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Anthropology Pronouns Or Else

When They Won’t Keep On Saying Just How Special You Are

August 17, 2026 56 Comments

From the pages of Metro, where Ms Rachel Meghan is talking about herself:

“I’m non-binary,” I told a neighbour. We were at a barbecue and talking about queerness. I went on to explain that although my pronouns are they/she and ‘she’ is acceptable, I much prefer ‘they’.

The barbecue is in Hell. Did I mention that?

“That’s cool,” my neighbour replied, adding, “My daughter is also non-binary.”

Or, “I have badges too,” she said.

I felt accepted – but then, just seconds later, that same person yelled to their partner at the grill: “She said she wanted a hamburger!”

Oh calamity. All that specialness – dashed to pieces.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened; far from it – which is why I reluctantly continue to offer up ‘she’ as a pronoun. It’s exhausting having to constantly correct people…

And yet correcting people – constantly – attempting to make them mouth absurdities, remains a go-to impulse. An irresistible temptation. Despite those claims of exhaustion. Funny, that. Whether other parties might be fatigued by this habit is, alas, not explored.

Throw the fact that I’m a mother into the mix and people basically consider it permission to see me as a woman

Well, given observable reality, that will happen.

“Everything came to a head after I became a mother,” says she. Pretensions of themness, the craving to seem special – perhaps more special than one is – would, I suppose become harder to sustain. Given the arrival of someone more important, someone whose needs tend to come first.

I never saw myself as a mum when I was younger, just because I didn’t think I’d ever be in a long-term relationship.

That’s the spirit.

I always thought I was too weird to date.

Not sure whether that’s a fear or an aspiration.

My husband and I got married in 2020, and I became pregnant in 2023.

As women so often do.

My anatomy allows me to be pregnant, no matter how I identify, it’s just how my body works.

Specifically, a woman’s body.

But I’m also a spiritual person,

As, like, totally spiritual people feel compelled to say.

So, becoming a mum gave me a new confidence and a fresh level of knowing myself.

A spirituality of self. How terribly innovative.

After my maternity leave, I worked at a very queer space, a bookstore and bar, where I was surrounded by the LGBTQ+ community. It was here I really felt I’d found my people, and the words to describe myself.

Again, self. And repeated descriptions thereof.

I was still worried about having to correct others frequently; but eventually I decided it was more worth it to live as my truth. In 2025, I came out as genderqueer, then non-binary.

So many badges, and they’re all so shiny. Also, my truth.

My son is two now, and still too little to truly understand, but as he gets older I explain a little bit more here and there. I say, “Mummy isn’t a woman; they’re just Mummy.”

Better start saving for those counselling sessions.

My son even calls me ‘bubba’ instead of ‘mama’ most of the time – I didn’t instruct him to do that, I think he just clocked my queerness on his own.

As two-year-olds do, of course. I can hear those eyebrows raising from here.

The newer people in my life, like my co-workers and regulars at the bookstore, have no issues using they/them pronouns – but I’ve noticed that it’s a lot harder for people that have known me for a long time.

Having known the author as a girl and then as a woman, presumably. Not as some imaginary, unsexed being. One who’s had sex and consequently a child.

My husband – who had no problem with me coming out – sometimes struggles, but he makes a pointed effort to refer to me gender-neutrally.

Imagine the fun. All those corrections and self-corrections. All that pointed effort. The evenings must fly by.

However, one family member, while very leftist and accepting,

No laughing at the back.

finds it hard seeing me as anything but a woman. When I told them about my pronouns, they even went as far to say “What does it matter if you’re not in the room?”

How very dare they.

But of course it matters. It’s about how I want to be perceived by the world, and the people who love me should be supportive of that; wherever I am.

You see, in a sense, she’s always in the room, policing how her self is being perceived. On account of being so spiritual.

Update, via the comments:

What’s noteworthy, I think, is how closely these things follow a familiar, if unconvincing, pattern.

Say, the feeble, retrospective excuses for ongoing pretensions. Ms Meghan tells us of not wanting to get her nails done as a girl, and not wishing to straighten her hair, as if this were the very measure of things. Or the complaints of being exhausted by her own chosen contrivance, as if her attention-seeking were only being done reluctantly, as if she weren’t the author of it.

And the rather implausible claim of not influencing small children to make them mouth the expected absurdities. The demanded affirmation. In madam’s case, the claim that her two-year-old son “just clocked my queerness on his own,” unprompted, while simultaneously boasting of telling said two-year-old, “Mummy isn’t a woman.”

And of course the strange lack of concern for those on whom these tiresome dramas are being imposed. Including her own child.

