What is this, Gender Pronoun Day?
Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, is railing against “political correctness”, generally a good sign that we’re dealing with a right-wing wackaloon, depending on what has gotten them wound up. In this case, it’s safe to say he’s an outraged wingnut, because this is what has got him upset:
Gender identity is defined by the Ontario Human Rights Commission as “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.” The commission defines gender expression as “how a person publicly presents their gender,” which can include behaviour and outward appearance such as dress, hair, make-up, body language and voice, as well as a person’s name and the pronouns they use.
Yes? Seems like plain old ordinary common sense to me — gender is complicated and messy, and a matter of personal experience as well as biology. All I should care about is how a person presents themselves, and I should respect that.
But no, not to Jordan Peterson! This is unadulterated crazy talk.
Peterson is critical of these terms and their definitions as outlined by the commission, and compares the changes Bill C-16 would bring about to the policing of expression in “totalitarian and authoritarian political states.”
I think he’s got it backwards. Demanding that individuals conform to one of only two gender roles is the totalitarian/authoritarian position.
He also argues against the existence of non-binary gender identities, or those that are not exclusively masculine or feminine, saying “I don’t think there’s any evidence for it.”
By the way, he’s a professor of clinical psychology.
You could try typing evidence of non-binary gender identities into Google Scholar and see what comes up. Do you think it might be a blank page? It isn’t.
Peterson said that if a student asked him to be referred to by a non-binary pronoun, he would not recognize their request: “I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them. I won’t do it.”
Amazing. Why? So it would be OK for me to address Jordan Peterson as “she” or “her”? He seems to be saying the subject of a reference is not to be allowed any say in how they are addressed. I also wonder if he’s one of those professors who insist that students address them as “Professor” or “Doctor”.
It’s common courtesy to ask how someone wishes to be addressed, and especially in a formal relationship, to respect that. There’s nothing wrong with a professor insisting that they be addressed by title, or by first name — and students should respect that convention. Would it be OK if, against his wishes, I addressed Jordie-boy as “Maximum Sphincter Peterson” in the classroom?
Peterson told the National Post that he decided to make the video and go public with his views after receiving a memo from university HR outlining new mandatory anti-racist and anti-bias training. “That disturbs me because if someone asked me to take anti-bias training, I think I am agreeing that I am sufficiently racist or biased to need training,” he said in an interview.
Yes, Maximum Sphincter Peterson. You are sufficiently biased to need training. We all are. I have a terrible habit of calling an awful person a “sphincter”, and I could probably do with a little conversation about how it makes others feel.
Nice use of singular they there.
See, Jordan, it’s really not that hard.
Sphincters are your friends.
And psychologists wonder why trans folk are so jumpy with them.
I’d dearly love to know what possible harm using someone’s preferred pronoun does to Peterson.
Oh and from now on I’ve decided to extend his objection to the use of people’s preferred proper nouns. He doesn’t look like a “Jordan Peterson” to me, so should I ever meet the chap, I shall insist on my right to call him Skidmark Y’Front.
Let’S just call him “Jordie”. I’d never do to him what he wants to do to trans and non-binary folks (even though it wouldn’t come anywhere close to the violence inflicted by this on trans and non-binary folks), but there’s plenty of ways to disrespect him in the name department.
Naming is power. If you can name someone you have power over them. It has a long and deep racialised and gendered history.
It’s nice that we have one thing we can all agree on, Jordie-Gordie
Well so what? Who cares?
I don’t recognize that Peterson has a coherent thought in what passes for his mind. I’ll address him by a non-binary descriptive, loon as in loon Peterson. As he points out, I do have that choice.
Shorter Peterson, Hey you kids. Get off my lawn!!!
This guy comes across as a cranky old man, complaining about everything that happened since the Dark Ages ended.
I get that this stuff can throw people off at first, especially if they’ve never encountered anyone who’s outside of the so called “norm”(is there a more encompassing and shortened term for white het cis able bodied etc, like an abbreviation?) it’s the same as the singular “they”. It can be a little awkward at first when you’ve never thought about it before. So what if it is a little weird, it can go a long way to improving someone elses day and nobody gets hurt. People make this sound so complicated and for the most part its pretty easy. Maybe some acronyms are getting a little complicated, and I I be hard to keep up with some of it depending on your situation in life but that doesn’t mean you can’t make an honest effort.
