Reducing People to Their Pronouns

 

China is testing hypersonic nuclear missiles. Russia is threatening to blackmail Europe over its energy supplies. The “professional and businesslikeTaliban are beheading women.   And the US State Department is… lecturing Americans on the importance of using people’s self-insisted pronouns.

Today on International Pronouns Day, we share why many people list pronouns on their email and social media profiles. Read on to see why it matters what pronouns you use.

It’s self-evident that a lot of the pronoun obsession is rooted in narcissism (“My pronouns are any important aspect of my identity!”) and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) (“I will force you to use my chosen pronouns and make the authorities punish you if you don’t.”) That’s on the individual level.  Also, “honoring” self-insisted pronouns is a way of elite status-signaling for cultural leftists. (“Look at me! I am doing the thing that marks me as socially superior.”)

There’s also a political reason leftists consider pronouns so gosh darn important. A pronoun reduces an individual into a limited, defined category where they can be slotted. It’s no different than the left’s penchant for dividing people up as: BIPOC; cisgender; transwoman; Boomer; Millennial; white (supremacist); LGBTQQIDAAPPO2SBNBGNCGGAPPO, and other categories. Divide people into categories and indoctrinate them that they have interests and prerogatives that other categories of people are determined to keep from them. It’s a very deliberate cultural Balkanization, based on Marxist theory (people are divided into classes that are constantly at each other’s throats — which is very useful for authoritarian leftists in maintaining power.)

Ultimately, reducing people to a pronoun is dehumanizing. That’s a feature, not a bug.

On a Tangential Note:  Re: The controversy, protest, and walkouts at Netflix (check out Transgender Barney Rubble here)  over Dave Chappelle’s allegedly transphobic comments. How much do you want to bet every Hollywood talent agent with a transgendered client is burning up the phone lines to Netflix. And how sure can we be that they didn’t instigate this to begin with?

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There are 15 comments.

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  1. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Good post. I think you’re right about both the narcissism and the strategy of division.

    I continue to believe that every individual has the absolute right to choose and use his or her own pronouns. I choose “he/him” and “she/her.” I will use the masculine ones when referring to people whom I think are male, and the feminine ones when referring to people whom I think are female. I don’t care what pronouns other people choose to use when referring to me: I’m not a tyrant and so I won’t try to dictate other people’s word usage.

     

    • #1
  2. Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. Coolidge
    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr.
    @BartholomewXerxesOgilvieJr

    Yeah, that bit about “which pronouns you use” is dishonest. The only pronouns you should use to refer to yourself are “I” and “me.” What’s at issue here is which pronouns you want to force other people to use when talking about you. Why so many people fail to make this distinction is beyond me.

    • #2
  3. DonG (CAGW is a hoax) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a hoax)
    @DonG

    The English language needs non-gendered pronouns for living creatures.   I don’t want to have to sex your cat, to get the right pronoun and “it” is confusing for a pet.  I don’t want to say, “Your cat looks like he/she is about to spit up a hairball”.   Awkward!  As for people, if I don’t care enough to learn your proper noun, then I certainly don’t care enough to learn your pronoun.  Make my life simpler and choose a non-gendered set of pronouns, eg, “ye” and “ye’s” works for me.  Now it is, “your cat looks like ye is about to spit up a hairball.”

    • #3
  4. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    DonG (CAGW is a hoax) (View Comment):

    The English language needs non-gendered pronouns for living creatures. I don’t want to have to sex your cat, to get the right pronoun and “it” is confusing for a pet. I don’t want to say, “Your cat looks like he/she is about to spit up a hairball”. Awkward! As for people, if I don’t care enough to learn your proper noun, then I certainly don’t care enough to learn your pronoun. Make my life simpler and choose a non-gendered set of pronouns, eg, “ye” and “ye’s” works for me. Now it is, “your cat looks like ye is about to spit up a hairball.”

