Look At My Shiny Identity
Via Mr Muldoon, a tale of what sounds like mid-life contrivance:
Imagine the fun.
The contriver in question is Amanda Elend, a scrupulously progressive woman whose list of causes is extensive, if somewhat predictable. She tells us,
Ah, the basis of any sound marriage.
Coinciding, oddly enough, with the big four-oh:
The idea of having an identity – one with boutique status and complications that have to be danced around in an affirming manner – is terribly important to Ms Elend. And as we’ve seen, self-definition is very in right now, and quite competitive. Plus, there’s so much potential for chiding and rituals of atonement:
Ms Elend’s children, aged six and nine, were also informed of their mother’s elevation to the role of Fascinating Being:
The word husband is used intermittently. Sometimes it’s partner.
“Can we still call you mom?” my 9-year-old asked.
You see, every small child wants a mom whose new pronouns have to be memorised, and who reveals that their family is suddenly conditional, one option among many. A mom who, in middle-age, is still on a journey of self-absorption – sorry, self-discovery – and who could at any moment become a radically different, and altogether more fashionable, kind of entity. Quite what a six-year-old is supposed to do with such information, beyond feeling confused or insecure, is unclear.
But children, being children, are at least easy to manipulate:
It’s a niche pleasure, an acquired taste. And any project of self-preoccupation must have its little accomplices – in supporting roles, of course. Even if the star of the drama sometimes fluffs her lines:
Hold that thought, madam.
And it’s so much easier to shift the focus of any interaction towards oneself if there are complications to mention and pronouns to stipulate.
Update, via the comments:
Nikw211 questions Ms Elend’s honesty, and adds,
Well, it’s hard to be sure exactly how much embellishment is in play. But as with other articles in much the same genre, these things are presumably intended to present the author or subject in a fairly flattering light – as sympathetic, resilient or long-suffering, even heroic. Stunning and brave, as they say. Which, again, suggests obliviousness and insufferable self-involvement. I mean, if this is the idealised, airbrushed version of the author…
It’s also worth bearing in mind the extent to which so many of these ‘progressive’ ladies seem to have ideals that are actually quite twisted and dysfunctional. Ms Honor Jones, for instance, our supposedly oppressed – and supposedly heroic – senior editor at The Atlantic:
Whatever the author’s embellishment in any instance above, the ideal itself is worth noting. As is the weirdly unanimous approval from equally woke and statusful peers. Because apparently there’s a moral universe in which such behaviour is considered boastworthy, a basis for applause.
…
20 years from now what’s the betting one of the kids will write a book called My Mother Was A Narcissist….?
The day these new pronouns were announced would have been the day I filed for divorce and sole custody, so this guy is a better man than I am.
What, what am I saying? Of course he’s not! He’s enabling this mindless, narcisssistic lunacy and screwing up his kids.
Somewhat related.
Been married for 30 years and never felt like that. Is it a progressive thing?
My friend had his wife of 10 yrs (and 2 kids) leave him for a woman. He was much more devastated than if she just left him or left for another man. It called his whole identity into question.
How do you find out you are bisexual except by cheating on your spouse? And a second kind of infidelity is writing an essay like hers. Too common in the internet age.
It does, I think, belong to a genre of articles in which ostentatiously ‘progressive’ ladies boast of their bewildering approaches to marriage.
And we mustn’t forget this jolly compilation.
Odd that they refer to themselves as “I”.
Islam and BRICS (I still don’t see what on earth South Africa has achieved to justify inclusion therein) must be shaking their heads in disbelief at how easy their respective goals are becoming.
“Can we still call you mom?” my 9-year-old asked.
Reading that, I swore. Loud enough to startle the cats.
She not only just terrorized her child into feeling imminent abandonment, she doesn’t even realize it.
Where did the notion that people controlled the pronouns used by others? You have no right to “your pronouns” madam. I and I alone determine with which pronouns to use when I refer to you. You are allowed a proper name and I will be happy to defer to that but the pronouns are mine. I’m thinking they may be dip and sh*t.
Maoists, radfems, and the clinically insane. But I repeat myself.
David, I admire your resilience. Seriously, I do. I find reading the original articles to be oppressive and anxiety producing. I far prefer reading your interpretation, keeping it at an arm’s length so to speak. I know this makes me weak and pathetic, and the kind of person who hides within his echo chamber. But still, I would rather not spend my time trolling through Scary Mommy, and attempting to keep my head out of the oven. I don’t know how you do it.
The kid reveals a major flaw in the whole pronoun charade. You don’t use pronouns when talking *to* a person, only when you’re talking *about* a person. Someone who complains that you have misgendered them should be reminded that you weren’t talking to them, so butt out.
Tiresome narcissist tiringly narcissizes.
