, though even within those language families there are exceptions (e.g., Farsi doesn’t have any grammatical gender).
Harris got a bunch of praise when she announced her pronouns at an LGBTQ town hall last year:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/11/chris-cuomo-pronoun-gaffe-lgbt-forum/
I think your explanation that Harris is young enough to get away with it is correct. And I’d guess she thinks it makes her a good ally. I suspect the notion of it signaling obedience never crossed her mind.
The people I think of as “the patriarchy” are generally the last people I’d think would want to hear someone’s pronouns.
Biden lists who he is the spouse of while Kamala doesn’t (though she does say she is a wife) in their respective Twitter profiles. If that were reversed much could and probably would be made of that difference. But maybe it’s just people writing their Twitter profiles how they saw fit with nobody being oppressed.
Geography is perhaps a factor, as Harris is from California while Biden is from Delaware. I think it’s fair to say that California is far more open to gender-bending than Delaware is. I could be wrong though.
Pronouns are a shibboleth. Kamala wants to appear to have some measure of “progressive” bona fides; Biden doesn’t. I sincerely doubt that either gives the matter more thought than that.
I cannot find the details at the moment, but I saw a report that a business had declared that everyone was to use “they/them” pronouns for everyone else in the company. A TIM complained that, without “she/her” pronouns, he felt invalidated. The business said they’d review the policy. It would be nice to verify the story, but this does not surprise me in the least.
iknclst: There was an episode of Shameless in which “the yutes” all went around in a circle and explained how they “identified” themselves. Ah: Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssTZtRQmhxY
In a world facing an economic meltdown and hundreds of thousands of deaths (as well as devastating natural disasters at least partly attributable to climate change) worrying about what PRONOUNS we are using to describe ourselves seems the height of comfortable, affluent privilege to me????
I don’t have a good answer to the question, but I will note that Kamala Harris made pandering to the trans-cult a central part of her bid for the nomination, whereas for Joe Biden it was just an after-thought, and probably one that a policy advisor came up with rather than something that he cares about.
Brian M. #10: we’re quite capable of worrying about the big stuff as well as the small.