We know that something is being waved in our faces
Joan Smith is. not. having. it.
Referring to Izzard or any other trans-identified man as “she” is profoundly insulting to women. In this instance, it happens to be the Guardian talking to Izzard “ahead of the release of her new film”. The word “her” has no place in that sentence, creating an immediate sense of cognitive dissonance. We know that something is being waved in our faces, challenging us to object to our own erasure.
What’s being waved in our faces is the [implicit] dick along with the explicit dick move of ordering us to ignore the dick as we are forced to submit to it.
For years we were told that using someone’s preferred pronouns was a matter of “being kind”, when it’s nothing of the sort. “Look at this obvious man and dare to challenge a suffocating orthodoxy that insists he’s a woman,” is what it says. Suffocating and silencing, because once you accept that, everything else flows from it — men demanding to be in women’s refuges, changing rooms and prisons.
All those people adding “he/him” or “she/her” to their email signatures are telling us they accept the argument that someone’s sex is a matter of personal choice.
And they’re telling us we’re evil shits for not doing likewise. It’s very much an attempt at social control, at forcing us to submit to the new boss.
It’s a form of gaslighting, promoting an ideology that’s hugely controversial, not to say scientifically illiterate. When a newspaper or website does it, it’s making a conscious decision, lining up behind the idea that men can become women at will. It could only happen in a culture where women’s legitimate concerns are laughed at and disregarded.
And stamped “KAREN”.
Not Helen Joyce this time – it’s Joan Smith.
Sums it all up in a nutshell.
And this:
ARRGGH thank you. I was reading both articles at the same time.
The claim that using someone’s pronouns of demand is a mere ‘kindness’ is belied by the fact that they are also claimed to be non-optional. Kindness is not mandatory, and mandates are by their nature not kind as there is the implication of enforcement, punishment, for failure to comply. It is further undermined by the revisionism we see at play with trans identities. When someone declares they have a gender identity, name, and/or pronouns at odds with their sex, it is immediately forbidden to mention even obliquely that the person ever had anything other than those even in the past. This is especially visible with famous people, as their pages on wikipedia, imdb, and others are immediately edited to match the new demand even for past events under their previous name.
Perhaps the best demonstration of this inflexibility can be seen in the very public tragedy Elliot Page, formerly Ellen. The wiki page for Hard Candy states the protagonist’s actor as Elliot Page, despite being Ellen at the time, and despite her character being a 14 year old girl. The plot of that movie begins with that character tempting another man into meeting her via online flirting, as she suspects he is a paedophile who killed an earlier victim of his predation. In particular, she suspects he is a heterosexual paedophile – the entire interaction thus depends on her being female. Yet that of course does not stop all references to Elliot referring to her as grammatically masculine.
A footnote on that page gives us another absurdity: “Elliot Page, in his memoir Pageboy, revealed that a member of the production gave him a ride home after the wrap party, and then sexually assaulted him.” Him him him, despite the glaring incongruity: Ellen page was sexually assaulted 16 years prior to ‘coming out’ as a man. The assault was due to lust for her as a woman. Elliot’s own page contains a stream of further absurd lies.
The ‘kindness’ claim is a flimsy defence, part of a coercive effort to promote mass lying.
And this leads to another problem. If someone just encountered an actor who changed their name/pronouns/identity after beginning their career, and wants to find more work by them, it could be difficult, unless literally every copy of the, say, film, book, etc, has been edited to reflect the new name. Since you are not allowed to ‘deadname’, who would dare tell you this used to be Bob Smith, and you have to look under that name, rather than Jasmine Smith?
A lot of college educated women do not change their name partially for that reason. Their degrees and accomplishments were done under their birth name, and even a lot of more conservative women will choose not to change their name because of that.
I had an affair.
The affair ended our marriage, and I accept full responsibility.
My ex-wife retains my surname because so much of her personal and professional life is attached to that name. To have reverted to her birth name would have, in all likelihood, cost her far more than the pain of divorce.
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On the plus side, people who attach “pronouns” in the signature to every email that they send are doing us a big favor by letting us know to avoid them. I wish that all believers in such whackaloonery would make their delusions so clearly evident; it would have saved me a great many dead-end interactions.
I saw Eddie Izzard doing stand up about 25 years ago. Although he presented unconventionally, he made no claim at the time to be a woman. One memorable punchline was “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body”. We were supposed to laugh at it, and we did because it was very funny. Now we are supposed to take the same claim (no matter who makes it) entirely seriously.