I also get a snort out of their new obsession with pronouns. A grammatical term I bet they could not have defined 5 years ago. Quick, “Them Elend”, explain to us other grammatical terms.
How about a dangling participle ? No, it’s not that thing you no longer like between your “partners” legs.
Monty Python couldn’t have written it any better…
“I now identify as a bisexual, nonbinary person,”…while my husband thinks he’s a kumquat.
[ Glances at tip jar, resumes wiping bar in a stoical fashion. ]
I find reading the original articles to be oppressive and anxiety producing.
Credit note only, no refunds.
I actually kind of hope my wife does this to me.. give me the excuse I need. Needless to say, I’d have nothing to do with her after that. For one thing, by coming out as bisexual, she’s openly admitting to adultery. And for another, I’d consider my kids mental health in serious jeopardy.
Why is she using “me” and not “us”?
Pronouns: the commies use “comrade” for everyone. Much cleaner…but lacking in bullying power and narcissism.
A mother declaring her sudden-onset bisexuality (real or imagined) to her six-year-old child strikes me as a little odd. Ms Elend is, after all, married, to a man – supposedly happily – and so any lesbianism would be entirely theoretical, would it not? Unless of course she intends to break her marriage vows and have an affair, thereby jeopardising her marriage and inflicting serious, possibly life-denting distress on her own children.
And that’s before we get to the whole “Mommy suddenly feels a bit dysmorphic, or at least feels she ought to be” thing.
They/them is plural. So is her husband guilty of bigamy?
Her husband should find a good family law attorney that specializes in defending men. He’s going to need it.
If it happened to me, I’d say I didn’t marry them, I married her, so if she isn’t her, they aren’t my wife.
A mother declaring her sudden-onset bisexuality (real or imagined) to her six-year-old child strikes me as a little odd.
Some people rise to the responsibility of being a parent, some people have kids as accessories or a captive audience to their *lived* lives.
All I see is an aging 40 year old women with a massive ego and no wisdom screeching “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!”
“If it wasn’t for your dad and you kids, I could be off shagging other women!”
That.
Well, small children generally appreciate, and very much benefit from, family stability. it’s hard to see how a six-year-old is expected to process this information, from their mother, without at least entertaining some distressing thoughts. For a parent to have not considered this rather obvious detail, as seems to be the case, suggests a level of self-involvement one might regard as pathological.
So, the mental illness didn’t fully manifest itself until she realized SHE is getting older, and less attractive. So she decides to make herself more interesting; at least to herself.
What’s struck me most is that I don’t think there’s a single word in that piece that’s true.
Her resume on her website here tells us she completed a Double Major in Creative Writing, American Studies and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults and that she’s also worked as a “Creative writing mentor for teen girls”.
So what I think we’re actually reading here is basically autobiographical fan fiction.
A bit like when one of those postmodern novelists writes themselves a walk-on part in their own novels – but shittier.
And I think I might genuinely find that prospect even more disturbing than if she really had done all the things she says she’s done in that piece.
Because very real fractures have emerged in almost every corner of society – in government, in education, in the workplace, even in the military – the military for God’s sake!
And these fractures are having very painful real world consequences.
They’re causing girls to do irreparable harm to their bodies before they’ve even turned 21.
They’re causing people to be bullied, threatened, and even sacked for thinking women are women and men aren’t.
They’re causing others to be intimidated into humiliating silence.
And here’s this witless imbecile making this shit up just so that she can crow about how she’s a writer, a real one, at high school reunions.
That’s an understatement!
I stand by my original judgement. It’s either a “shitpost”, or she’s a sociopath. Or both.
This is not “The Women’s Room” wife finding herself.
It’s hard to see how a six-year-old is expected to process this information, from their mother, without at least entertaining some distressing thoughts.
At the very least, would it have killed her to call a family gathering where she could explain it to the kids, rather than dumping it on them out of the blue?
I refuse to believe that The scene in the car with the kids actually happened. Never mind HER, what kind of father would tolerate that?
I must say that I read these gems you find, David, and after a while I strongly think these women are just trolling us. There’s no way they keep this crap up day-in, day-out. Perfectly exhausting.
But I can certainly see the likes of that squirrel-looking Elend woman cranking out clickbait like this article for a living.
…what kind of father would tolerate that…
Ahem. Her ‘partner’ was driving. No information on the chromosonal arrangement of said ‘partner’.
Video or it never happened.
“All I see is an aging 40 year old women with”
Without a large bottle of cheap Aussie wine in which she could find herself…
I blame 60s pop psych for all this “finding myself” crap, this navel gazing. If you are a vacuous twit and gaze inward you will find…nothing. You find yourself by building yourself, by testing yourself against reality and finding out what you can accomplish and what you can do. Can you camp in the wild, catch a fish, pass the bar exam, change a tire, make stir-fry, write software, write a poem, shoot a gun accurately, make people laugh? Your feelings come and go and are not a stable basis for your personality.