PS: if we’re going to use the totalitarianism argument i’d really like someone to cite an example of a totalitarian/authoritarian state enforcing. Anything but colonial industrial era gender roles.
*it can be hard*
That was my gut response too, when my university ran a similar course for all staff some years ago. But I went, and I did actually learn a few things. Surprising how that works, isn’t it?
Actually, if your university/work place invites you to an anti-bias training session, the most likely circumstance is that they are asking all staff. It’s like mandatory fire response training. They’re not offering it because they think you are more likely to catch fire than the next employee. It’s an institution-wide strategy.
Sounds equivalent to refusing to use someone’s preferred version of their name. EG: (personally), my given name is Steven, often asked upon introduction, ( after “is that spelled with ‘ph’ or ‘v’ “?) whether I prefer “Steven”, or “Steve”. I say which and most continue to use the one I selected.
If a “boy” preferred to be called “she” or a “girl”, “he”; what’s the BFD? Why not.
Jordan Petershit [he won’t object right, cuz he says one can’t dictate their preferred form of address, eh] is trying to justify rudeness.
I guess he’s showing that it’s not just Americans who are bigoted binary jerkholes.
So who writes the training?
Let’s call him it.
That’s about the amount of respect it deserves.
That has pretty horrifying implications given the history of “it” as a pronoun to bludgeon trans people with. I’d file this under “bad ideas.” I want Professor Dipshit to treat all of us equitably, not for Professor Dipshit to get the trans treatment.
My gender non-binary child is planning to study psychology. UofT was one of the choices. I think we can firmly prune the list by one.
Note that it is reported that Grand Douchenozzle Peterson’s hour long polemic includes the use of the term “Social Justice Warrior”, a sure sign of an objective academic presentation…
qwints @12:
People who are aware of their own privilege, and how privilege blinds. People who understand how implicit bias works in all people. People who understand microaggressions, and the damage they can do. People who have actually taken the radical step of shutting the fuck up and listening to those who are most frequently dealing with biases every day.
Even people who have done all those things still struggle with implicit bias, stereotypes, privilege blindness, lack of respect and understanding, and microaggressions. It takes work to maintain awareness and constantly update it. The notion that anyone is inherently bias free is a stupid one. We all are, but it can be overcome.
Those kneejerk, gut responses people have are a normal defense, “I’m not racist!” or whatever the particular bias might be. Everyone wants to think that, but it doesn’t make it so.
Mark thé Snark@15: “I think we can firmly prune the list by one.”
I’d research the department. It’s not unusual to have one asshole in a department. Students can often avoid the ass.
If they can’t, or if the rot extends further, then for sure advise going elsewhere!
Oh yes, of course, this isn’t about non binary people asserting our own right to self determination. No, no, no! This is an assault on his right to go through life without his expectations being contradicted. For the longest time, I thought being non binary meant I’d deal with people not getting it, but would never face the same kind of shit that binary trans people do, but it seems like people are just queuing up to get something – anything – to be bigoted about. Is it really so hard to understand that my gender identity is about me, me, and nothing but me? It’s not an attempt to change other people’s language; it’s not an attempt to reinforce the gender trap, as one TERF writer recently claimed. For fuck’s sake. Is it really so much to hope that people might eventually realise that it’s prejudice in general that’s wrong and useless, rather than just surrendering one bigotry as it becomes socially untenable in order to retreat to a new battle ground?
“So who writes the training?”
Everyone is wrong sometimes, so how do we tell what it true? Its the same epistemological issue. Everyone has bias but not everyone has the same bias, so you need to critically analyze a range of views (including your own) and compare them to evidence (which in social/psychological issues includes the experiences of those subject to potential bias).
@qwints #12:
In the case of the course I went on, an ex-cop.
Yeah, I know. I tried not to smirk.
