On the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, Jon Oliver cuts through all the misinformation spread about transgender issues by those seeking to create a sense of alarm that this is some kind of fad that is exposing young people to harm and are even passing laws forbidding gender-affirming care. He discusses what gender-affirming care actually involves and why it is nothing like what its opponents claim it to be.
He also makes an important point that is often overlooked, and that is that when young transgender people are allowed to be who they are, the joy and hope that enters their lives is something that is truly heartwarming to see.
He also takes aim at those, and of course you knew that Ted Cruz had to be among them, who seem to think that allowing people to choose their own pronouns is something to be ridiculed. I wonder how those people would react if others started deliberately misgendering them, referring to them with pronouns that they think is not consistent with their perception of their own gender. If they protest, as I think would be likely, the other person could reply, “I’m sorry but that is how I perceive your gender. Your sense of self and gender preferences are of no concern to me.”
A close friend of my daughter from her days in middle school transitioned and has let it be known that they prefer the pronoun ‘they’ and its cognates. I am of course perfectly happy to do so. But I would like to think that even if my views on this issue had been completely different, I would have respected their choice and used it out of common courtesy and basic human decency and the desire not to hurt someone whom I know well and like.
Do people like Cruz not have anyone in their close circle who are transgender? I find it hard to believe that they do not. If they do, how do they refer to them privately? Do they use the requested pronoun or do they say, “To hell with you, I am going to refer to you as I damn well please?” Come to think of it, that might well be the way that people like Cruz think and behave.
Why? I mean -- I’m not a horrible bigoted millionaire and I don’t hang around with horrible bigoted millionaires, but if I was a horrible bigoted millionaire I can’t imagine many transgender folk would want to hang around with me.
My circle of friends is mostly people like me -- middle aged white dudes. The ones I’d count as close are exclusively a tolerant, progressive bunch, but that’s kind of a self-selection thing -- the people we all knew in school who’d be homophobic/racist/whatever were the people we pretty deliberately “lost touch with”. I’d imagine Cruz’s circle similarly just naturally excludes anyone whose expression conflicts with his attitudes.
I see your point about choosing friends who are like-minded but surely there must be transgender family members or friends of family members? I can’t imagine that all of of Cruz’s extended family are transphobic?
I’ll throw an idea out there. Why do any of us need gendered pronouns? How often does the gender of a pronoun in a sentence contribute to the meaning of the sentence? Maybe sometimes, but I think it’s fairly rare. The first and second person pronouns are not gendered and somehow we manage that without confusion.
We should have true gender-neutral third person pronouns. “They/them” is a good temporary compromise but it can be confusing using one term for both singular and plural, like ‘you’ as either singular or plural. That’s why we often hear “you folks”, “you guys”, or “y’all”.
By the way, I know “y’all” doesn’t get respect from sophisticated grammarians but I think that word should be promoted to the official second person plural pronoun, ‘yall’ without the apostrophe.
I wonder how those people would react if others started deliberately misgendering them…
Most cis men certainly don’t like to be mistaken for women — them’s fightin’ words! Same goes for cis women being called “mannish.”
Even if Cruz does have some trans people in his social circle you won’t hear it from him, at least not while this is a current hobby-horse for the Fox “News” crowd. Don’t forget that Cruz remained utterly silent after the Orange Hairball called his father complicit in the Kennedy assasination. If Cruz won’t stand up for his own father, he sure as heck won’t for anybody else as long as he sees no benefit in it for himself. Charles Dickens has a quote I think very apropos of Cruz, “A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!”
Unless someone comes out and says it, or you knew them before they transitioned, how would one know ?
If the question is specifically about Cruz , then who in their right mind would be in his close circle ?
@Raging Bee
One my biggest frustrations with feminists who are anti-trans is that they don’t seem to realize what an own goal their position is.
Still can’t comprehend why people would want to make up wild fantasies about people they’ve never met and then scare the hell out of each other with a bunch of made-up nonsense. Or why people supposedly into “family values” care so much about what’s in other people’s pants. Or who other people’s romantic partners are. What kind of family life or romantic relationships do these “family values” weirdos have? That sure sounds like the setup to a lot of horror stories.
I wonder how many of them would suddenly discover the problem with this sort of mess if the target were different. Like let’s imagine politicians and religious leaders started spreading stories about some made-up correlation between whether a man is circumsized or not and his likelihood of being a sexual predator. It would be as ridiculous as the anti-trans fearmongering but I bet a whole lot of them would suddenly decide to be a lot less gullible.