These people, lesbians mostly, aren’t as interested in “shagging other women”. At some level, I could at least understand or (barely) respect that. In a biological, evolutionary sense it would make some degree of sense. No, people like this are 100% about “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!…ETC. ETC. ETC!!!! TO 11!!!!!” This is obvious to those who have done the analysis. Their egos override 1,000,000,000 years of evolutionary sense.
Guiltily places small amount in the tip jar to part cover a longstanding, overdrawn bar tab.
cheese and crackers. retarded is what I read. What a shame. Poor father and kids. Divorce will ensure documentation. Unless.. the dad is as retarded as the mom.. kids thrown to the wind. sad sad sad.
Forgetting that the courts are as retarded, if not more so, than the parties involved. It’s a 🤡 🤡 🌎
This is the definition of unstable. Literally.
“I was giving a speech at a grad-school reunion. I nervously introduced myself as the former student known as “that girl who sings.” My horror set in quickly. How could I misgender myself after making sure everyone in my life referred to me properly? I worried that maybe I was not really nonbinary.”
Is it wrong that I want to beat this woman severely? You know what I’ve never wondered in all my decades? Whether I was “binary” or whether I was male. Only crazy people wonder things like that.
I haven’t read all of the original article, but I bet she views the 6 yo’s “can I still call you mum?” with pride (“Look at how right-on my kids are. I raised them, you know.”). I doubt she realises that most people don’t read that and think ‘what progressive and socially conscious young people”, rather it just seems terribly sad.
And also, unless you are planning on having an affair/leaving your husband why would you tell your kids who you could be off with, were it not for them?” If a ‘cis’ mother turned to her kids and said, “if it wasn’t for you and your father, I could be off boning the entire Brisbane Broncos” we’d rightly think that was pretty deranged.
Narcissism much?
It’s hard to be sure exactly how much embellishment is in play. But as with the other articles linked in the thread, these things are presumably intended to present the author or subject in a fairly flattering light, as sympathetic, resilient or long-suffering, even heroic. Stunning and brave, as they say. Which, again, suggests obliviousness and insufferable self-involvement. I mean, if this is the idealised, airbrushed version of the author…
Bless you. May all your things be fully charged.
It’s also worth bearing in mind the extent to which so many of these ‘progressive’ ladies seem to have ideals that are actually quite twisted and dysfunctional. Ms Honor Jones, for instance, our supposedly oppressed – and supposedly heroic – senior editor at The Atlantic:
Whatever the author’s embellishment in any instance above, the ideal itself is worth noting. As is the weirdly unanimous approval from equally woke and statusful peers. Because apparently there’s a moral universe in which such behaviour is considered boastworthy, a basis for applause.
“I now identify as a BIsexual, NONBINARY person,”
I am guessing that means “I consider my sexual identity to be across a broad and vast spectrum but I only shag two points along it, you know, the REAL ones . . .”
[ Slides badly sellotaped bag of crisps to Stephanie. ]
On the house.
I *do* wonder what percentage of their clicks are from sites like David’s.
You’re harshing my fantasy of being peerless and unique.
Meanwhile, another problematic problem which is probably also racist is discovered.
I was mildly surprised that intimations of racism didn’t crop up. Still, early days.
“60s pop psych”
Ah the heady days of Johnathan Livingston Seagull…
(OK, 1970…)
There have been lots of people, mostly women, who have left marriages to “focus on themselves”, in spite of children, in spite of a wonderful husband. This has been going on for a long time and not because they were “nonbinary”. It is children fleeing the responsibilities of adulthood and dressing it up in fancy language.
Still, early days.
Indeed, note that the article mentioned “research” and farming only in the UK, Urp, and ‘Murka, not a single thing from Africa, Asia, South ‘Murka, or anyplace where insects are already eaten.
Clearly hwite supremacy and colonization, or something.
Her script reads like the ad copy on the back of a box of chardonnay. Not the cheap kind, the really good kind you get at Whole Foods.
And in the interests of balance, we mustn’t forget the dramas of the ‘progressive’ father.
I blame Henrik Ibsen. Which reminds me, in all my years I still haven’t figured out what sickness I need to get that would require me to go to Italy.
Well, this is a uniquely congenial forum.
[ Looks nervously at door leading to correction booth. ]
[ Straightens coasters, bar-wiping intensifies. ]
I realized I was bisexual and nonbinary when I was almost 40
All I see is an aging 40 year old women with a massive ego and no wisdom screeching “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!”
It is children fleeing the responsibilities of adulthood and dressing it up in fancy language.
