Says a commenter to the NYT Ethicist column, "My Relative Isn’t Trans or Nonbinary But Wants to Use ‘They/Them’ Pronouns. The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on allyship and forms of solidarity" (NYT).
The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, took a different position: "Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general policy of calling people whatever they want to be called.... [Y]our relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship.... As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange."
I haven't seen "passing strange" in a while and wonder if some readers these days might puzzle over whether it has something to do with "passing" as type of person that you are not — like Rachel Dolezal, white and passing as black.
But the "passing" in "passing strange" — as William Safire wrote in the NYT in 2005 — is "an archaism" that means "exceedingly." It was originally seen in Shakespeare's "Othello": "'twas strange, 'twas passing strange," that is, it was very strange. "Passing" is often seen with "fair," as in John Milton's "Paradise Regained": "passing fair/As the noon Sky." Safire says that "passing" has weakened over the years, perhaps because it is confused with the "passing" in "passing fancy" or "passing grade."
But the "passing" in "passing strange" — as William Safire wrote in the NYT in 2005 — is "an archaism" that means "exceedingly." It was originally seen in Shakespeare's "Othello": "'twas strange, 'twas passing strange," that is, it was very strange. "Passing" is often seen with "fair," as in John Milton's "Paradise Regained": "passing fair/As the noon Sky." Safire says that "passing" has weakened over the years, perhaps because it is confused with the "passing" in "passing fancy" or "passing grade."
The poet and essayist Dorothy Parker helped undermine the original meaning in a 1925 poem about a pretty and virtuous girl that focused on that phrase, concluding: "Alas, no lover ever stops to see;/The best that she is offered is the air./Yet -- if the passing mark is minus D -/She's passing fair."
Anyway, who do you think had the better answer to the relative that didn't want to go along with they/them-ing where there was no bona fide nonbinariness? I can understand some people feeling they are being compelled to affirm a political position and therefore that they're only willing to do it where it has to do with another person's deep beliefs about gender identity. But I thought the commenter I quoted in the post title made a good point that got me thinking of my old tag "gender privacy," created here, where the topic was "a person who is asking for no reference to be made to her sex... a request for privacy about her body."
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57 comments:
Please address the specific topics raised in the post. This is not an occasion to restate things you've already said about pronouns and transgenderism. I'm going to delete comments that don't take off from the new material presented here.
It’s the nice thing to do. Just be nice to people
Liberals finally draw a line in the sand - and it's this?
I used 'passing strange' in a comment here a few weeks ago, related to Trump's newly announced love of music. And I'm pretty sure others have used it here.
The comment page is different. No moderation statement, for one thing. I hope this goes through.
'Tis passing strange to speak two of one,
When done the they is vague,
Like a ghostie at mostie.
You see "passing strange" used occasionally in S.Ct. opinions. Because the Justices are highly educated, have large vocabularies, and I guess think it shows us how smart they are.
I'd rather the opinions were shorter, written Hemingway-esque with more commonly used words. You know, so they could be more easily read and understood by more people.
In “passing strange” passing means (to me) beyond. In the passage from Parker it relates to a passing grade. For Rachel Dolezal, passing included an element of subterfuge.
"You see "passing strange" used occasionally in S.Ct. opinions. Because the Justices are highly educated, have large vocabularies, and I guess think it shows us how smart they are."
The old Safire column speaks of John Roberts. In fact it begins with these paragraphs:
"When school busing to achieve racial balance was a big issue in 1985, John Roberts, arguing for judicial restraint, wrote to a fellow Reagan White House aide, "It strikes me as more than passing strange for us to tell Congress it cannot pass a law preventing courts from ordering busing when our own Justice Department invariably urges this policy on the courts."
"This summer, defending the Bush White House from criticism of its prewar intelligence evaluation, Senator Kit Bond, Republican of Missouri, told the Senate, "It is more than passing strange that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would bring out Joe Wilson as some kind of credible witness for their cause.""
Last Sunday at the early Mass
I passed a passing lovely lass
But she gave off a stink
Which led me to think
She also was passing gas.
I'm perfectly happy to call someone by whatever NAME they say is their name.