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Reading time: 5 min
Written by: David
Academia Anthropology

Lifeform Solidarity

August 15, 2026 75 Comments

Further to recent rumblings in the comments, I bring scenes of an immensely radical gardening project conjured into being in June 2020 by Seattle’s progressive-activist community:

https://t.co/ifrtXG4r0V pic.twitter.com/SVoqRie115

— President Dr RollerGator MVIP PhD (@drrollergator) August 13, 2026

More scenes of radical signage can be had here.

Footage of said radicalism, this wokeness that didn’t happen, is also available:

Don’t forget when the main character of the CHAZ entered pic.twitter.com/4Og0gCBGAg

— Skipbeat (@Skipxbeat) August 14, 2026

I know. You may want a moment to steady yourselves. What with all that deep political heft.

And because it bears repeating:

“As an Academic, I can pretend not to understand things at a level you cannot even imagine…” https://t.co/kQvZZeN3E4 pic.twitter.com/hnX7uUdqJW

— Conan, Summer Aesthete (@conan_esq) August 13, 2026

Readers who browse the comments of this blog – and by God, you should – will recall that Martha Lincoln, our associate professor, our fearless anthropologist – the one shutting down replies and retreating from any risk of correction – frames The Atlantic as right-wing.

For readers unfamiliar with this supposedly right-wing publication, allow me to share with you a few samples of its contents:

When women who are slightly black are oppressed by not being allowed to blast out loud hip-hop in the university library, where people are trying to study for exams.

When women are oppressed by crumbs.

When women, especially black women, are oppressed by crossword puzzles.

When black women who thieve habitually are the real victims.

I could of course go on, but we’d be here all day.

And hey, in academia, all things are possible.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Pronouns Or Else

And Lo, An Enraged Male

August 4, 2026 142 Comments

Or, Discourse Was Attempted:

Perfectly normal. pic.twitter.com/AShv6sF3b0

— Gay Not Queer (@Gaynotqueer1) August 2, 2026

Now, ladies. About your changing rooms…

Update:

Our Bellowing Man-Witch shouts, theatrically, “I am the villain of this world,” as if he were a martyr, presumably in some attempt to elicit sympathy and thereby compliance. But in a non-trivial sense, he is a villain. As I said regarding this bestubbled maiden:

But what strikes me most is the fact that Mr Paquette doesn’t seem to understand that what he wants – i.e., the ability to coerce and dictate, to bully others into lying – is not something that he should want.

Wanting the power to make others tell quite blatant lies about what is and isn’t real, and to thereby make those people cowed and absurd, is what makes him a bad person. A villain in this low-grade cross-dressing drama.

The demand for dishonesty, the demand that lies should be imposed, ain’t a virtue or a basis for applause.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Travel

New Neighbours

August 1, 2026 127 Comments

Brendan O’Neill on life in an age of euphemism:

Spain was invaded yesterday. There is no other way to put it. Close to 50,000 foreigners, mostly men, swarmed into Spanish territory and laughed and jeered as they went. Every generation before ours would have called that an invasion, and we should too. The era of euphemism is over. The left’s house of lies has fallen. We can all now see with our own eyes that our nations are being overwhelmed by cocky, often hostile men from afar.

The footage from Ceuta is extraordinary – throngs of foreigners, mostly men from Morocco, gatecrashed an enclave of the Spanish kingdom. They scaled fences, kicked down gates, colonised the beach. Some punched the air with glee, clearly delighted with their successful storming of Spanish territory.

An assault. All cheered on by ladies of a certain kind.

Says Mr O’Neill,

I dare the left to call this ‘asylum seeking’.

At which point, the reliably ludicrous LBC presenter James O’Brien comes to mind.

With all of the earnestness he could conjure, Mr O’Brien described the intruders as akin to “climate refugees… moving from inhabitable to habitable,” before referring to Ceuta as “nowhere near as inhospitable” as Morocco. Despite Ceuta’s climate being indistinguishable from, say, Tangier or Tétouan.

“There was something about the footage that shook me to my core,” said he. Though the scenes of mass invasion and subsequent looting and disorder – described as a “wave of humanity” – were much less of a concern to Mr O’Brien than the prospect of some onlookers, and perhaps quite a few local residents, regarding the violation as less than ideal.

And clearly, these immensely vibrant young men, overwhelmingly of fighting age and remarkably unencumbered by women or identifying documents, are merely using other people’s cars to start fires of neighbourliness. Arson being the universal language of warm feelings.

It’s all one big expression of gratitude. Of common humanity. The ennobling effects of which can be found with little effort.

Because sharing and caring, right?

