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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38204 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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So the Canadian Green Party had a meltdown over "misgendering". . No good deed goes unpunished in the land of fringe party circular firing squads; their attempt to be inclusive by having pronouns (but mistakenly picking the wrong ones) has become a firestorm.

It all started at a Sept. 3 media event in Vancouver kicking off the party’s leadership contest. In a Zoom appearance, Interim Leader Amita Kuttner was identified using a caption bearing the pronouns “she/elle.”

Of course, there is the standard "it made me feel unsafe" stuff. All of the leadership came together to harshly criticize this and the President - a volunteer- resigned cause she felt scapegoated, regardless of the apology.

The statement from the leadership candidates:

“The September 3 incident was but the latest in a number of similar behavioural patterns that Dr. Kuttner has faced throughout their tenure,” it read.

I'm sort of bemused how they frame this as some sort of pattern of racism, like calling a black person a slur or making jokes about women coders (they even use the term "harassment" at one point)

When the reality is that this person has deliberately chosen an atypical set of pronouns that will naturally cut against how most people over 5 have learned to use those things and so will naturally get misgendered sometimes.

This just solidifies in my mind that this entire thing will generally breed confusion and then conflict. That may even the point.

Of course, the political opportunism immediately follows:

Amidst all this, Kuttner launched a fundraiser last Wednesday intending to spite Jonathan Kay, an editor with Quillette and occasional National Post columnist. Kay had tweeted that the misgendering controversy sounded “exactly like satire,” prompting Kuttner to ask supporters to donate $68,000 to counter Kay’s “hate.”

As of press time, the fundraiser has pulled in $226.69, $10 of which was donated by Kay himself.

The President laments not only not being able to get anything done to the hysterical claims of harm but it being used to basically marginalize and remove her and other party figures:

Despite my best efforts to take us forward and find solutions, I am constantly distracted by claims of harm. I have spent much time trying to work beyond naming, blaming and shaming, and have called for restorative processes – yet these things continue to evade me because I find resistance to change.

Claims of harm have been weaponized in political attempts to remove people from the party. That is the truth of it. Federal Council was told that I caused harm to the interim- Leader. There was no evidence presented. I was excluded from Executive Council meetings that were organized without my knowledge. Briefly I was subjected to much harm and disrespect, and in the interest of the GPC I chose to not make this public to avoid harm or disrepute from coming to the GPC. This is evident in all our recorded meetings.

Reminds me of that article recently about how charities and organizations can't get work done with woke employees who are constantly attacking each other.

TBH, the Green Party - despite what some people want it to be - is an utter mess and small party nonsense like this isn't surprising.

The problem is that it's unclear it'll stay small party nonsense. The problem is not just this norm being spread, but that it is being enforced by both hate speech and discrimination law (probably why "safety" and "harassment"* have been so emphasized)

* BTW: I recall Jordan Peterson argued that we would end up in a place where misgendering would lead to these sorts of claims. He was told it would never happen because it was about continued misgendering. To that I say: that's bad enough + this case doesn't bode well for that position. It was a single incident, there was an immediate apology and it still became a huge fracas. Dreher's Law of Merited Impossibility hasn't struck yet, but it's looming.

I should also add that this individual is kind of a stereotype of a "trender"; she's gone from being a woman in 2019, to agender, to nonbinary, now to ftm trans and nonbinary, with pronouns shifting every time (as she's gained increased prominence within the Green Party/national politics). She now uses he/they/ille pronouns (that's a French neopronoun), so wow, quelle surprise that someone misgendered her.

(I would say that normally I'm fine with going along with someone's preferred pronouns, but when it is so obviously farcical you have to draw the line).

A friend of mine is engaged to a trans man. This trans man changed the name they prefer to be addressed by like three times in as many years.

I get that trans people prefer not to be deadnamed and I try to address people by their preferred name whenever possible, but really, beyond a certain point you're getting into Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddy/Puffy levels of absurdity.

he/they/ille pronouns (that's a French neopronoun)

How is "ille" pronounced? My first thought would be to pronounce it the same as "il"

Yeah... is it [il], or [ij], or some other pronunciation that ignores French phonetics? Or maybe tries for some obscure argument in favor of pronuncing the final e... but again, [ilə] or [ijə]?

I want to expect [il], but that'd render it inaudible.

(I would say that normally I'm fine with going along with someone's preferred pronouns, but when it is so obviously farcical you have to draw the line).

When does it become farcical to you? My standard is that anything other than standard male or female pronouns are farcical and that you only get to switch those once, maybe twice before it's really not on me to figure out what you are today. If someone makes an obvious effort to present as a man, they get male pronouns, if they make an effort to present as female, they'll get female pronouns. Anything more is a bridge too far and I don't believe in the sincerity of even a single xir.

When does it become farcical to you?

I don't like it, but I will grudgingly refer to someone using "they/them" pronouns if they really insist on it. I absolutely draw the line at neopronouns, however.

I don't believe in the sincerity of even a single xir.

I do think they're mostly sincere, just very confused because the whole edifice is hopelessly convoluted and being pushed by their peers who in turn all have a different flawed understanding. There is no central dogma because the concepts evolve daily because if they were ever formally set then the battle lines would be clear and the whole movement would fracture irreconcilably. The whole thing is like what you get in a game of calvinball where everyone makes up their own rules and it's considered a grave sin to tell someone that their rule is silly and will make the game unplayable.

Yeah, I'm on the same page as you are. If you make a genuine attempt to present male/female I'm all good with it. No neopronouns and no they/thems though.

I’m kind of fond of they/them, if only because I find gender “abolition” more sympathetic than aggressive gender affirmation.

Cis by default, baby.

If only we could abolish gender without abolishing clarity when referring to more than one person at a time...

The book notes on page 85 that "Our research clearly shows that women do as well as men in general elections. It also shows that the reason there aren't more women in public office is that not many women have run. Women have made up a very small percentage of candidates in general elections, particularly at higher levels of office."

I kind of like xir, it sounds like I am in some kind of vaguely Star Trekian utopia. I've never been asked to use any pronouns in real life, let alone xir though.

At my previous workplace, people listed pronouns in their work profiles and one person had a long explanation of why their pronouns had asterisks in them and how to pronounce them out loud. Fortunately, I never had the misfortune of needing to engage further than emailing a group list that they happened to be on.

I used to really dislike him but I've come to sympathize with the Jordan Peterson position of "we can talk if it's the two pronouns and you legitimately make an effort but using anything else is actively supporting a radical ideological regime that naturally slides into farce".

All of the confusion of gender identity as this dualist force and "not being a boy or girl" and such are encouraged by these neo-pronouns so why should I go along? By using them I'd be helping along the very silliness I fundamentally disagree with.

TBH I'm becoming skeptical of even changing those two pronouns, since that is how this whole mess got started.

At the very least, there should be strong differentiation between a transwoman and a woman in text and reporting. It wouldn't be so bad for them to use the "wrong" pronouns if reporting didn't sometimes seem to use this to obscure cases where sex clearly matters (e.g. who just committed that sex crime? A male or a female? I think it matters when we're collecting numbers )

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