So, if decorum, preferences, and just fucking normal human decency count for nothing, would he be okay with a student calling him a Scum-dripping Fuckstick whenever applicable?
@Caine, Thanks. That’s helpful.
IOW:
.
says Jordouche
Uh-huh. And if they had mandatory Health and Safety training,
shehe would refuse to attend because that would be admitting he’s an intolerable danger to life and limb.Well, gee, let’s see what the American Psychological Association has to say.
If I was ever going to make gay porn or form a rock band, then ‘Maximum Sphincter Peterson’ is going to be my professional name.
Also what is wrong with civility and decency, or as I call it, political correctness.
Coming from a psychologist, this is basically an admission of professional incompetence. It’s on par with a biologist saying “I didn’t come from no monkeys!” Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Jordanson, you’re significantly racist and you’re also significantly biased in a wide variety of other ways. That’s how human brains work.
Ironically, the first research interest listed on his and her and their and also its Wikipedia page is “self-deception.” Nailed it!
I wonder if he would react the same way if someone asked him to refer to them as Cree instead of Indian.
I think we can consider Peterson a conservative crackpot. For heaven’s sake he’s wearing a tie in his photo in the National Post. Not psycholigical behaviour.
And have a look at his personal page http://jordanbpeterson.com/. I am really pleased to read that he Jordan B Peterson, raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stuntplane, piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts, built a Native American Long-House on the upper floor of his Toronto home, and been inducted into the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw tribe. It would also be nice to see his publicion list :(
And according to wikipedia:
Peterson published Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief in 1999. The book describes a comprehensive rational theory for how we construct meaning, represented by the mythical process of the exploratory hero, and also provides a way of interpreting religious and mythical models of reality presented in a way that fits in with modern scientific understanding of how the brain works.
Yah, right. Most of his department must cringe at his name.
@ 15 Mark The Snark
I suspect most psychology departments have one or more loonies. Probably most university departments of any size have, at least, one.
Last I checked UofT had an outstanding psychology department, much as I hate to say so—Uof T are traditional rivals of my undergrad school. But, if your son wants to study psychology UofT is not a bad choice at all. As numerobis says, “Research the department”.
I hear what she is saying, so OK lady, got it!
Hnngh, as much as I’m cool with making fun of him, I’m actually really not comfy with misgendering someone just because they’re an asshole. It’s not okay to be racist to a person just because they’re an asshole – the same principle applies here.
Okay, so fast forward to a year later when a non-binary individual is unlucky enough to get your class as you aggressively misgender them, now with video proof that it’s part of an intentional bias and watch as you get raked over your coals by your superiors for failing to comply with canadian law regarding gender identity discrimination.
Basically, this video is going to serve as evidence for a score of discrimination lawsuits in the future and hopefully a dismissal from his position as he’s clearly incompetent in his designated role.
If the University gave a fuck, I’d love to see him immediately replaced by a non-binary professor who gets to watch him box up his stuff.
Ah, the human race. So many bigots, so little time.
Major tech companies require all staff to take diversity training. Don’t universities? The curriculum is developed by humans, so it isn’t perfect but it goes a long way. The best one’s start with a very simple rule: respect for your fellow workers. It’s not difficult, even a university professor can do it.
This puppy is exaggerating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairview,_Alberta
I’ve been there. Nice place.
Vivec,
Thank you for the reminder. I tend to fall into that trap, myself.
He’ll probably be more upset being called Mr anyway, since as PZed suggests he sounds like the type to insist on his academic titles being used.
@Siobhan #14 – Sorry, you’re right about that. I shouldn’t be dehumanizing anybody including Peterson. I’ll find another way to blow off steam.
While I might be able to get used to the singular they thing, and generally see the usefullness of a neutral pronoun, this seems a little bit excessive. Is that site even real, or a fake to mock people actually affected by that whole “non-binary” thing? If it is real, what do you think of it? I think if someone starts inventing pronouns, they have no right whatsoever to complain about being “misgendered”, since there is no way any other person would be able to correctly guess the “right” pronouns.
prae, which pronouns are not invented? ;)
Actually, there are some terms in your adduced list which are unfamiliar to me… but I would have very little trouble interpreting them in context. And I bet you too would have little trouble, once you got the idea.
