No No No
Human rights? You sure about that?
One – get those clapping hands out of my face. Clapping at us is not the way to persuade or convince us of anything.
Two – yes using specialty pronouns damn well is optional. People don’t get to pick out their very own pronouns as if they were a party dress and then force other people to use them. My words are not yours to control.
Three – of course it’s not “a huge form of support, respect & love” – don’t be so ridiculous! Calling a man “her” is neither support nor respect nor love.
Four, why do trans people get their very own special day about 700 times a year now? Why do they get to suck up so much oxygen? Are their delusions about their sex really the most urgent thing we have to think about? More urgent than climate change or Hamas or Trump or Putin or poverty or war? Or, by the way, the staggering rate at which rape goes unpunished?
Put your stupid pronouns away and do something useful.
Sorry, NO. Nobody gets to DEMAND my respect. It’s earned. And let me tell you this: if you’re going to berate me for referring to you with a pronoun that is obviously correct on the basis of your secondary sexual characteristics, then you’ve lost any chance at earning my respect.
Even IF playing along with one’s delusions was “a huge form of support, respect & love” (no, it’s not), YOU CAN’T DEMAND ANY OF THOSE THINGS FROM ANYONE. They are all of them to be EARNED. Of COURSE they’re “optional”. You demand them, you’ve lost them.
WHAAARGARBLE but there isn’t a strong enough swear for this.
So: No, no, no, and NO. Hell, once more for the dimwits in the back: NO.
I’m going to print out this post and paste it around my neighborhood, on traffic-light poles and the like. Important message to spread.
One needs a quality helmet, raincoat and gumboots in order to wade through this torrent of horseshit.
If speech isn’t optional, it’s compelled, and then it’s against human rights, not for it. It’s as if the HRC cannot hear what they’re saying. And it’s further evidence of Helen Joyce’s assertion that taking a falsehood like this into your organisation turns it actively against its core mission. Turns women’s rights groups into men’s rights groups, gay rights into anti-gay rights, children’s rights into adult’s rights. In this case, turns you against human rights.
Dear Lord, how many special days do the Ts get? Visibility Day, Invisibility Day, Support Day, Pride Month, (revised) LGB (+T!) History Month, National Women’s Day Plus T, International Women’s Day Plus T, T-Women’s History Month, Purple Day, Flag Day, Sports Day(s), Human (T) Rights Week, Independence Day, Stonewall Day, Non Binary Day, weekly Drag Queen Story Indoctrination Hour, etc., etc., etc. Now it’s Pronoun Day TOO? There are no days, weeks, months, or hours that are allowed to be devoted to anything or anyone else. “All T, all the time,” gets truer all the time.
If something is a huge form of support, respect, and love, then it is ABSOLUTELY optional.
maddog1129, you’ve forgotten the most important one, the “Trans Day of Vengeance”. Not menacing or sinister at all, that.
There is the old quote, varyingly attributed, that “when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”. As a younger man I would have never predicted that when totalitarianism came to the Human Rights Council and related movements, it would be wrapped in the ever-more-crowded rainbow flag and carrying its pronoun badge.
For what is totalitarianism in its essence if not the command to love an ideology above oneself? Not for nothing (and not unrelated to this discussion) did Orwell make the Party’s first and highest command that to love Big Brother. Not for nothing is the novel’s last line that of Winston Smith succumbing to this dictum and thereby demonstrating the final death of his soul — and the final cementing of the Party’s total power over every aspect and corner of every member’s heart, their total victory in their total war against the human spirit.
@ #8:
For that they need a suitable megalomaniac on whom to focus, and an equivalent document to Mein Kampf. “Heil Transfuhrer.?” It somehow relegates everyone, from mere ‘fuhrers’ on down, into subordiate status. The TransReich wuld be torn apart, with Nights of the Long Knives everywhere before it even got going. Though there is no certainty in this life.
I don’t think that the HRC set its brightest mind to composing this. I know what it’s trying to say but the two sentences contradict each other: the change of subject from ‘someone’s’ in the first to ‘you’ in the second changes the message somewhat. To me, the second sentence is saying that it matters not what pronouns we non-special people use to refer to the precious ones; any old pronoun will do.