Thanks, Mano. Polls show that transphobia skews older, male, and conservative. Guys like you show that decency transcends gender or age.
The pronoun issue is illogical.
.
When I interact with a person, conversing with said person, the only relevant pronoun is (drum roll….): YOU. Not “he”. Not “she”. Not “them”. YOU.
.
So will the T’s and woke people tail me, tag me, eavesdrop on me, spy on me, monitor my actions to investigate if I will refer to T’s by their “preferred” pronouns?
.
So will the T’s and woke people set up a thought police?
.
A San Francisco 1980’s poster that I deem evil: “We do not want to be tolerated, we demand to be loved!”. Back then, the poster related to homosexuals/lesbians. Today (2022 AD) the poster can relate to T’s. In the land of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, tolerance is the minimum courtesy, not love. Demanding love makes one a stalker; reminds me of the movie “Fatal Attraction”. Are the advocates for T’s into placing pet rabbits into pots of boiling water?
.
“Raise your hand if you want to be left alone.” Most people -- including Progressive/Socialists -- will raise their hands. In this sense Progressive/Socialists are crypto-Conservatives.
.
Apparently the T’s and their allies are not content being left alone, not content being themselves. Being left alone and being isolated are 2 different things. Being left alone means your private sphere (whichever way you want to define it) will not be invaded, intruded, violated by outsiders. Being isolated means no interaction whatsoever with outsiders at the initiative of the outsider not of the T’s. I have friends who are into activity X which I avoid; I am willing to interact with said friends in activity Y. I refuse invitations to engage in activity X. Mutual respect is evident when the invitation decline is accepted; otherwize there is no friendship. Can an atheist be friends with a religious person? Can a teetotaler be friends with an alcoholic?
.
Whether Ted Cruz has a T among his inner circle or family circle is irrelevant. Having a friend/relative who happened to be, say, a convicted rapist does not make one an advocate for rape; yes, the friendship needs to be re-evaluated if it is worthwhile to be a fair-weather friend or a friend through good and bad. There are T’s and there are T’s: many T’s do not buy into the woke ideology, do not buy into the pronoun gimmick. Just like many homosexuals are Trump supporters. Who cares how Ted Cruz refers to T’s in private? Only the busybodies. Only the thought police.
.
The T game, the mimicry game, the deception game is a very dangerous game: it is an ultimate game of life and death. In the animal kingdom the mimicry game, the deception game makes some predators more lethal, makes some prey safer by disguising as predators. The drive to recruit and groom prepubescent T’s leads predictably to a ruinous and tragic end. The T’s embracing the woke ideology need to understand that there is a Big, Big World who is NOT into you, who is NOT fascinated about you, who is indifferent to you, who will be polite to you, who will interact with you, who will tolerate (NOT love) you. Politeness, etiquette according to the World’s rules, not according to woke ideology.
.
You are as happy as you allow yourself to be. If your happiness depends solely on the thoughts and actions of others, then you are setting yourself up for a life of pain and delusion. Of course you should fight against actual injustice against your being to maintain whatever level of happiness you may have. Remember that the Declaration of Independence declared the Creator-given right to the “pursuit of happiness”, NOT Happiness itself.
.
You may be gratified that others join in your world of delusion. Imposing your world of delusion on others is just arrogance, selfishness, and tyranny.
So will the T’s and woke people tail me, tag me, eavesdrop on me, spy on me, monitor my actions to investigate if I will refer to T’s by their “preferred” pronouns? So will the T’s and woke people set up a thought police?
Why would anyone need any of that, when you’ve already made your willful stupidity and bigotry obvious to the whole world?
I hope that the fish-troll’s transphobic hate screed gets removed. No idea what motivates these people, or the hysteria about trans people being deviant others, scheming to rool the world
English they, them, their ARE the ‘true’ gender neutral pronouns, along with thy, thee, thou, thine and the archaic collective plural ye of y’all.
English has lost grammatical gender. It lacks the masculine and feminine cases entirely though the words sé and sie and thes are still in use in the other Germanic languages that retain three cases for gender.
I don’t find singular they any more confusing than their, there, they’re, or to, too , two. You can always just use their name if all those pronouns are getting you down. 😉