Directly addressing your point, in my experience most people who dislike the gender binary pronouns will first correct you and tell you their preferred term, and only after that will they object to your further issue terms they are at best misnomers, and at worst deliberately scornful.
@prae, 37
Why are you guessing?
prae, #37
I don’t think non-binary people are out to get us cis people. I doubt their master plan behind their pronoun preferences is to embarrass cis dudes and gals. And like Athywren said, why guess? Either ask or respond appropriately when corrected. What’s the big deal?
As an aside, why is it at all important to denote gender when using a pronoun?
I am as cis as can be, I am a ‘he’ by customary use. But I am also a ‘they’, perhaps not as customarily, but with similar historical justification.
Just as with marital status, it is an irrelevance in almost all contexts.
(English has lost most of its grammatical gender, and I don’t find people object to spoons being female or knives being male. It would hardly hurt to dispose of the last vestiges of this historical (and irrelevant) baggage)
[erratum]
“I don’t find people object to spoons not being female or knives not being male”
@29 jrkrideau
Of course he’s an Albertan. Dog above. *facepalm*
Linguistically speaking, no, we won’t end up with 571 different pronouns to indicate every bit of nuance in someone’s gender identity*. That’s not how language works, as it is a shared code between a group of people. We don’t use pronouns because they’re terribly accurate but because they’re short and handy.
So when people say “I won’t respect your pronouns” they’re not saying “somebody constantly inventing new words for themselves goes against the fundamental nature of communication and is untenable” because that’s not what’s happening. When they say “I won’t respect your pronouns”, they actually mean ” I refuse to accept your fundamental and exclusive right to determine your gender identity yourself. I insist that my opinion on your gender identity is more valid than your lived experience and since I’ve got the social power to make you feel this I will do so.”
*It is not as if that were the case for people who identify somewhere on the binary. It’s not as if “she” tells you awfully much about my particular identity and how being female is constructed in my particular case.
@Prae
“Hey, nice to meet you. What are your pronouns?”
Problem solved. You remember more names and pseudonyms than you’ll ever have to remember pronouns, so I’m sure you can deal with it.
chigau (違う) wrote:
According to that page, its climate is more moderate than Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg, albeit with a little more precipitation than all but Winnipeg. It’s remote and probably isolated, but it doesn’t seem to be a frigid wasteland.
prae @ 37
Agreed. We should all use “they” about unknown persons because how can I possibly know the gender of an unknown person? Er, wait, wait, that’s not what you were saying. Are you suggesting we should just assume what pronouns a specific person uses and then if we use the wrong one…? What? We should just keep using the wrong one, because we couldn’t guess right and they have no right to complain (ie correct you)?
It’s a perfectly ordinary thing to ask what pronoun someone wants to use when you’re getting to know one another: “Can I use the informal you?” English is an odd one because we switched entirely over to the plural, formal second person pronoun and just force it on everyone. But if thou takes issue with changes in pronoun use–for how could thee be able to guess the “right” one–thou can stick to the classics. And how could thee ever know what second person pronoun is preferred! There’s no way to guess that. So thou is just going to keep calling everybody “thee” and none of these people have a right to complain for being so bizarre as to make up a whole new use for “you.”
(By the way, I’m non-binary and I use “they” and I just tell people when it comes up. Gosh.)
@John Morales: “why is it at all important to denote gender when using a pronoun?” <- I think THAT is the right question here. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of that singular they thing, as a truly neutral third person pronoun. And that is exactly my problem with these tumblr inhabitants: this list I linked looks like an attempt to go the opposite way, do denote even more genders(?) using even more pronouns. Instead of tearing down the few walls we have, they seem to be constructing even more of them, so to speak.
So what? Presumably you have friends and can remember their preferences in terms of names. Do you complain that one Johnathan insists on being called “John”, while another insists on “Johnny” or “Jon”?
