all 11 comments

[–]lefterfield 19 insightful - 1 fun19 insightful - 0 fun20 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

I don't agree with her on this point:

By all means, we should refer to individuals however they prefer in private or in direct communication with them. I do.

And I hate that it's pushed as a matter of politeness. It's a dangerous precedent, too. A person can screech all they want that they're the Queen of England, but unless they are that person, I'm not obligated to call them your majesty. It's not rude for me not to. With trans people I know, I carefully avoid using any pronouns or gendered language, referring to them only by name. If I have to speak about them to someone who might tattle on me, I do the same. But that's not out of politeness either, rather a desire not to lose social/financial positions that matter to me, and to not constantly be in a fight over it. If I was JKRowling, I'd call them men.

But like so much else, I don't care what decisions people make in their private lives. I agree with everything else she says, and I'm glad she's speaking up about this as a public matter.

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I hate that it's pushed as a matter of politeness. It's a dangerous precedent, too. A person can screech all they want that they're the Queen of England, but unless they are that person, I'm not obligated to call them your majesty.

lefterfield, I agree with you 100% about this.

I grew up in a religious milieu where children and adults were forced to call authoritarian adults who were physically, mentally and sexually abusive and to whom none of us were related in any way such names as "father," "brother," "mother," "sister" and "pope" - the last one deriving from the ecclesiastical Greek and Roman words for "patriarch" and "father." And zillions of other kids and I were taught we not only had to treat these persons with reverence and deference, we had to obey and please them and do whatever they commanded.

Being forced to false name these people and apply labels to them that were untruthful was a key way potential victims were primed to accept their/our abuse as "normal" and reflective of "the natural order."

I refuse to call a male a female or a female a male for the sake of "politeness" or any other reason.

[–]Oof_Too_Humid 13 insightful - 3 fun13 insightful - 2 fun14 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Yeah, I'm with you on this. I myself used to be all polite about it. But now I force myself to NOT be polite: to NOT refer to TIMs as women, or even transwomen.
It does seem like there's a pattern for many of us. We hit our very first level of peak trans. We still try to be polite with the pronouns, but then eventually we just see toooooo much. We see that the "slippery slope" is not a fallacy in this landscape. And we realize that our "niceness" is a weakness that has been and is being used against us.
I recently had the pleasure of watching Heather Heying -- who is about as nice & diplomatic of a person you could imagine -- jettison her niceness while she and her husband were discussing a TIM in a girl's locker room. Bret was trying to be all diplomatic and polite. But Miss Heather was NOT HAVING IT. While Bret was treading carefully, calling the guy an "individual" and what not, Heather just kept referring to the culprit as a dude. I love seeing women when they finally plunge full-force into righteous battle.

[–]lefterfield 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Absolutely! I used to try to be "polite", too. But they never give the same respect back. It only seems to encourage them to push back harder and browbeat women into submission. And yes, I looove when women call it out, without apologizing or backing down. Posie Parker is awesome, if only for this reason.

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Can you link to the video where Heather Heying, as you say, "wasn't having it"? I'd like to watch it.

BTW, from watching Heather and her husband Bret have their taped convos, has anyone else gotten the impression that Heather is the smarter one of the two? That's the sense I get. Also, she's a much more effective communicator - he seems simply to like to hear the sound of his own voice, and often uses a whole lot of words without actually saying all that much of merit or substance. I know I'm wordy, too, LOL, but at least I try to put a lot of content in my long-winded posts - and to provide links to further information as well. Plus no one has to hear my voice, which is definitely not among my best features.

[–]Oof_Too_Humid 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Here you go: https://youtu.be/MQvobuU8MN4?t=3511
The only reason why I caught the clip was because they spoke about it on a subsequent show - they explained that when they were discussing it, they hadn't realized it was an old incident. I'm sensing that Heather is getting more & more pissed about the trans shit. It makes sense that she would be more concerned about it than Bret because hey- it affects us women more. We're more likely to get it.
I wouldn't say one is smarter than the other---they're just different. I would say that I love seeing them when they're getting along especially well. I like to see an old married couple act all flirty and in love. It's sweet.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you! And I imagine your impression of Bret and Heather's comparative intelligence is probably more accurate than mine is, or was. I think I was perhaps jumping to a conclusion coz I've seen/heard Bret talk a lot more than Heather. After all, since the Evergreen story broke, he's done tons more interviews and lectures on the social-political aspects of what's been happening in our culture than she has, and he's also been the one to give televised testimony in the US Congress and before legislators/regulators in Washington state. Also, in all the footage documenting what happened at Evergreen, Bret features prominently, but Heather is unseen - due, I believe, to her being on sabbatical or some other kind of leave that semester. It's only since they Heather and Bret starting doing their videos on YT together and the videos have been getting big play that the larger world has begun to get an opportunity to hear her speak as well.