In the years leading up to menopause, the female endocrine system dumps huge amounts of sex hormones into the system in a belated attempt to encourage procreation before the egg factory shuts down for good. All that estrogen makes women in their forties batshit crazy. -er. Combined with the very real neurochemistry of the seven year itch and you have the driver behind so many women abandoning their families about this point in their lives.
So one part Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism, one part The Wall is Cruel.
some people have kids as accessories or a captive audience to their *lived* lives.
That’s not uniquely female. I have several male friends who seem to think that their children exist primarily to ensure they will always be able to find players for their favourite board game.
who have left marriages to “focus on themselves”,
Betty Friedan had a lot to do with that … she was utterly disappointed in marriage, so instead of looking inward, she looked outward and based her feminism on a foundation of the Marxism she grew up in.
@Steve E
Monty Python couldn’t have written it any better…
“I now identify as a bisexual, nonbinary person,”…while my husband thinks he’s a kumquat.
Monty Python did write it:
“We are now no longer the knights who say ‘NI’. We are now the knights who say… Ecky-ecky-ecky-ptannnng-ni-wah. Therefore, we must give you a test!”
“What is this test, O knights of – O knights who so recently said ‘NI’?”
<a few lines later>
“Stop saying the word!”
“What word?”
“I cannot tell. Suffice to say, ’tis one of the words the knights of NI cannot hear!”
“Well, how can I not say the word, if you don’t tell me what it is???”
“Aaaargh!!!”
Self-absorption? Check.
Dictating how others must speak? Check.
All that estrogen makes women in their forties batshit crazy. -er. Combined with the very real neurochemistry of the seven year itch and you have the driver behind so many women abandoning their families about this point in their lives.
Add to that in the normal course of life if you’ve had kids in your 20’s, they have or will soon be leaving home. This is a very vulnerable spot where women who see their ‘life’ as almost over rather than just a series of stages or milestones to embrace feel they have to abandon everyone and everything to “start over”. And if you don’t have an internalized value system that gives weight to one’s responsibilities to your family, there’s nothing to brake the rush to ‘find yourself’ sans everyone else.
To add to Darleen’s comment: “yourself” is best grounded in relationships (family), country, and faith. A pure individual devoid of these is empty indeed.
I still haven’t figured out what sickness I need to get that would require me to go to Italy.
TB used to be a favourite
It seems to me that finding oneself – or “getting to know myself,” as Ms Elend puts it – is usually a by-product of ageing and just getting on with the stuff of life. And yet some people seem to think their as-yet-undiscovered specialness requires some kind of project to that end. Some new and more fashionable identity, for instance. Such being the vastness of this supposedly untapped resource and source of wonder.
As I said a while ago, regarding Honor Jones, mentioned upthread,
And since you ask, no, it didn’t go down terribly well.
Ah. That’s what we on this side of the pond used to use Arizona for. Still, no pity for ‘poor’ Nora.
“finding myself”–through experience, I “found” that I like to run and lift weights and hate spiders. I “found” that I can tolerate annoying noises and have no sense of smell. It is good to know these things in relation to reality. There is no “self” absent reality and other people.
I knew one newly they/them who told its young children “i’m not mom any more. Call me “parent”. Its eldest daughter is now trans. Fortunately the father got full custody of the other kids.
I’m just going to leave this here and then run away.
then run away
To sea?
beware: rum, sodomy, and the lash.
beware: rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Not necessarily in that order.
Somehow, I doubt it. Like, I really doubt it.
https://twitter.com/seanferrick/status/1637621515553239040
rum, sodomy, and the lash
Thre traditional Royal Navy version, rum, bum and the lash, is more euphonious but I guess would be misunderstood on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
The fact that she has her nine-year-old in a booster seat should have been a bit of a warning flag as to her mental stability even before the pronoun silliness. (Unless the kid is the reincarnation of Herve Villechaise, in which case…)
Thre traditional Royal Navy version, rum, bum and the lash, is more euphonious but I guess would be misunderstood on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
I thought bum was yer bottom on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was fanny that means front part on the Brit side, and back part on the Yank side. Although bum could also mean lazy, shiftless, homeless type person on the Yank side; not sure if same on the Brit side.
Few Americans know that “bum” can mean bottom, and vanishingly few ever use it that way.
I recall it being used mostly by small children and slightly bawdy women pretending to be coy. As I recall as a child swapping out ‘bum’ for ‘butt’ about the time one stopped putting the word ‘tippy’ in front of ‘toes’. I had for some reason forgotten about ‘bum’ until as a younger teenager hearing it used in British TV like Two Ronnies and Doctor In the House. I did not know ‘fanny’ changed meaning crossing the Pond. I wonder if that has ever caused me confusion…Ummm…whose “front”? Fanny Flag was a moderately well known female comedian/comedienne/writer/game show panelist over here back in the 60’s & 70’s.
I think switching genders on your spouse counts as a breach of warranty. Repair needed.