Why are name preferences and other such things privileged above pronouns for you? Sure, xe/xem/xer and the like are exotic pronouns, but I doubt you call people ridiculous when they have names you aren’t used to. If you met someone named Wawrzyniec, would you consider their name ridiculous?
Not defending Jordan Peterson here, just a personal slant. A year or so ago I followed a link to his lecture series Maps of Meaning and Personality and Its Transformations and ended up watching them all over several weeks. In his element Peterson is a riveting lecturer and I took away a number of insights that have been illuminating in other circumstances. I still remember him pulling layer after layer of meaning out of Disney’s “Pinocchio”, of all things. I think I can still recommend these; in retrospect the opinions, and the scholarship behind them, seem sound, and they are certainly entertaining if you like big-idea thinking about history and psychology.
But then, wanting to follow up on this academic pied-piper, I also found some video of a long interview with him. In an unscripted rambling interview, he expressed a number of opinions that made me quite uncomfortable — I don’t remember specifically what, just the general sense that, ohhhh-kay then, offstage he’s a bit of a right-wing douche. Which was a disappointment.
prae, #48
So this has been your position about “he” and “she” since long before you heard about non-binary pronouns. You must have gotten so tired of having to call all the people you encounter either “he” or “she”. What a bizarre coincidence that you bring it up here on a thread about gender neutral and non-binary pronouns.
#AllLivesMatter!
Let’s talk neopronouns. Neopronouns are non-binary pronouns other than they that a non-binary individual may select for themselves because that is the pronoun that best alleviates their gender dysphoria and most feels like them.
Neopronouns get a lot of shit, because they feel “new” (bad news everyone, all language is invented, sorry to break that to all of you) and because non-binary individuals have been oppressed and cut out of most of western society for thousands of year (spoiler alert, they’ve always existed).
Someone who goes by a neopronoun is using it because that is their pronoun. That is the pronoun that fits them best and which fully encompasses who they are. They aren’t using it in some bizarre cat and mouse game where they are just looking to trip up poor innocent cis people and make them look like idiots. They are using it because it is their pronoun.
And if a non-binary person corrects you about their pronoun, that’s a good thing. They are trusting you to actually respect that and not try to start a pointless and humiliating argument about things they’ve thought through more than you probably ever will:
http://www.robot-hugs.com/disconnect/
The secret is to just accept their pronoun, use it from that point on and move on with your life instead of stomping your feet on the ground at the “injustice” of having to grow up and react to the world as it is.
I work as a teacher. I have trans kids in my class. A good number of them are some flavor of non-binary. Some use neopronouns. So, how did us poor beleagured teachers handle this horrifying reality? Well, I wrote up an email that has those students names and pronouns and what names and pronouns for them are safe to send home (not all of our students are out). Takes 5 seconds, about as much as respecting a kid’s name correction from the official sheet or a preferred nickname.
I even had kids who were genderfluid, including one whose pronouns changed day to day. How did we react?
I’d ask the kid in the morning their preferred gender pronoun and then send an email around to the other teachers. I KNOW! A whole 30 seconds of human interaction to not be a dick to a student who already has enough microaggressions on their plate (this student currently use they pronouns).
I’ve also ran a number of trans organizations, which meant a lot of neopronouns matched to new names. Simply asking people what they’re preferred/personal gender pronoun or PGP was a quick way to refresh or check in if I forgot. Beyond that, it just took a good 5 minutes of practice to get used to using them.
Which isn’t much to do compared to all the effort involved in aggressively being an asshole because “neopronouns iz hard”.
Seriously, you fucking whiny ass cis people. We’re expected to hold our piss all day long, best plan routes around all the unknown people who want to kill us, and suffer endless slurs anytime we walk outside and you cry your asses to sleep over maybe having to learn a handful of extra pronouns.
Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
+1
+1 from me too.
Just caught an interview with Jordan on As It Happens on CBC Radio. http://www.cbc.ca/aih.
He came across as intolerant and he was railing about the extreme left-wingers pushing this pronoun agenda. On the other hand, he seemed to be characterizing much of the right wing as ‘a beast’ so who knows.
Still seems a bit of a nutter.