    The language needs no such thing.  We’ve survived this long without, um, it.

    • #4
  5. Fritz Coolidge
    Fritz
    @Fritz

    This nonsense is insidious. Filling out the online medical history form in preparing for an upcoming annual eye exam,  the form asked both what “gender” I’d been “assigned” at birth, and what were my “preferred” pronouns. I left the latter blank but had to respond to the former to complete the page. Mercifully, the choices were limited to Male and Female, so there’s that going for them which is nice.

    • #5
  6. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Fritz (View Comment):

    This nonsense is insidious. Filling out the online medical history form in preparing for an upcoming annual eye exam, the form asked both what “gender” I’d been “assigned” at birth, and what were my “preferred” pronouns. I left the latter blank but had to respond to the former to complete the page. Mercifully, the choices were limited to Male and Female, so there’s that going for them which is nice.

    I agree about the absurdity of the pronoun part. As for the “assigned” thing… I’ve run into that, and I have a theory. I think it’s an attempt by sensible people to ask the question “What is your real sex? Not what you imagine it might be, or what you wish it might be, but what it really is. You know, what the people who looked at you ten seconds after you were born said it was.”

    • #6
  7. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Fritz (View Comment):

    This nonsense is insidious. Filling out the online medical history form in preparing for an upcoming annual eye exam, the form asked both what “gender” I’d been “assigned” at birth, and what were my “preferred” pronouns. I left the latter blank but had to respond to the former to complete the page. Mercifully, the choices were limited to Male and Female, so there’s that going for them which is nice.

    That kind of thing on the form might just be a deal breaker for me.  Not inclined to take medical advice from people who believe men can get pregnant.

    • #7
  8. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Victor Tango Kilo: It’s self-evident that a lot of the pronoun obsession is rooted in narcissism (“My pronouns are any important aspect of my identity!”) and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) (“I will force you to use my chosen pronouns and make the authorities punish you if you don’t.”) That’s on the individual level.  Also, “honoring” self-insisted pronouns is a way of elite status-signaling for cultural leftists. (“Look at me! I am doing the thing that marks me as socially superior.”)

    I observed how nonsensical this pronoun business is at work. There’s a message board on a work network. I don’t have an account, but anyone can read it. About a year ago I noticed pronouns showing up in people’s information boxes when you hover over their avatar. Last week I saw a reply where the person referred to the original commenter by ‘they’. I hovered over the poster’s avatar and he had his pronouns there, ‘he/him/his’. He didn’t yell at the person replying that the wrong pronoun had been used. I almost created an account just to be offended for him.

    • #8
  9. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    I was about to make a post about International Pronouns Day.  Thanks for saving me the trouble!

    • #9
  10. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    As has been noted many times before, leftists claim to care about people, but only in the abstract, as parts of groups. But present them with actual humans with actual wants, needs, desires, and abilities, leftists can’t stand actual people. 

    • #10
  11. KCVolunteer Lincoln
    KCVolunteer
    @KCVolunteer

    My pronoun is KC. You are welcome to refer to me that way at any time.

    • #11
  12. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    If I’m ever asked for my pronouns (and, thank goodness, that hasn’t ever happened), I’m going to say that my personal pronoun is 30 seconds of silence.

    • #12
  13. Matt Bartle Member
    Matt Bartle
    @MattBartle

    I went through my LinkedIn contacts a while back and deleted anyone who listed pronouns.

    • #13
  14. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Someone here on Ricochet a couple years ago came up with he/her and you’d better say something like ‘he rode her bike to work’ or you’re a bigot.

    • #14
  15. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Fritz (View Comment):
    This nonsense is insidious. Filling out the online medical history form in preparing for an upcoming annual eye exam,  the form asked both what “gender” I’d been “assigned” at birth, and what were my “preferred” pronouns.

    Oh, man. You missed it.

    The preferred pronoun for an eye exam is I.

    • #15
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