Another, possibly minor, thing; how do they propose to make this work in gendered languages where possessive pronouns agree with the gender of the object, not the sex of the subject?
Descriptively, do I say *he* is a transwoman, or *she* is a transwoman? I don’t want to be horrible to people who are obviously struggling with life, but is this not simply a matter of etiquette? Or style? Will I be accused of committing a ‘hate crime’ because I have come to use the English language in (arguably) a conventional way over the years? Will I be accused of ‘transphobia’ if I get it wrong? Why are we being forced under threat of punitive measures to learn and employ this new sub-language?
“…isn’t optional…” is a very specific phrase. They are not asking us nicely, they are mandating.
Four a: Why do they also get Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day?
On X, a women posted about how her son, who has long hair and is not sporty, went through a “self-esteem day” at school and one of the workshops was on pronouns. The teacher was badgering him for his pronouns, “you’re in a safe space here” and he kept replying that he’s a boy.
https://x.com/Poppy_yyyyyyyy/status/1714978065401463270?s=20
If I was growing up in that sort of environment I am certain I would be marked as either trans or non-binary because I didn’t fit the male stereotype well enough. This is not a “self-esteem” exercise, it’s a way to get the kids to conform to expectations. They are teaching boys that if they are not masculine, they are certainly not real boys.
I wish I could snap my fingers and wake people from this mesmerizing ideology.
Sigh.
Remember when it was only dictionary compilers who were obsessed with pronouns?
@Mike, yes, they certainly go after the tomboys and the nerds.
I imagine there was some sporty boy sitting near him who didn’t even get asked, because he was “performing masculinity” so well. But the nerdy boy with long hair will get badgered about it. And that’s a point where ostensible kindness itself becomes bullying. In effect, that girly boy is getting bullied, by the teacher, for not being macho enough.
There was an article on PITT about that some time back:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/pronoun-bullying?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fbullying&utm_medium=reader2
It would be interesting to read that twitter thread, but it looks like Elon broke all the thread unrollers now.
As if pronouns command respect any more than verbs or past participles do. Word meanings and references are either accurate or inaccurate, it has nothing to do with respect. Of course they mean respect the *people* who are using pronouns in a certain way, not the pronouns themselves.
Funny thing is, every time I see someone needlessly displaying their pronouns, I don’t gain respect for them, but probably quite the opposite.
To quote Seven of Nine — “I will not comply.”
One aspect of the pronoun business that had never occurred to me before: does this extend to languages where there’s a choice of second-person pronouns that can show various levels of power or intimacy or respect? We’ve lost the you/thou distinction in English, of course, but what of tú/Usted in Spanish or du/Sie in German? Does the misuse of those constitute an egregious attack on the person addressed? Should we have a worldwide “vous/sız/Lei” day?
And what are we to do with languages like Korean and Japanese, where I understand the relative power relationship between interlocutors determines not just pronouns but grammatical forms and lexical choices?
That’s an interesting point. It hadn’t occurred to me either. It’s a way you have to think about pronouns, and make decisions about them, and maybe feel uneasy about getting them wrong – which English doesn’t have, because as you say the you/thou distinction is gone. It’s all over the place in Shakespeare, and naturally in his contemporaries but I haven’t read them as intensively. There’s that line in Twelfth Night – “and thou thoust him some twice it had not been amiss” – meaning, cool plan to insult Malvolio by thou-ing him. There’s also the explosive moment in King Lear when Kent is upbraiding Lear for treating Cordelia so badly and he shifts from “you” to “thou” and Lear erupts. Pronouns were SERIOUS BUSINESS.
Actually he doesn’t say you at all, but everyone would have known it was the normal thing to say.
KENT.
Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honour’d as my king,
Lov’d as my father, as my master follow’d,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers.—
LEAR.
The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.
KENT.
Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound
When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy state;
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgement,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;
Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sounds
Reverb no hollowness.
————-
The thing is, “thou” stands for intimacy, love, tenderness as well as/instead of equality or inferiority. Kent is both insulting Lear and loving him as a father. Lear of course sees only the insult.