Prae
Well, it’s probably at least in part because of all the cis people going “No! Think of the grammar!” over singular they.
What the long lists of neopronouns indicate to me is 1. There’s a strong demand for singular nongendered pronouns and 2. We haven’t settled down into a consensus yet. I’d expect a couple of them to become more common while others fade into linguistic oddities, a process which is already happening to some extent. In the meantime, you’ll just have to deal with the terrible burden of listening to people when they tell you their pronouns and having the basic respect to actually use them.
@prae, 48
Just out of curiosity, roughly how long would you say you’ve been thinking about this? I’m just curious because I’ve been thinking about it on some level for most of my life, and while I fully recognise that my thoughts on the issue are not objective, I do believe that they’ve been careful and comprehensive, and I can’t help but suspect that this might not be the case for you on this topic.
Yeah, it’s alright. It doesn’t do an awful lot for me, except in the way that it doesn’t force ideas about gender onto a person, but it at least has that going for it. Other people specifically prefer they, and I’m super cool with that, but I don’t feel it works for me. To my way of thinking, they is what you use when you don’t know someone’s gender – when you say “what do they do?” it seems to me that what you’re saying is “what does [he or she – I don’t yet know which] do?” and while I’m not going to tell someone who prefers they that they’re wrong to do so, it doesn’t fit me as a pronoun for me; I’m not a trans woman waiting for someone to discover that I’m a woman – I’m agender. (Or subgender, if it’s not a little bit excessive to be specific.) I’m not going to tell someone who prefers they that they should change their preference because of the way I feel about that word, but it doesn’t suit me. I much prefer ze*, and while I’m ok with being called they, or he, or she, or even “oi you” as long as it’s not aggressive, being called ze makes me feel… something. Like when you see recognition in the face of an old friend you haven’t met in a decade.
*Feel free to be appalled by yet another excessive website.
Opposite way to what? Opposite way to accepting man, woman, and handwaved other? Well… yeah, of course we want to go the opposite way to that. I have exactly zero problems with genderfluid people, but I’m not genderfluid myself and it doesn’t really seem like a great way to avoid confusion for us all to use the same pronoun. Maybe it would be better if we didn’t denote gender when using pronouns, but as things stand, we do, and it kinda seems more like you’re just kicking the table over and yelling, “ok, nobody gets pronouns!” now that you’ve found out that more people than men and women like having words for themselves and getting all excessive.
Nope.
When the Berlin wall went up, I would imagine it went directly through many neighbourhoods. When it came down, I would imagine that those neighbourhoods still existed, and it would seem pretty weird to say that reasserting themselves as neighbourhoods was constructing new walls, don’t you think?
A wall has been plowed directly through gender for centuries. The existence of people like us who don’t fit the binary asserted by that wall has been denied for centuries. And you think we’re putting up more walls by asking for recognition? Maybe it would be worth thinking about it for a little while longer?
@prae 48
Why? What problem does that solve that in implementing it doesn’t create more problems? Why is “genderblindness” a worthy goal (and almost invariably advanced by people who are largely treated as unmarked and ungendered)?
Also, what is “neutral,” “truly” or otherwise, about ignoring people’s preferences and identities? Advocating for people to alienate themselves from their identities, often hard fought for, is not a “neutral” or unbiased act. It’s a violent erasure, a suggestion that any marginalization people have experienced on account of their identities is a product of those identities, a suggestion that the act of identification outside of normative boundaries is itself the root of the problem, and therefore needs to be quieted, contained, or made redundant.
“neutral” != “neuter”
Cerberus
I’m totally not arguing against neopronouns. I’m more than happy to use whatever pronoun someone asks me to use, because I’m not an asshole. I only highlight this one part because, linguistically, that’s not what a pronoun is and how they work.
There is no fixed amount of pronouns in any language and different languages cut up the myriad of ways to group people together differently (English “you” is a total mess) so there’s a lot of space to add to that.
But not unlimited. A term that fully encompasses who you are will be a noun.
“She” doesn’t fully encompass who I am either and comes with a lot of baggage I’d be happy to drop.