I recently saw a post on LinkedIn where the writer was berating people who put pronouns after their names in their profiles or email signatures. I unfollowed her and blocked her right away. I don’t have patience to suffer idiots who can’t let people be who they want to be or define themselves how they want to. Don’t these people have anything better to get worked up about, like poverty or war?
I get why some people are confused by people displaying or stating their pronouns, but I don’t get why some grandstanding snowflakes get their undies in a bunch over the whole issue. If you’re offended by someone being assertive about themselves and the way they present to people, you probably shouldn’t read on.
In fact, this is a conversation that I might swear about a bit about. As in: if you’re one of these people, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Like many of us, I have gender diversity and neurodiversity in my family. If we want to call each other by our desired pronouns or by anything else, what the fuck business is it of any other person, family, or governor of Florida?
Our oldest is going to college in the fall, and I’ve been on several campus visits in the past year. The student tour guide always starts by asking people their names, their intended majors, and their pronouns. Nobody thinks anything of it, probably (hate to say) because it’s a more educated group, and complaining about people choosing their own pronouns is, let’s face it, just plain stupid.
I’ve worked at companies for five years where everyone was perfectly fine putting pronouns in their email signatures. Furthermore, I’ve worked at companies with trans people since my career began in 1988, and nobody thought anything of it. In 2004 I worked for another company that put out a very kind and thoughtful memo about the use of the bathrooms while an employee was transitioning.
If nasty, divisive politicians want to put up a fight about saying gay or being trans or dressing in drag and reading to children, they’re going to have an enemy in our largest American businesses—the ones with our smartest people—who have Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives because they care about their employees more than these politicians care about people. These very same politicians always say the government should stay out of business, but apparently telling private businesses what they can and cannot say, whether they should have DEI programs, and what DEI even means is perfectly cool with this morally superior lot. In their world, as George Orwell would say, some people are more equal than others.
But telling people how they can live their lives is taking this divisiveness to a whole new hateful level. Government should be out of our lives, these politicians say, but if they had their way every decision in the bedroom and with our bodies would be policed, just like women’s choices to govern their own bodies is already policed and more limited than ever in our lifetimes. The mere discussion that there are gay and trans people, that they should be allowed to make their own decisions about who they are and how to govern their bodies, and that they can read to children without hurting them should all be policed. Or as George Orwell would call it, thought-policed.
Trans people are already being targeted by the crazies more than most other groups. In addition to politicians who can apparently find nothing else to talk about but how the LGBTQ+ community is ruining America, some musicians with big hater followings are stirring up fury over such harmless things as merely recognizing a trans person on a can of beer. These musicians can usually be found nowhere near any playlist of mine on any of the too many music platforms that I subscribe to. I never liked any of them, because they were stupid before, and now they’re both stupid and hateful.
Can you think of a more basic and fundamental human right than the ability to determine who you are and what you will be called? What business is it of anyone to take away that right from you or say you shouldn’t have it? People—politicians, musicians, anyone—who engage in this hostility over trans people or pronouns are merely looking for a reason to mistrust or hate other people who want to live their lives without being vilified and blamed. Or in the case of politicians, to point out how they are different in order to own the other side.
How do we fight this nonsense? By yelling louder than these haters. We tell them and prove to them with our words and our actions that there are far more of us who don’t look for reasons to hate people and who accept people for who they are. We drown them the fuck out. We work with and through our employers, many of whom will happily join us, to say this hate will not stand. Good luck to the hating politicians then.
For my family, and because I am a human being, this is now a fight I am joining and taking up arms about (in the form of my keyboard). If you come at other people and tell them they can’t be who they are or can’t say who they are or can’t govern their bodies, I’ll be here shouting. And BTW, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
Let’s drown these haters out.
