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Pupper InterloperTell me about your dog.
I love my baby so much. She follows me around all day long. She loves her toys and I love watching her play with them. She greets me like she hasn't seen in me in six months... every time. She is very spoiled because she is used to people instantly loving her but she understands the rules of the house so she is a very good girl.
She protected me from a creepy man at the park where I walk her. He got way too close and tried to be aggressive with me because I didn't accept his advances. She sensed my discomfort and barked at him and he left me alone almost instantly. She has a scary bark. She knows when I'm sick or sad. If I'm sick, she's extra good. If I'm sad, she sniffs my face, gives me a couple of small licks, and lays down next to me in what I interpret as a loving and gently protective manner. She's my first dog and I am learning a lot.
This is such an excellent article.
I used to think, "fine, sure i'll use your preferred pronouns, just stay out of women's spaces etc.". But actually the longer this goes on the more i see that linguistic concessions make it increasingly difficult to argue for women's rights and to explain to the populace what is happening. It also makes it impossible for anyone who cares about the representation of women to perceive - still less change - the unfairness we still see against women.
Playing fast and loose with language in this way, making it bend to match political objectives and social niceties, ends up distorting our perception of reality. If ‘she’ takes first place in a women’s event, nothing remarkable has occurred. Our capacity to push back and challenge the reality before our eyes – a man beating women – is then seriously thwarted.
It is for this reason that transgender activists are so obsessed with pronouns.
Edit for punctuation.
I don't think TRAs are that smart to use language as such a weapon. I think they stumbled into it just by happenstance when they got all screechy about being called "he."
language is a form of programing, every journalist worth his salt knows you can change someones opinions without them noticing, just by using the right words to steer the reader to what you want.
This is a really great article - like many, I used preferred pronouns (I even had mine in my work email signature) thinking it was the nice and kind thing to do. Needless to say, as I've peaked, I've become far less interested in that and more committed to using accurate pronouns in support of women and girls.
And on the same note, I am sick to death of the "biological" nonsense.
At first I considered it clumsy, wordy, redundant, superfluous, and just plain silly.
Now I consider it as bad as "cis."
Yeah, yeah, I know the motive is different: "Cis" is in their word; "biological" is ours. "Cis" is in your face; "biological" is subtle. No, wait, not just subtle, but rather, insidious.
The effect is the same.