I know this isn’t a popular thing to say these days. Though I’m attacked at every turn, I’m never going to be hailed as “courageous” for saying what I’m about to say. Here it is.
I am a man.
There’s no mistaking that. I obviously look like a man. If the Adam’s apple didn’t give it away, then the beard ought to. You can get my attention with “sir”, “mister”, “dude” or even “hey you”. Any of those are perfectly acceptable.
No one can look at me and think I’m anything else but male.
So, if anyone were to call me “miss”, “ms.”, “mrs.” or “ma’am” I’d know they were fucking with me.
And you know what? I wouldn’t care. Not even a tiny little bit.
There are only a handful of people in this world whose opinions I value. And even fewer whose opinion of me I value. The odds are not in your favor. It’s highly likely that I don’t give a shit what you think.
Get Over It Already
Oh, I admit, I used to be easy to provoke. I remember a time when someone repeatedly called me a girl. They did it because they knew it would push my buttons and make me upset.
But then I got over it. When I was twelve.
You see, one of my brothers or sisters would constantly and relentlessly pick on me and call me names. I can’t remember specifically which one of my brothers or sisters did it. Though it was probably all of them because they were all assholes. But pick on me they did. Because it was very effective. And, apparently, had an extremely high entertainment value.
But their name calling ended up being a good thing. Because I stopped calculating my self-worth based on what other people said or thought about me.
I think part of the problem with this whole “you hurt my feelings generation” is the trend toward single-child families. Kids who don’t have siblings also don’t have anyone around to toughen them up.
That alone wouldn’t have been a problem. But then we reached a point where kids are no longer allowed to be kids. Which means that nobody at school is allowed to pick on anyone.
And that gave us a bunch of sensitive kids that grew into adults that let everything bug them because they possess less emotional maturity than a 12-year old.
Ridiculous is as Ridiculous Does
I’ve known a lot of women. Wait, that didn’t come out quite right. I don’t mean I’ve “known” a lot of women. Not in the biblical sense. What I mean is that I know a lot of women. Ah…you know what I mean.
And I don’t know any woman who doesn’t think it’s ridiculous to substitute -woman for -man in common compound words. You know what I’m talking about. Using chairwoman instead of chairman, forewoman instead of foreman, fisherperson and sportsperson.
My wife would have absolutely no problem being called a “chairman”, or a “foreman” or a “fireman”. I know because, not wanting to push my white-patriarchy-privilege on anyone, I’ve asked her. I suspect the vast majority of women feel exactly the same way. At least the ones I’ve asked do.
That’s bad enough, but it didn’t stop there. You see, the easily-offended couldn’t stop with just adding a gender-neutral term. No, they had to keep going until they eliminated the gender-specific terms too.
These days, every time you turn around you see another word that has literally been neutered by changing it into the gender neutral “something person”. All in an attempt to rid the English language of every gender-specific word.
Did I Hear That Right?
I had the TV on last night and was only sort of listening to it. Someone was making introductions and said, “and this is my sibling, Louie”. What now? This guy was introducing another dude-ish looking person as his “sibling”. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it sounded so strange that even only paying half attention my ears immediately picked up on it.
See, the word “sibling” is gender neutral. So, anyone not wanting to use “brother” or “sister” could choose to use the word “sibling” instead. In fact, I did just a few moments ago. But nobody introduces anyone as their “sibling”. Sure, they might say “my siblings” when talking about “my brothers and sisters”. But introducing a single person as your “sibling” just sounds strange.
Can you guess where this is headed? Yup. That’s right. The words “brother” and “sister” will be on the banned word list before you know it.
What’s wrong with “brother” and “sister”? I’m glad you asked. It’s the same thing that was wrong with “chairman” and eventually the ridiculous “chairwoman”.
Let’s say that you met some people in charge of various committees. Some call themselves a “chairman”, others call themselves a “chairwoman” and the rest call whateverselves a “chairperson”. What conclusions will you draw about each one of them? Exactly.
You know that the men and women who call themselves “chairmen” have their heads on straight, and understand that what’s really important isn’t them, it’s the committee they chair. The “chairwomen” are people who buy into the whole white-men-bad thing. And the “chairperson”? Well, those folks have issues. And the people who have those issues don’t want them to be made so obvious.
By adding a third title, essentially none of the above, you identify the “chairperson” as abnormal. And rightfully so. But the abnormal people don’t like that. Which is strange because that’s how they self-identified.
Here’s where I get confused. Why is it that people go out of their way to dress like Boy George just to get noticed? Then, when they get the attention they so desperately seek, they bitch about it.
So, what happened with “chairman” and, ugh, “chairwoman” is that those words were too specific and, used in conjunction with “chairperson”, could allow someone to infer that the chairperson is an idiot. Which, apparently, is a bad thing.
So, the word police just made it socially unacceptable to use anything other than “chairperson”.
It won’t be too long before the words “brother” and “sister” will be added to the list of Words You Must Not Say. We’ll be forced to use “sibling” or, maybe we can walk around sounding like Jeb Clampett and use “kinfolk”.
It’s Called Job Security
Why is this happening? I’ll tell you why. It’s because this nonsense has evolved to a point where companies are hiring people for the sole purpose of coming up with these bullshit ideas. And these Chief Inclusivity Officers have to do something.
But the low hanging fruit such as changing something-man to something-woman has already been done. And if the people in charge of Inclusivity don’t do something, then their jobs are in jeopardy. So, someone, somewhere came up with the brilliant idea to remove “man” and “woman” altogether and replace it with “person”. Just so they could keep their job.
So, we end up with people like Disney’s Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Vivian Ware. Now, I don’t know what Vivian’s personal pronoun preference is so I’m just going to call her an idiot. So, the idiot also known as Vivian recently announced that Disney is going to stop using the terms “ladies”, “gentlemen”, “boys” and “girls”.
She’s not doing it because it’s a good idea. She’s doing it because she has to do something. Because if she doesn’t do anything, there’s no reason for her position, and she’s out of a job.
Disney has already gotten rid of men, women, boys and girls. It doesn’t take much imagination to see where this is going. How much longer do you think it’s going to be before Disney gets rid of men’s and women’s restrooms? Probably just before Vivian’s next performance review.
So, after Vivian gets her bonus, your little girl gets to share the restroom with a man who thinks he’s just a really ugly woman. And Disney will become the Happiest Place on Earth for pedophiles.
But Wait, There’s More
Vivian is just one person. There are people everywhere whose sole job function is to come up with even more ridiculous ideas. Because the less ridiculous ones have already been taken. I can easily imagine some government worker in Florida getting a bug up her ass and deciding that “manatee” is sexist and we should all start to use the word “womanatee”.
If we ever get to that point, I can guarantee that continuing to also refer to them as “sea cows” will definitely get you cancelled.
