People who list their pronouns in their bio - or in their email signature - are not being kind, or inclusive, or progressive. And they are most certainly not enlightened.
They are legitimising the idea that self-identified gender should trump biological gender.
They are legitimising the medical transition of a rapidly expanding group of children in Western countries.
They are promoting coerced speech.
They are normalising the dismissal of science in favour of ideology.
They are compromising the rights of women and girls to sex-protected spaces.
They are emboldening teachers who encourage students to adopt new identities without their parents’ knowledge (yes, that’s educational policy in Victoria under the Daniel Andrews government)
They are making impossible the collection of sex-based government data in key fields such as health and crime.
They are confusing characteristics of people suffering gender dysphoria (bullying, depression etc) with causes of gender dysphoria.
They are enabling activist groups to cancel people who refuse to play along with science-lite gender ideologues by not stating their pronouns.
They are promoting homophobia by encouraging same-sex attracted people to change their sex (which, of course, impossible) because that is seen as preferable to being thought gay.
On this point, brilliant journalist Bernard Lane writes:
“At the London-based Tavistock child gender identity clinic (which is to close next year after a loss of confidence in its “gender-affirming” treatment model), there was reportedly a dark joke among staff that “there would be no gay people left” as medicalised gender change accelerated. This is because many of their young patients appeared to be potential lesbians who’d been “affirmed” in their new identity as (nominally) straight boys. In smaller numbers, effeminate boys who might otherwise emerge as gay or bisexual adults were being affirmed as girls.”
They give credence to LBGTQ demands that other forms of language - mother, father, born-a-boy, born-a-girl etc) - be banned as untrue and even dangerous.
They promote the idea that biological sex is a lie imposed by white Europeans on natives who were happy gender benders living in a paradise of gender fluidity before colonisers arrived with Bibles
But doesn’t listing your pronouns make it easier for trans people to list theirs?
And shouldn’t we do this because - as we are so often told - trans people are far more likely to self harm?
By listing your pronouns you are helping to keep transgendered people safe. Or so the argument goes.
The idea that trans children are suicidal unless they are acknowledged and affirmed in their identities has been critical to convincing the masses to embrace gender theory. I mean, you don’t want to be responsible for young people taking their lives, do you?
It’s an emotive and therefore powerful argument. It’s also a nonsense.
Bernard Lane writes:
“The claims, however, are typically based on anonymous online surveys conducted among self-selected groups—the kind of low-quality study design that would not be taken seriously if the results weren’t seen as ideologically convenient.
“Because gender clinicians and activists keep recycling this alarming suicide rhetoric, the result is that, far from serving to protect children, their claims tend to consign these already troubled patients to victim status, and encourage their unrealistic expectations of what can be accomplished by medical interventions. Quite apart from the effect this may have on suicidal ideation, it’s hard to ignore that this narrative presents the clinicians and doctors as heroic saviours of children otherwise doomed to self-destruction.”
In like fashion, those who insist on publishing their pronouns like to think of themselves as somehow heroic and virtuous. They are exactly the opposite, helping to normalise a dangerous idea that is having devastating consequences for an increasing number of children.
I suspect the reported high incidence of depression and suicide in some of these kids has more to do with the fact they are emotinally unwell. Being told you are not what nature intended just adds to the confusion. The massive surge in hormones during puberty causes immense confusion and discomfort in some. Everybody's experience is different. Allowing children to go through puberty naturally teaches them to adapt to the changes in their body and mind. They only need advice to how the body naturally changes and what to expect and that they will be ok when the process is complete. No medical intervention required. (I am probably not articulating as well as I should but I haven't had my second coffee yet but I hope you get my drift).I was never a girly girl and still am as a grandmother
As for pronouns, they are an assault on the English language and I will not comply.
Tavistock is subject to a class action by thousands of disgruntled parents. When they win which they will your map of clinics in US will be very different as they all close and run for the hills. All of this nonsense to please less than 1% of the population. I’d rather shoot the bastards. And Dictator Dan allowing teachers (the third sex) to be in charge of this. Spare me please!