The people behind you have a bus to catch

It still amazes me to see how people get lost in the maze of Jargon Absolutism – of treating certain sanctified verbal formulas as if they were reality itself. Say it and it becomes true no matter how nonsensical the content.

https://twitter.com/DrAdrianHarrop/status/1010142561380552704

Blar blar identities are valid – the sacred formula is uttered and the molecules are changed. But what does it mean? What does it mean to say an “identity” is “valid”?

Identity can be a prosaic factual matter to do with some basic facts about who one is, as with an ID card to use a service one has paid for or registered for or both. It starts with name and can included date of birth, place of birth, sex, address, height and weight, eye color – neutral emotionless facts. That kind of identity is valid if the facts are correct and invalid if any of the facts have been falsified. That’s neither political nor interesting. But DOCTOR Adrian Harrop isn’t talking about that kind of identity, he’s talking about the new, holy, sacred kind of identity, that has no precise definition but is all the more mandatory for that. The less factual it is, the more the harrops need to shout about its validity on Twitter.

But Harrop wants this sacred kind of identity to be confirmed on the factual identity documents as well as in the throbbing hearts of devotees. That’s ludicrous. It’s like insisting that passports should include one’s favorite book or video game or city or bird. That’s not what passports are for. Passports aren’t little diary entries, and the officials who check them and stamp them don’t have time to learn about the glorious unique fascinating personality of the person presenting the passport. Yeah? When you show your passport you’re one of hundreds of people in a line of people and it’s not an occasion for showing off. Go ahead, be “nonbinary” if you’re dumb enough to think that means something, but passports don’t need that particular bit of your personality and it’s just boring tedious vanity to make a fuss about it.

And no their “existence” is not “denied” simply because their meaningless self-description is not included in their passports. My passport doesn’t say that I’m a nerd and yet I continue to exist.

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