Ze zim zir
News from the MidAmerica branch of Unitarian Universalistism:
UUMA/UUA Neurodiversity Skill Up Series: Rev. Leela Sinha
Rev. Leela Sinha (ze/zim/zir) is a brown, queer, genderqueer, entrepreneurial community minister with a theology of pleasure and a habit of transformative mischief. In zir work, ze offers leadership coaching, training, and keynotes, working with leaders and organizations to develop and delight in the power and intensity we have, and to use that power for good.
Wait a second. Who is this “we”? Did anyone ask what our pronouns are? And by “our” of course I mean “fm”.
Ze has been a UU all zir life, and lives and works in the Bay Area. Check out zir’s work with zir Sinha Intensive/Expansive Framework, work supporting teams and individuals working together, and podcast The Intensives Institute. We’re excited to welcome Leela because zir’s framework of supporting individuals and teams in embracing their strengths and working together even with different brains does not depend on medical diagnosis.
I think the real reason they’re excited is because of the fun and danger of keeping track of all those specialty pronouns. Do you know the difference between zir and zir’s? Because I gotta tellya, I sure don’t.
Also…brown?
Maybe the brown signifiies that ze is colorqueer. There is both “gueer” and “genderqueer” in the biography, and I honestly don’t know the dfference between the two. I know what genderqueer is supposed to mean, but why include both in the bio?
Maybe it’s just because I’m not feeling well that I can’t really make sense of this, but it seems like there is more money to being a guru than there is in actual working.
I too wondered (and still wonder) about gender AND genderqueer. I think it’s kind of like badges – the more the better.
Sorry you’re feeling unwell!
Thank you. :)
Get well soon Mike. I also think the guru community is perfectly suited for gender woo.
Someone would have to be offering something really spectacularly wonderful to make it worthwhile to be bothered with. (To put things in perspective, I don’t think Buddha, Jesus or Mohammad demanded custom pronouns, did they? Sure, Jesus claimed godhoodness, and Mohammad claimed a special connection to Allah (both of which were certainly bigger demands on their followers), but at least they didn’t fuck around with special goddamn pronouns.) Even then, it would be hard to square the idea that someone so demanding, attention-seeking, and fastidiously narcissistic would have anything of value to teach anyone. I could imagine such a CV only impressing those too insecure to call her bullshit bullshit. If they’d paid her good money, they would find something useful in her “leadership coaching, training, and keynotes” whether it was there or not. Who would want to admit they’d been had, and not noticed the vacuousness of her proffered wisdom from the airy nothingness of her description of it? From what I read here…”a theology of pleasure and a habit of transformative mischief”…”working with leaders and organizations to develop and delight in the power and intensity we have…” I can’t tell what this person thinks she has to offer, as her description is full of warm fuzzies, but lacking in meaning and clarity. Sure, you don’t give away the solution to the mystery novel in the blurbs, but you want to be able to see that the thick stack of pages you’re buying aren’t blank. But if all she says to describe what she’s selling is frothy nothingness, then I’m guessing those pages are going to be pretty empty. So, not worth being bothered with.
It would be like Nigel Tufnel saying his amp goes up to eleven and eleventy.
“airy nothingness is good.” Reminded me of:
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
She (I can’t be bothered with the stupid pronouns) looks to be of Indian or other South Asian ethnic background, at least in part. Her name also implies such. People often call those with such backgrounds “brown”. Many people get called “black” because of their ancestry rather than their skin color. “White” people and “black” people don’t usually have skin colors of actual “white” or “black”. It doesn’t strike me at all as unusual that Rev Sinha might be called “brown”. It’s an ethnic classification phrased (misleadingly, inappropriately) as a skin color classification.
I often think of an interview with some genderist “trans” person who was asked for his “intersectionalities”, if I recall correctly. He answered with a litany of gender words, maybe there were some race terms thrown into the mix. The interviewer said, “Nice”, as if these descriptions were somehow impressive, as if it’s an accomplishment to have all these words. Badges, for sure.
“Forget it, Jake — it’s Unitarian Universalists.”
Genuinely funny, Sastra!
Shameless, an American sitcom, played with this a few years ago. The gay kid was meeting a coterie of queer kids who proudly and at length listed their multiple gender… accomplishments? Hilarious yet sad.
I’m fairly sure I don’t want to know what a “theology of pleasure” is.
It means you’re a member of a Dionysian cult…