The booking was for a woman. But that wasn’t what turned up. Sure, that’s what it said on the documentation, but my lying eyes saw a bloke. I am often pointing out that homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species. We are very good at telling someone’s sex even at a distance. There are so many secondary characteristics, that it is almost impossible for a trans person to pass. Forget, for a moment, the primary characteristics and look at what is walking towards you. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, likely too be a man – see also long arms. Strong jawline, likely to be a man. Men and women hold themselves differently and walk differently. Then of course there was the ‘long’ hair. Except that it was a comb over that would make Arthur Scargill blush. No amount of hormone replacement therapy will correct male pattern baldness. If I’d missed all of this, there was the voice. As soon as a trans person opens their mouth, the game is up. It is very rare for them to have vocal surgery.
OK.
I was training a new colleague and we had two clients. So all three of us were polite, yet all three of us knew that we were participating in a lie, that we had to agree that the sky was green and the grass was blue, up was down and black was white.
We were reminded that the pronouns were she/her. When this happens, it tells me that the person concerned knows damned well that we can see through the sham, so we need to be reminded to play the game. Which, given that we are professionals in a professional environment, we were polite. My get around is not to us pronouns at all. I just refer to the person by name. Because, in my own little way, I am rebelling. I am not going to refer to an obvious man as ‘she’ and for the whole day I managed not to.
To be polite – to not unknowingly give offence – is to be a gentleman, that’s the definition.
Yesterday was pretty uncomfortable for me, frankly, because I hate lies. But I behaved like a model Soviet citizen. Mostly.
Ooooooh, no. Having not just been there but lived there – yea, while it was still Soviet – it’s the little bits that mark out out as the Soviet. I’m not allowed to complain about this but I shall, sotto voce and without anyone being able to call me to account.
Well, OK, that was the modal Soviet, not the model perhaps.
I do remember voting no in the referendum on gay marriage. My reason was that I thought that, having gotten away with this, the woke would simply be encouraged to push even harder for even worse nonsense.
In hindsight, I don’t believe that it altered the pace of the introduction of new rubbish at all. Since they can amuse themselves by making us jump through ever higher hoops, they continue to do so.
One of my managers is a trans man. A few things to point out:
1. Has a high pitched voice, although you can tell she’s trying to sound less feminine. The mannerisms and cadence, however, are such that a biological male would seem homosexual if using the same vocal pattern.
2. We work in different offices (in different cities) so I’ve only seen one picture of her, and haven’t even had a Zoom call. But from her LinkedIn picture I can tell what she is. Dressed like a lumberjack, diminutive figure, ears sticking out the way many women’s do (but long hair usually hides it), clear face with no sign of shaving, and she still looks kinda chesty. If she did get any kind of top surgery, then she didn’t remove everything. Other than that, I just see a haircut and a hint of facial stubble (maybe she’s taking hormones), depending on the photo’s resolution.
3. She uses an unambiguously male name, and includes “He/Him” pronouns in her email signature. Although, I find it actually makes sense in this case. Otherwise, the voice and 12-year-old boy appearance would throw me off. There might be 1% of trans people who can pull it off, but in most cases your brain is hard-wired to put 2 and 2 together. She’s been very friendly and easy to work with, and nothing political or social ever comes up in conversation, but the thought is always there that I might slip up during a phone call or whatever. And I do work at the kind of company that would fire me if she ever did feel offended, which is the real problem.
I would consider just using the first name as Longrider suggested, but she’s leaving the account team in a little while anyway, so no more worries after that.
Whenever I find a better opportunity, on my last day at my current job, I’ll put “Trump/Won” or “Kanye/2024” as my pronouns in my email signature. I’m Jewish so nothing they can do.
Well he was lying and demanding that you pretend to believe him. Apart from the trans-sexual aspect this isn’t unusual in human history. Most people think they are better than they actually are (the Dunning Kruger effect) and it is usually polite to indulge their delusion. Before taking their money, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless
” if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;’ he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction.”
Did I just get fisked?
Not really. Your anecdote does raise fair points about the nature of the tranny delusion as well as both societal acceptance / rejection of another persons delusion.
Right now we’re going along to get along (but not without subversion), but what if we took the legal approach and said “You must defer to his/her/its tranny delusion or face the wrath of men with guns”, which is mostly about the punishment being the process.
Once again, the Soviet aspect needs repeating.
It’s not from Solzhenitsyn:
The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.
Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs
There’s a great H L Mencken quote: “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
Add to that the other fellow’s gender self id.
The purpose of forcing people to go along with the lie is in order to humiliate them.
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
― Theodore Dalrymple
The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window
No apostrophes, that’s why he’d be embarrassed…
To be polite – to not unknowingly give offence – is to be a gentleman, that’s the definition.
Do you actually mean that? I would have thought unknowingly giving offence was the standard position relative to the woke, these days. Since what gives offence can be redefined to suit any situation.
To be polite, to not knowingly give offence? But isn’t there also a whiff of the Marquis of Fantailer about the whole thing? Do people have a right not to be offended? Or is it a right to choose to be offended?
Personally I choose to be offended if I’m being expected to be complicit in a lie. Especially when I suspect the person doing the expecting is as much aware of the lie as I am.
See where you get by being polite? If the trannies had been told to fuck off in no uncertain terms, right at the beginning, you wouldn’t be in the shit you are today.
The third person pronouns are the property of the observer, not the observed. How hard’s that to understand?
I’ve just thought of wizard wheeze. When confronted by a person insists on naming their pronouns, insist on naming yours. That you should be addressed in the second person singular. Thou, thee, thy & thine. And thus declaring your individuality rather than being one of a crowd.
If someone ever insists I “define pronouns” then I’ll demand “His Grace”/”Master of the Universe and Lord of All He Surveys”. Bet they won’t be so keen on pronouns then.
My pronouns are on my Twitter bio: quod/ille.