Someone I know very slightly recently posted a photo of herself on “Farcebook” wearing on her blouse one of those stick-on labels that are frequently handed out to conference attendees. Her label contained her name on the top line; then there was a space beneath it where she could, if she chose, fill in her preferred pronouns.
She had filled in “they/them” and then posted her photo on Farcebook with text suggesting to her audience that they “normalize this.” She continued “Pronouns matter. And they should not be assumed.”
A storm of discussion followed, some pro and some con. Several people congratulated her for her courage in “coming out.” Others pointed out that she was asking people to deliberately make grammatical errors.
After a few interchanges with her in which she continued to give me ambiguous answers about her meaning, I finally posted this, something I have thought about for a long time but never had occasion to say to anyone.
I’ll leave this post open for comments below.
Well said Karen.. so happy you have raised this issue. The absurdity of "sexual confusion" has been brought to a head with the situation with Halton District School Board sanctioning the exhibitionistic behaviour of Kayla Lemieux. Rebel News now has nearly 13,000 signatures on a petition saying Director of Education should be fired for not stopping this behaviour. https://www.rebelnews.com/tags/kayla_lemieux
I agree 100% the English language should not be changed due to people's sexual choices.
Wow, you hit that nail smack on the head. There is something profoundly immoral about this pronoun crap. No one needs to know what one's sexual preference is. Leave sex out of the equation. I don't need, nor want to know someone's sexusl preferences and we need to stop "celebrating" it! Live and let live, as long as one is not involving children.