But I refuse to lie to anyone - regardless of how much they want me to - so I refuse to use false pronouns for anyone.
It's my language not yours. I use the birth sex pronouns. Otherwise no story makes sense.
"I'm perfectly happy to call someone by whatever NAME they say is their name."
This. That is polite. Bullying me to change my use of the English language to suit how you think it should be used is not polite.
Third person pronouns are for talking about someone behind their back.
If I request that no one ever refer to me behind my back, why people honor that?
" Bullying me to change my use of the English language to suit how you think it should be used is not polite."
The left sees destroying language to be a good thing and uses it as a means of thought control. Anything can mean everything. Or nothing. Whatever is convenient for The Cause.
For some reason, I'm reminded of one of those interminable car trips to Yellowstone. "Mom! Jimmy stole my pronouns!" Dad, grimly: "if you kids don't cut it out, I'm gonna turn this car around!"
I've never come across the use of 'passing', as in 'passing strange', where I was at risk of confusing the 'exceeding' context with the 'deceptive' one, the instance of 'passing' as a deception. Never. I think this is a case of the people wishing to 'pass', are also wishing to change the meaning of the word 'passing' in order to support their case, foisting Gender Battle on the unsuspecting public. F*ck them, they don't get to.
As for the compelled-speech aspects of demanding pronoun genuflection in the Gender Wars: F*ck that, too.
The way to opt of the Binary is not to use third person pronouns at all.
If I am approached by someone who asks me to address them as "Emperor Napoleon", I'm not likely to agree. And that's all I have to say about that.
As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it.
As I mentioned in an earlier comment, Kamala Harriss, the Rachel Dolezol of presidential politics, seems to think it does.
John Henry
I use "passing strange" fairly often.
As for pronouns- why shouldn't a cis-gender person get to request the use of any pronouns they want to use? Isn't it just as polite to follow his requests as it is to follow the requests of a trans-gender person?
When addressing someone, I will just use their name and avoid pronouns altogether- simple solution. However, I recently got criticized for doing that by the transgender person who took offense that I kept using the given name rather than the previously demanded, insistently demanded, "they/them". It was apparently offensive that I didn't bend the knee and use the pronouns instead of the given name. "Fuck right off" was my response.
The polite thing to do is not to impose yourself on someone. There is even a standard apology 'I don't mean to impose...'
If they have been impolite to me by imposing their incorrect use of language, I will be impolite right back in ignoring it.
Nickname or legal name changes are different. I would use that out of politeness. If someone wants to be called 'they', he or she may feel free to change his or her name to 'they' and be done with it.
I was helping with a class this week that was for high schoolers, and a lot of them just automatically said "..and my pronouns are..." and I'm just thinking "Listen, kid, I'm never referring to you again after this class, this is a waste of time".
But it's really conditioned into the young.
It's kinda weird to try to control people like that. If I'm not around, I really don't care what I'm called. And if I'm there, I have a name.
I have never referred to anyone other by their name or “you “. Why the narcissist community cares about they are referred to in the third person when they aren’t even there shows nothing but more narcissm
If a person demands I use non-standard pronouns, that prompts the question "Who do you think you are?"
I was helping with a class this week that was for high schoolers, and a lot of them just automatically said "..and my pronouns are..." and I'm just thinking...
you'll be lucky if I remember your name, Slick. Pronouns? GTFOH.
I agree with Appiah.
“The true pronouns for these narcissists are I/me/me/me/me.”
Overwhelmingly true. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t even be discussing it.
Mason G Said:
"you'll be lucky if I remember your name, Slick. Pronouns? GTFOH"
Indeed.
"It’s the nice thing to do. Just be nice to people"
1. GFY
2. Its an attempt to mindfuck you by forcing you to deny reality. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH, because when you teach your brain to lie to you ("that is a woman") your subconscious takes notes and begins to edit reality without your knowledge or permission ("the traffic light is green"). Hopefully in ways that are lethal to you because yoi will eventually slip into madness.
3. GFY
Him and her for gender by sex at conception. Trans for transgender spectrum (e.g. homosexual, confused, dissatisfied, undecided). Cisgender is misgendering. There is only gender and transgender (i.e. state or process of divergence).