And when the uninvited newcomers swarming through your streets start desecrating your ancestors’ graves while hurling rocks at you, it’s just a sign that they want to get to know you better.

I’m reminded of the scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which Zaphod Beeblebrox visits the headquarters of the eponymous publication, which is under attack, being bombarded from orbit. Despite the thunderous explosions, he encounters obliviousness. In disbelief, and trying to be heard over the explosions, he shouts, “Do you know your building’s being bombed?!”

As a summary of our times, and in more ways than one, it does have a certain resonance.

Update, via the comments:

Chow Bag quotes this,

With all of the earnestness he could conjure, Mr O’Brien described the intruders as akin to “climate refugees… moving from inhabitable to habitable,” before referring to Ceuta as “nowhere near as inhospitable” as Morocco. Despite Ceuta’s climate being indistinguishable from, say, Tangier or Tétouan.

And replies,

“Always respect the media!”

Well, setting aside Mr O’Brien’s limited grasp of the Mediterranean climate, he did bring into relief one of the key ideological differences of our time, one that blurs into fantasy and psychodrama.

I mean, if you can watch the footage of the invasion and the almost immediate looting, arson, assaults, etc., and feel – or pretend to feel – an urge to indulge the invaders, to side with them over the people whose neighbourhoods, homes and businesses are being trashed and plundered, that’s… quite something.

It’s a line that divides, and in a significant way. It does suggest a rather fundamental incompatibility.

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Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Art

A Lot Of Art Was Swinging About

July 28, 2026 52 Comments

I know, I know. I’ve been starving you of culture and refinement.

Allow me to correct that scandalous oversight:

The Western Europe you were talking about? 🫪😁

Two million euros spent on a dance performance by naked black people. “The Belgian government spent two million euros on an event aimed at protesting the era of colonization.” pic.twitter.com/lBXQ0Y4m1B

— Rusich 🇷🇺🇸🇪🇳🇴 (@Rusich7777) July 27, 2026

“I like it very much,” says one lady in the audience.

I knew you’d be intrigued.

The piece in question – by Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira, titled Repertório N.3, and performed during Ostend’s publicly funded Dansand! festival in 2025 – is, as I’m sure you spotted, a triumph of the political and profound.

Not only is the liveliness above “challenging and resisting the violence and oppression that black bodies face,” it’s a “brave elaboration of a queer black (self)-defense against physical and discursive violence,” and a “piece of queer Black Brazilian anti-colonial resistance.”

But you knew that, of course.

More specifically,

Confrontation is a crucial part of this performance. The two dancers enter nude, and dare the audience, sitting on chairs decked out in a rectangle around the white rubber mat, to acknowledge their existence.

And then the aesthetic stuff really kicks in.

Throughout the performance, the artists work with a minimalistic movement vocabulary, with simple movements such as mimicking swinging a lasso, a feminine roll of the wrists or shading of the eyes, and reclining on a rolling table in a pose reminiscent of Manet’s Olympia while being dragged around the stage by randomly chosen spectators.

And what’s more,

the performers create half a heart with their hand and invite members of the audience to add the other half with their hands.

It’s all deeply emotional. Very moving.

The performers seek out the gazes of the spectators, and test their boundaries. As the performance moves on, the confrontational intimacy of the performers increases. They move towards the public, charge ahead, bend down on all fours, and stand on their heads, exposing their genitals just mere feet away from the audience.

Reminds me of a club I was dragged to back in the Nineties.

Armed with a deep and radical knowledge of “postcolonial, gender and race studies,” and via the medium of nude side-shuffling, the performers are “finding new ways to represent the experiences of minorities.” Should any readers endowed with brownness care to elaborate on this point, preferably while dressed, by all means do.

For those of you craving more, highlights of another performance, from the ImPulsTanz Festival 2024, can be found here. Given the, um, nature of the piece, I’ve had to choose a screengrab with some care.

No, don’t thank me. All part of the service.

Update, via the comments:

As so often, questions are raised not by the mediocrities and grifters doing the, um, performing, but rather by the audience. The people who turn up and watch, as if they were beholding something of enormous importance, a feat of “anti-colonial resistance.”

As if “the experience of minorities” were somehow being epitomised – and defended against “discursive violence” – by two tiresome queens stomping about in the nude.

Daniel Ream quips,

This is literally just Dancing Bear videos.

While Dicentra adds,

Never underestimate the power of White Guilt to move some people.

The performance and its rather strained justifications do seem tailored to the kind of racial neuroticism favoured by progressives. Their hang-ups and affectations. An apparently inexhaustible resource to be exploited.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.