Indeed it cuts both ways. Nothing like a well-timed “Perdóneme Ud.” to express annoyance. I guess you can get a similar effect in English with “Excuse me, your Majesty,” but it’s not as subtle.
It seems like we’re becoming a nation of Lears.
He’s very Trumpy in fact.
That is very interesting. I was thinking about when I learned the formal and informal “you” in French; vous and tu, and how I wondered at the time why English lacked such distinctions. It didn’t always, which never really occured to me, even having read some of the KJV by then. Nice to make that connection so many years later. Merci, Ophelia and WaM.
re. thou/you. Until just now I wasn’t aware that they had distinctly different connotations. I thought it was just that in old English the ‘th’ sound was represented by the thorn – similar to a Y but with the vertical line extended to the same height as the arms – and it was the advent of moveable type that created ‘you’ from ‘thou’ by doing away with the thorn and simply using a y in its place. As the thorn became forgotten it was the y pronunciation that became common usage. Quite why some old ‘thorn’ words retained their original pronunciations (the*, there) and some didn’t I assumed was down to the oddities of the language.
*Except when used to give that ‘olde worlde’ charm: Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, for example.
Having different connotations for thou and thee would make more sense to me, although lines such as ‘Shall I compare thee [..] thou art more’ would suggest they were either interchangeable or were context- rather than subject specific.
Why do you insult Lear like that? He was clearly intelligent, and at one time an able and loved leader, and in the end he showed he was capable of remorse, self-awareness, love, and loyalty, even if it was far too late.
I guess if you strip away all his good qualities you end up with something like Trump.
AoS,
Subject (thou art) vs. object (Shall I compare thee). Cf. “I am” vs. “Shall I compare me”.
By the way, “thou” is apparently still used in parts of northern England and in Scots.
Me, too. Without my good qualities (for whatever they’re worth), I would become something like Trump. I think without good qualities, we’d all become something like Trump. Maybe some of us would dress better or have a better color complexion (i.e., not orange).
I worry more that we’re becoming a nation of Trumps than a nation of Lears. At least Lear could make marvelous speeches. I bet he never said “covfefe”. If he did, Shakespeare certainly didn’t report it.
WaM, I can’t say that I’ve heard ‘thou’ used in the North, although ‘tha’ and ‘thee’ are still quite common north of the Trent. Having said that, in the local accent of Birmingham and the area surrounding it – on the fringe of which is Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon – ‘you’ rhymes with ‘thou’.
WaM @ 28 – I assume you’re joking, but just because I can’t shut up on this subject once I start, I’ll just say that Lear’s shift from being Trumpy to not being Trumpy is what the play is all about. In Act One he absolutely is Trumpy. He’s vain and credulous enough to take the ridiculous flatteries of Regan and Goneril seriously and then fly into a rage at Cordelia who does in fact love him. Then he does the same to Kent, who also does in fact love him. He’s not intelligent at all. His remorse is the peripeteia, not the starting point.
Arguably Shakespeare was hinting, rather dangerously, that being a monarch isn’t good for people.
Lear and Shakespeare are far more interesting (if less urgent) than most of the subjects you cover, so no complaints here. Yes, I was joking, and for the most part I agree with your analysis. Just a couple of points: first, the fact that the few decent characters in the play love him hints at the man (and king) he must have been at one point. As far as I can tell, no decent person loves Trump. Second, I think he does have a latent intelligence that comes out in the end, but in any case you’re right that he’s ruled by his vanity and rage at the beginning, so yes, Trumpy.
Now that you mention it, it’s hard to think of a king that Shakespeare paints in a good light. Henry VII, perhaps, but that’s just a bit part and he could hardly have done otherwise. Henry V gets the heroic treatment, but his conquests are all thrown away at his death, and we know what’s coming next, so I take that as a dig at the stupidity of his war. (But that could just be my own bias; I never did like the bastard.)
Yeah boy does it come out at the end. That “handy-dandy” speech – it give me goosebumps every time.
And then the speech when he and Cordelia are reunited and all is forgiven.
“No, no, no, no. Come, let’s away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.”
Ugh, that just makes the end that much more brutal. Howl, howl howl!
My corporate lawyers employers really value getting inclusive awards and they sent us 10 commandments for Happy Pronoun Day.