Can a fetus/baby identify as a teenager, an adult, with a claim to humane treatment including a right to life, with equity and inclusion?
...solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it.
Can I not use this argument to say men wanting to be women is now invalid?
"Using pronouns properly..."
Well, that's the trouble right there. It's like the split between Catholics and Orthodox, once you break the unity anything goes. And a Baptist pastor certainly can't act like he's the pope (though many do) Once you go beyond the original usage of pronouns... you can't declare yourself the grammar pope.
"It’s the nice thing to do. Just be nice to people"
Everyone should initially be treated with respect and dignity. Everyone. That includes the party being contacted as well as the contactee. When a contacter's first casual interaction with the contacted is to demand terms from the contacted, that is not a casual interaction, it is an aggressive one. We should all strive to be nice, but there's a point at which courtesy ends and antagonism begins.
Transgenders keep confusing boundary violations as malicious. They're not. Everyone has boundaries. Transgenders are people and they deserve dignity like anyone else, but not at the expense of policing my speech. That's where my boundaries are violated. I will happily call anyone Throat Warbler Mangrove and even Emperor Napoleon to their face if they’ve legally changed their name and everyone knows them as such. But I will not undertake semantic gyrations to appease the person I'm speaking with like a monkey dancing to a fiddle. There will be consequences.
There's this John Forbes Nash style equilibrium that we always deal with whenever we interact in any way with another person. It is unreasonable and illogical to be surprised when the counterparty fights back against deliberate and controlling regulation. Don't hit me and I won't hit you...hit me and I will hit you back, not everyone turns the other cheek...
"When a contacter's first casual interaction with the contacted is to demand terms from the contacted, that is not a casual interaction, it is an aggressive one."
Bears repeating.
The thing that flummoxes me about this pronoun business is that no one appears to realize that pronouns are never used when speaking TO someone, only while speaking ABOUT someone to a third party. If you want "they/them" pronouns, you want them applied to you in the third person.
"Passing strange" could be understood as "beyond strange" or "past strange" -- extremely weird.
And on pronouns, I can call you by your preferred given name, but no chance of they or them. (unless they are multiple personalities). And any business interaction that contains pronouns immediately sets me up for disbelief.
It’s an interesting rhetorical device to force people to state a preference between a pair of arguments when they may find both repellent. I wonder if there is a term for such a technique? Is there a subtext of normalizing the choices in the mind of the reader so accosted? Imagine if we applied this device to other deviant social practices - Who has the better argument for pederasty? Who has the better argument for subjugation of women? Who has the better argument for mass slaughter of Jews? . Seems to me a variation of begging the question.
I would honestly like to say something about this issue but no thing about it makes sense. I can't make the ketchup hold a coherent shape. Can't choose one of the two weird takes on this passing strange subject because the underlying rationale for any of this is missing.
They fired eight shots at President Trump.
They/them turns every wrongdoing into a conspiracy.
Fen said...
"It’s an attempt to mindfuck you by forcing you to deny reality. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH, because when you teach your brain to lie to you ("that is a woman") your subconscious takes notes and begins to edit reality without your knowledge or permission ("the traffic light is green"). Hopefully in ways that are lethal to you because yoi will eventually slip into madness.”
Thanks, Fen.
Now every time I see a green traffic light, I’m going to see that God Damn puke green color the Harris campaign has adopted.
"But I thought the commenter I quoted in the post title made a good point that got me thinking of my old tag "gender privacy," created here, where the topic was "a person who is asking for no reference to be made to her sex... a request for privacy about her body." "
Then, why not "it?"
I know I harp on this a lot, but it's still enforced Newspeak. It's a means of control
Oso Negro at 8:47, I absolutely love your comment. The pronoun thing, particularly because, as many have pointed out, it doesn't even generally apply when you're face to face with someone, is only a form of "declare yourself!" with a metaphorical dagger at your throat.
a person who is asking for no reference to be made to her sex... a request for privacy about her body." "
You can't always get what you want. And it certainly seems as if a whole heap of our troubles emanate from the unwarranted conviction that you ought to be able to anyway, and devil take the hindmost.
