There’s more than one way to bully
So kids in school can be compelled, by the school, to use wrong, counter-intuitive, fantasy-based “pronouns” in conversation.
A federal appeals court decided on Friday to revisit its recent decision to uphold a central Ohio school district’s right to enforce policies against the bullying of transgender students, which had been challenged by a conservative parents group.
That’s very misleading. Of course schools should have and enforce policies against bullying, but failing or even refusing to join someone else’s fantasy isn’t bullying. Arguably the demand to be called anything non-intuitive is itself a bullying move. If you’re ordered to call people by the counter-intuitive pronouns, you’re going to have to work hard to remember to do it and avoid being tripped up by the deeply entrenched habit of knowing who is a she and who is a he. You have to override your own instincts instead of having an ordinary relaxed conversation.
There’s also the small matter of endorsing a lie, which schools really shouldn’t be forcing students to do.
I get that the whole thing can be a setup for deliberate bullying, but that’s part of the problem with the whole stupid fad for luxury pronouns. Kids in school shouldn’t be making luxury demands of that kind, it just gums up the works.
Olentangy, located near Columbus, sought to prohibit the “misgendering” of transgender students, including by failing to address them by their preferred pronouns.
See, that’s not fair. It’s not reasonable. It’s not what school is for. What if there are no “transgender students”? What if they’re just students who have fallen for a dopy fad? What if there are not even any students who genuinely feel “trapped in the wrong body” or similar? What if all this heavy breathing about misgendering is a silly nothingburger that needs to go away so that we can pay attention to important things?
The case is one of many around the country addressing the rights of transgender students.
For the millionth time: there’s no such thing as a right to force other people to call you what you’re not. That’s not a right. It bears little resemblance to a right.
To state the bleedin’ obvious for the millionth time, one does not address people by their preferred pronouns, be they “she”, “he”, “they”, “zir”, or “shitbag”. One addresses people by name, or by using some other form of address such as “sonny”, “your Beatitude”, or “darling”, or as “you” or even “thou”, or by simply apostrophising them.
It is the age-old distinction between fantasy and reality, as seen down through the ages. Much in the way of blood, of sweat and of tears has been spent maintaining it. Men are not women, and aryans, however defined, are no ‘master race.’