Also, I do think you are right on the money when you say that it seems Heather

is getting more & more pissed about the trans shit.

BTW, I remember seeing that story about the middle-aged exhibitionist man using the female locker room at the Evergreen pool when it first came out. It's appalling that it was the schoolgirls who got forced to use alternate, sub-par facilities so this man could be allowed to prance around the female locker room and lounge in the sauna flashing his dick and balls.

Also, I strongly disagree with Bret's claim that "the onus is not on (the TIM naked in the female locker room) to figure out how to navigate this" coz the onus is entirely on the institution. Yes, in these cases there's an onus on institutions to issue clear, fair rules. But there's also an onus on the individual males involved in the efforts to dismantle longstanding institutional rules put in place for the safety, dignity, privacy and mental wellbeing of female people and to replace them with new rules that prioritize and pander to males with sexual fetishes and claimed "identity" issues.

Every grown man and boy beyond the toilet-training stage knows that it's inappropriate and unacceptable for males to be exposing their dicks and balls and leering at the bodies of girls and women who are naked or undressing in locker rooms and saunas. It's because it's inappropriate and unacceptable that boys and men like this "Colleen" dickhead get off on doing it! Decent males who have respect for girls and women don't engage in this type of behavior.

Plus, Bret is ignoring that most/nearly all the people who have always made the rules at/for all our institutions in society have themselves been male - and now mostly male decision-making bodies (legislatures, school boards, courts, college administrations, etc) are changing the rules to favor other males. (Although sadly, today these males are doing this with the approval and encouragement of some females, such as Nancy Pelosi and all the Democratic women behind the misnomered US "Equality Act" and women like Ilhan Omar, Billie Jean King and Megan Rapinoe who are pushing for the end of female sports and female athletes having locker rooms and showers that exclude males.)

Finally, at the end of the clip, Bret further claims that again, "the object of our ire" should not be directed at any individual man who uses the claim of being "trans" in order to engage in sexually abusive behavior and to ride roughshod over the rights of girls and women. Rather, Brett says, "the object of our ire" should be on the ideology of sex self-ID that the trans movement is based on. Brett seems hellbent on overlooking and obscuring the fact that individuals are at the heart of all institutions, ideologies, groups, movements, legislatures and governments.

IMO, Brett is bending over backwards not to hold any individual members of his own sex accountable for any of the awful things that many men are doing, and are being allowed to get away with, in the name of "trans."

[–]meandering_vines 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I used to view using pronouns as a matter of politeness, but now I can't bring myself to refer to anybody with pronouns other than those based on sex. In the workplace this mostly means that I also avoid speaking about these people in the first place or use their name if I have to speak about them. Once activists started pushing for "misgendering" to literally be against the law or against workplace policy, the time for politeness ended. Also the concept of using somebody's pronouns if requested has now changed to "everybody must announce their pronouns when introducing themselves" and "you better make room in your Twitter bio to declare your pronouns!". It's also silly how activists constantly use the phrase "pronouns are about dignity and respect", as if correctly referring to somebody's sex is somehow the worst offense possible and as if women and people of color aren't routinely referred to with actual slurs.

[–]lefterfield 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

as if women and people of color aren't routinely referred to with actual slurs.

Seriously. They want to conflate a man being called a man the same as women being called gendered slurs and people being called racial slurs. If those are the same, it suggests that these people believe the slurs, and believe women are bitches and cunts.

[–]slushpilot 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In any case, such terms of address can only be privately negotiated, not demanded.

[–]divingrightintowork 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So glad to see this here! So glad to see her writing.