Only about 4-5% of employees put pronouns in their signatures. The pronouns are in fact what you would expect – he for the blokes, she for the women, and nothing like they or zi. Annoyingly, this does include some colleagues that I like. No-one ever talks about it though, not in my hearing anyway.
The 10 commandments:-
1. Normalise pronoun sharing – this is to make an inclusive atmosphere, where everyone is comfortable expressing their gender identity. [And those who don’t believe in this feeling pretty damned uncomfortable. Everyone should genuflect so the Catholics feel comfy.]
2. Respect how others choose to identify. [I’d like to see a trainee identify as an Associate or a Partner, and what respect they would get.]
3. Avoid assumptions. Unintentional misgendering can be hurtful and alienating. [Well I wasn’t much hurt when the woman at the laundrette called me Sir when I phoned to ask how much to clean a duvet. That’s my baritone voice for you. I was more hurt by the cost of cleaning a down duvet, not to mention heaving it to the laundrette.]
4. Demonstrates serious professionalism – shows that you aware and sensitive to the needs of a diverse workforce and our clients. [See point 1.]
5. Foster trust and relationships [See point 1]
6. Encourages open communication [See point 1]
7. Saves time and reduces awkwardness [See point 1]
8. Promotes learning and awareness. Seeing pronouns in email signatures can prompt others to learn more about gender diversity and pronoun usage. It encourages education and fosters greater awareness about the experiences of transgender and non-binary individuals. [Hmmm I’d be a bit careful there. “Gender awareness” can have the opposite effect, that the aware become highly hostile to this enforced bullshit.]
9. Reflects personal values: Seeing pronouns in email signatures can prompt others to learn more about gender diversity and pronoun usage. [See point 8]
10. Affirms support for the LGBTQ+ community: Displaying your pronouns shows solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. It sends a clear message that you are an ally and advocate for inclusivity and acceptance. [I choose my own allies and advocacy thanks].
The whole formal/informal second person pronouns is hard for translators into English. In A Doll’s House, Torvald Helmer says of Nils Krogstad that they were intimates at university – “We were thous” – and he doesn’t want to employ him in his bank as Krogstad might continue to call him “thou”. The translator has to say, “he called me by a first name” (which of course is de rigeur in organisations these days) or by a nickname like Torvie or Torviekin or whatever.
In Lord of the Rings Tolkein said of the hobbits that they had lost the distinction between formal and informal 2nd person pronoun, so they would address great lords in very familiar terms. This made listeners think that they, the hobbits, were of high status.
@WhataMaroon #30 – Agree about Henry V. I love his speeches, but he is so detestable in the Henry IV plays. I find his renunciation of Falstaff the chilliest moment in Shakespeare. And he, the entitled scion of a grand family, slumming it and playing with the bad boys until he gets the big job in Daddy’s firm.
KBPlayer@34,
And more than half of those aren’t “commandments”, they’re descriptions of desired effects. (Lack of parallelism is one of my major peeves.)
As for Henry V, I wasn’t even thinking about the other two plays, but yeah, he’s despicable there. The whole highway robbery incident (I can’t think of way to end this sentence)….
[…] a comment by KBPlayer on No No […]
@Maroon
Actually they didn’t call it 10 Commandments, that is my gloss.
If I was braver on Happy Pronoun Day I would walk about the office humming this:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seqaTuXkqFI
Mike Haubrich @15: I remember, as a rather shy and unsociable teenager who was both desperately wanting the attentions of the opposite sex, and horribly inept at gaining them (seriously, I’m glad I was born GenX, because if it’d been a couple decades later, I’d’ve been prime target for incel recruitment), being utterly stunned by well-meaning adults who, noting that I hadn’t had the ‘typical’ dating experience, asked kindly, “Are you gay?”
In all the cases I can think of, they really were just trying to give me an ‘out’ (so to speak), a way to explain why I didn’t have a girlfriend. But lemme tell you, in Midwest suburbia in Reagan’s America, that was NOT a welcome question. Hell, it probably wouldn’t have been welcomed if I WERE gay. So, yeah, singling out the ‘odd’ kids to interrogate them about their pronouns is not a great policy approach.