RUTHFULLY YOURS

A leftist shtick that been going on for some time in universities, government offices, and other haunts of the chronically offended is the idea of choosing one’s own personal pronouns — and expecting the world to actually use them.  Under this scheme, it would be politically correct for me to self-identify as:

e.m. cadwaladr
he/him/his

The main point of this bold new level of wokeness is that a man who wants to entertain an essentially psychotic delusion that he’s a woman may now style himself:

Higgly-Piggly Doe
she/her/hers

If someone does not go along with such a man’s mentally aberrant state and address him according to his delusional identity, the offending person can be prosecuted in some localities.  Nor is this game limited to mere conventional gender dysphoria sufferers.  There are now sixtyish new pronoun sets, just as we are told there are sixtyish new genders.  I do not know what genders “zie/zim/zir” or “ey/em/eir” denote.  These words sound vaguely Yiddish to me — though they lack the Yiddish language’s quirky charm.  The new pronouns are always uttered with a certain peevish militancy that precludes them having charm of any kind.

Now, I am an eccentric to the core myself.  I spell out my pseudonym in lower case for no better reason than that I do.  However, people usually don’t notice and address me as E.M. or Mr. Cadwaladr, and this tells me nothing other than that they lack my interest in unorthodox typography.  Colleagues butcher my real name with predictable regularity — and yet I fail to run to the police or collapse in a mortified swoon.  My habitual retort is, “Well — I’ve been called worse things than that.”  I smile, and they smile, and the world continues to spin about its axis without any interruption.  I feel no need to slink away in tears to the nearest safe space — no need for a therapist to help me through the heinous crime against the all-important “me.”

Unfortunately for the fringe majority of us who would like to just get on with our lives, there are a certain number of people out there who live to make indignant spectacles of themselves.  They want their special pronouns recognized as a baby wants something soft and comforting in his mouth.  Being adult in size, if in no other respect, these people cry loudly and discordantly and will not be pacified with the ordinary pronouns our language has assigned to individuals with their particular sex organs.  They want choice!  They want the recognition that the world stubbornly refuses to give them!  They want what they want, and they want it now — no matter how inconvenient or how utterly ridiculous it is.  And if they don’t get it, they will cry or wag their arms like Trigglypuff or call you a Nazi for the benefit of their fellow deeply aggrieved, intersectional, walking, squawking, semi-literate, life-sized anime creatures.

You do not meet such people often, thankfully — though they occasionally turn up to family gatherings, much to everyone’s discomfort.  If you’ve never met one and just have to satisfy your curiosity, almost any Starbucks or similar café will prove a likely habitat for frequent sightings.  Even the barista may offer just the specimen you are looking for, complete with falsies, androgynous attire, and hair of a color not seen since Troll dolls declined in popularity in the 1970s.  But be warned: coffee shops lack the protective physical barriers one finds in more conventional zoos.  Don’t wear a red ball cap of any kind.  It is like waving a red cape in front of a bull.  Well — a pink-haired, effeminate, attention-seeking bull that utterly abhors itself.

I do not wish to be rude or unkind, but when a person of sex gender dresses in hot pants and purple lipstick, it is simply a non sequitur to believe that that person isn’t trying to draw the world’s attention.  I try not to stare at retarded children or people who have obvious deformities — but I have no qualms about staring at those animated tragedies made not by the hand of nature, but by themselves.  People have, I suppose, a certain right to be bizarre — but the rest of us have at least an equal right to snicker or to disapprove.  Sick of mind these colorful human parodies may be, but you and I have no obligation to celebrate the sheer flamboyance of their psychosis.

Generally, I try to leave the aggressively aggrieved alone, but should anyone ever absolutely insist I call him “zie” or “ey,” or “he” when she is clearly female, I am prepared with a response:

“Alright,” I will say, “I’ll take your word for it.  I will do my best to remember, every time I see you, that you consider yourself to be something nature doesn’t — but I do have one condition.  As you can see, I’m a person of average height at best.  I’ve always thought that being a little taller would have gotten me more respect and helped my self-esteem.  For the sake of fairness, since I’m remembering your special self-identity, would you mind crouching a little in my presence — just to acknowledge that, inside, I feel taller?”

This is just a bitter fantasy, of course, but even a racist, misogynist, homophobic white man can dream. I know from hard experience that you cannot win an argument with someone who’s insane.  An argument requires some mutually agreed upon set of standards — some grasp of that unforgiving, iron-clad thing we call “reality.”  Not everyone has that grasp.  Shout and protest as they might, the truth is not within them.

I would like to think these people would straighten up if they just got laughed at a few times, took an honest look in the mirror, and learned to think of themselves as something a little more substantial than a Pokémon’s ugly cousin.  I have a sad hunch, however, that most of them have departed so far from reality that they’ve forgotten its address.  Mass insanity has always been a pretty implausible notion for me until now — but here it is, front and center, in all of its diverse and fluorescent-dyed glory. No amount of normal coffee or cold water in my face has been enough to wake me from this nightmare.  I just can’t be woke.  The alien invasion has commenced, and the aliens are far more disturbing than anything in Area 51 and far more dangerous than mere Mexicans.  But I’ll be damned if I’ll learn new words for these refugees from the indoctrination archipelago.  The language of my ancestors still suffices.