I think this comment of mine is more germane to the post than my first one.
"Wearing a Jamaican hat makes a bold statement about your connection to reggae music!"
-- Lisa Simpson
Dictating to others departures from common usage is both tedious and rude.
The Ethicist’s argument is internally inconsistent.
Traditionally society, in its adoption of language conventions, tells you what pronouns you get to use. The trans community rejects this and says people get to choose their own pronouns. Appiah says this privilege is reserved for the trans community and, if you’re not trans, you have to follow society’s conventions.
When was it decided, and by whom, that only trans people get to pick their pronouns? That only trans people are not locked in to traditional language conventions?
Appiah wants the appropriate number of people in the oppression goodie bag, so he wants this young woman to have sex with another woman to prove her cred. Oh wait, that doesn't work: it just makes her a boring lesbian. He wants her to renounce her biological reality and talk about it constantly and force everyone around her to submit to her shrill demands for attention to her denouncement of their inferior stable biological reality before gaining entrance to the oppression goodie bag. That's what freedom looks like, man!
I mean, "they!"
Remember that old horror film called "Them," the one about the giant mutant killer ants?
The problem with choosing pronouns is not political, but a matter of communication. Years ago I worked in a specialty food store. We served both prosciutto crudo (cured ham, the prosciutto most people think of) and prosciutto cotto (cooked Italian ham). A woman would come in and ask for prosciutto cotto, and then be outraged when she was given the cooked ham.
"That is what 'prosciutto cotto' means," I told her. "Literally 'cooked ham'. If you stop at 'prosciutto', or even just point, the mistake will never happen again."
She pointed at the leg of prosciutto crudo hanging above the counter. "Well I call that 'prosciutto cotto'!" she said.
"That's fine," I said. "Call it 'Studebaker' if you want to. Just don't expect to be understood."
And that's the problem, right there. Change the rules of language if you want. Make up your own language. Just don't expect everyone else to play along.
John Roberts wrote “It strikes me as more than passing strange for us to tell Congress it cannot pass a law …”
That strikes me as sloppy and wordy (as in the succeeding example). Drop “as more than”, or reduce it to “… beyond strange …”
You are, of course, free to choose your own pronouns.
I, however, am not required to participate in your mental illness.
I intended to comment on the annoying leftist crybullies who demand allegiance to their every dysfunction. But I can't stop laughing over your reliance on NYT Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, for his "wisdom" on pronoun usage.
I have younger family (nephews and cousins) that decided they were different and wanted to change. I wasn't close to them so they changed before I saw them next. At this point, while I still think of them as male, they don't and have physically changed. There really isn't any going back for them now. I don't want to add to their already large discomfort (neither is comfortable among strangers) so I do my best to think of them as female.
I have to admit that I pity them because the choice they made is irrevocably life changing and I think they narrowed their future options considerably by making the choice. But I also have to agree that it is their choice to make.
But these are family members, albeit not close by. I would not go out of my way to hurt them. Frankly, I don't go out of my way to hurt anybody. That said, if I make an honest mistake about somebody's gender - quite possible with some folks - I would be offended if they got offended by my honest mistake.
I was brought up to not stare at people that looked different. People with beards, adams apple and wearing a frock look different to me, so I want to study the differences, but that isn't polite as it would be staring, so I avoid the whole dilemma by avoiding them.
Maybe, at some point, they will seem "normal" to me and not worth the time to stare at. Like tattoos maybe, 30 years ago they were unusual enough to be surprising when they were extensive. These days they seem quite common thus making them "normal".
Of course, I doubt I will ever think of a guy having his junk removed as being "normal" ... even if they are family.
Pauligon: you didn't talk to your siblings when their children castrated themselves and deprived themselves of ever having children?
I assume you value immobilization over common sense and decency. No sharing a foxhole with you, pal.
Next up: silence on suicide and hormone-induced cancers.
I grew up with my maternal aunts and uncles from Pittsburgh saying "you'uns" and my paternal ones from Charlotte saying "y'all" and I haven't worried a damn bit about peoples pronouns since.
I always thought of "passing sttange" to mean "beyond strange" as in "you've gone past just strange and into a new type of strange."
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