Posted on 06/03/2022 4:48:48 AM PDT by MtnClimber
You are welcome to your own proper name. But you’re not welcome to your own pronouns, nor to your own language, nor to the objective reality that lies beneath.
For some time now I have heard members of both the political Left and Right continually draw a false analogy between pronouns and proper names.
The line of reasoning usually goes something like this: Ellen announces that she now wants to go by the proper name “Elliot.” Given this new knowledge, it would therefore count as disrespectful or perhaps even harmful for me to knowingly and intentionally keep referring to her as “Ellen.”
Analogously, so the argument goes, it would be similarly disrespectful and perhaps harmful of me to refuse to refer to her by her newly stipulated preferred pronoun of choice—he, they, “ze,” etc.—and to instead continue to keep referring to her as “she.”
It is precisely here where this false analogy between pronouns and proper names radically breaks down and where much of the confusion within the present transgender debate occurs.
Indexicals vs. Proper Names Pronouns, within a given language, are not the same nor do they function the same way within a given language as proper names; not hardly. Rather, pronouns are indexicals. Indexicals are terms within a given language with meanings that are context-dependent. Unlike natural kind terms (like “male,” “female,” “horse,” etc.) or proper names (like “Bob,” “Karen,” “Bruce,” etc.) which always refer to the same object or set of objects in a language-independent of context, indexicals get their meaning from the context in which they are uttered and from the behaviors of the speaker uttering them. Canonical examples of indexicals include terms like “I,” “he,” “she,” “here,” “now,” “this,” and “that.”
Unlike claims like “the sky is blue” or “a bachelor is an unmarried man,” claims with indexicals in them cannot be immediately determined as either true or false without knowing more about the specific context during the time of utterance. Hence, when I say “he is the boss” “this is the dining room” or “the meeting was yesterday,” the truth or falsity of these assertions will depend upon when I was speaking, or to whom or what I might have been gesturing when making such utterances.
Notice, however, that despite their initial incompleteness, indexicals get their meaning from a combination of the other public meanings that make up the particular claim or sentence in which they are uttered (i.e. “boss,” “dining room,” etc.) as well as from the publicly evaluable extra-linguistic contexts and behaviors (i.e. pointing) that accompany such utterances.
This is all to say that the meanings of indexical terms like “he,” “she” and “they” are publicly determined within an overlapping, integrated, and deeply nested network of shared meanings and concepts that refer both to other shared concepts and meanings as well as to the objective world.
And while, in principle, an individual’s own proper name can logically fall within the purview of one’s own stipulated determination; pronouns, insofar as they are indexicals, count as wholly public goods within a shared network of public meanings and cannot, in principle, be similarly privately or personally stipulated and still remain meaningfully intelligible. Indeed, personally-determined pronouns make about as much sense as personally-determined ze-dollar bills. Language and meaning, much like currency, it turns out, simply don’t logically work that way.
Refer vs. Regard What’s the big deal then, if Bruce wants us to now refer to him as Caitlyn?
No problem at all.
What’s the big deal if Bruce wants us to now refer to him as “she,” however?
Well, nearly every problem under the sun one could possibly imagine given how many other shared concepts, definitions, meanings, laws, records, institutions, and social practices (both past and present) are directly or indirectly attached to, dependent upon, and/or implied by the shared, intergenerational, public agreement over the fixed meaning of that one, single indexical term “she.”
Problems exacerbate when we consider the further distinction between simply referring to persons by certain terms versus regarding them by those very same terms. Indeed, it is here where the original false analogy mentioned above often compounds severely, as transgender advocates move from a low-stakes request: e.g., “please refer to me by my new proper name” to “refer to me by my new preferred pronoun” to “regard me by my new preferred pronoun in all respects and contexts.” This demand becomes increasingly difficult and eventually logically impossible for all other language users to accommodate, especially when the persons uttering such demands often fail to be the actual thing that these terms publicly refer to in any respect whatsoever.
Yet this impossible demandingness is exactly what is occurring at present with respect to benevolent sounding laws involving compelled gender terms, compelled preferred pronoun use, and “nondiscrimination” legislation and policies based upon “gender identity.” In so doing, such wrongheaded legislation not only runs roughshod over the most basic rights and liberties of all other non-elect language users, constituting the legal erasure of males and females and rendering the possibility of speaking the most obvious of truths a crime, but it also sets out on an impossible project against both the fabric of biological reality and against logic itself.
To grant monopolistic control to a privileged set of speakers over the meaning and rules of use of publicly shared indexical terms like “he” and “she” is, therefore, to grant definitional control over directly related terms “male” and “female,” and by implication, control over all language, meaning, and truth itself. And insofar as these folks cannot even provide an explicit definition of the terms “male” and “female” or articulate what on earth neo-pronouns like “ze” or “zir” are supposed to refer to, the state of affairs is actually worse than mere control over truth. It is the annihilation of truth.
In short, the seed of much of the present confusion within the transgender rights debate is largely located in the wrongheaded conflation of privately determined proper names with publicly determined indexicals as well as the valuing of politeness over truth under any and all circumstances. Truth, however, sometimes morally obligates us to assert it, regardless of who it offends.
You are welcome to your own proper name. But you’re not welcome to your own pronouns, nor to your own language, nor to the objective reality that lies beneath.
The people living in their false reality need to be laughed at.
It's like they think they're more than just a lowly singular being. They think they're a god.
The belief that their is no God is to make yourself your own god.
The problem started a long time ago, before humans were created, and then God (or nature, if you prefer), ‘decided’ to create humans (and most other animals) with two genders. Each gender with very clear differences in their bodies and clearly different functions in how they act or react to the environment and each other.
God (or nature) is the problem. We need to start all over again.
Just replace the prefix “trans” with the accurate term “fake”.
After that, everything makes more sense, and the psychos forget about the pronoun part.
They want you to go to jail for using the “wrong” pronouns.
They want to categorize threats and doxing as “freedom of speech.”
And they don’t care what you think about it because they have control over the generation that is currently in grade school. They can make “their” kids do, say, and think whatever they want them to do, say, think.
I recall that when I first started my “public schools are toast, there’s no saving them, take your kid out of public school, end the DOE” speechifying, many seemed upset with me. “But....we HAVE to send our kids to public school! There’s no option!”
I never had a kid but I know they are expensive. I asked Mr K (not the one on this forum) the other day how much it cost him and his wife (she is deceased) for pregnancy and to give birth at a hospital. He answered promptly: “We’d spent $20,000 even before we left the hospital!”
Once you get the kid home, there’s going to be a lot more expense and, of course, expenditure of other resources such as your time and energy. It adds up to a lot. But it’s your kid - it’s worth it, right?
So THEN, once your kid is about age 6 or so - and you’ve probably dropped close to half a million dollars or so to get him to that point - you send him to public school.
And you just CAN’T UNDERSTAND why your kid turns against you, doesn’t want to do anything productive, is angry all the time, hates others, has bad relationships, uses drugs, and advocates for the annihilation of our way of life.
(Using the editorial “you,” here, folks! I know most of you are excellent parents.)
I was talking to a lady that ran a store in the small town where I used to live about something related to this subject and she said, “By the time the kid is six, you don’t want him around the house anymore anyway! LOL! Sending him to school is better than abandoning him in the woods.”
I would rather have the half a million dollars.
The people living in their false reality need to be laughed at.
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I think the phrase is ‘openly mocked’....
I am not aware of a single employee who selected an alternative pronoun and we have several thousand employees.
I think most of this silliness is a media creation. The people that really care about this stuff are in a tiny minority.
If people have preferred pronouns for themselves, why can I not have my own preferred pronouns for them?
Genesis 11: 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
The more things change...
If someone tells me I should use the proper pronoun when I talk to them I would say the only pronoun I use is you as in what makes you think I want to talk to you.
Iran announced the pronouns for LGBT’ers:
Was, Were.
Ellen page? she looks sicker every day she’s living as Elliot.
Shame really. She’s mentally ill.
Their “preferred” pronouns are third-person pronouns, used when referring to a person who is not the person to whom one is speaking.
So these individuals are trying to control our speech when they are not present.
They want a unique pronoun for every individual on the planet. That can’t work with any language.
Proper names work. Every individual on the planet can in theory have a unique name. However, everyone knows it’s very difficult to remember the names of all the people that we associate with. You have to take a Dale Carenegie course to learn how to remember names. We are very forgiving when it comes to names because we all have experienced not being able to remember a name.
The fascists on the left would throw people into jail for not using the “right” pronoun. That should be understood in the light of throwing people into jail for forgetting one’s name, and is as fascist.
The people who propose these things are totalitarian fascists and should be ignored.
I kind of like this new pronoun thing, and have decided that my preferred pronouns are:
Sir
Boss
Master
and ANY Public Employee that refuses to address me by my “preferred pronouns” will be reported to the Authorities and their Supervisors for committing a HATE CRIME against me
Bingo. Mock them. Get in their faces with their silliness.
As to their choice of pronouns. BS. there are two genders. Wanting to pose as another is like claiming to be the king of england — BS. Don’t humor a nut, they just get nuttier and then demand more of you. Do not compromise with stupidity.
I think if I was around someone who wanted to be called by a pronoun that doesn’t fit reality, I’d tell them they can refer to me as, “His Majesty”, or if talking directly to me, “Your Majesty”.
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