From Montreal, via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, another feat of unrelenting pretension:
The proud author, Ms Julia Wright, a student at McGill University, is, we learn, a them – a paranormally ungendered being. And all is not well:
As one might, all things considered.
Well, as possibilities, the words neurotic and aggravating come to mind. And we could perhaps throw in hysterical, as a bonus, what with the whole hyperventilating-and-vomiting thing.
As for rudeness, pressuring others to pretend things on demand, despite the reality right in front of them, is not the most obvious recipe for civility and mutual respect. Some, for instance, will have come to realise that The Pronoun Game, so very much in fashion, is often a way to exert power over others, by making them say things, publicly and repeatedly, that they don’t for a minute believe to be true. There is, after all, the issue of probity.
And once you start playing The Pronoun Game, a game of pretend, it’s by no means clear how you might stop pretending before things veer into farce. Which, as we’ve seen, they very often do.
And then of course there’s the fact that the Pronoun Game is by definition a game all about you, but which others are expected to play, or are coerced to play, albeit in small, supporting roles. Not an altogether thrilling prospect.
However, Ms Wright appears unconcerned by such details – which affect other people, people who aren’t her. Instead, she returns to a much more engaging subject – namely, herself and her extensive list of feelings:
Again, as so often, one has to ask – exactly which player in this drama is doing the misgendering? The unnamed presenter who sees a young woman named Julia and refers to her as she; or the young woman named Julia who expects to be perceived as something other than she is? Indeed, as something that doesn’t exist. The kind of young woman who tells us, with an air of triumph, “I had been thinking about my pronouns daily for over two years.” As one does, when one’s mental wellbeing is not at all in question.
But ours is an age in which self-preoccupied young women are encouraged to boast, in print, of their unhappy compulsions, and to bemoan the fact that they appear to be what they are – no more, no less – and consequently struggle to seem complicated and fascinating. Specifically, a miraculously sexless being, “neither a man nor a woman.”
Probably. Not everyone wants to play.
Perhaps the word fad would be less offensive. Or tedious status-game played by the pretentious and insufferable. I’m open to suggestions.
It occurs to me that being surrounded by students and professors, for whom faddishness and contrivance are often the stuff of status, may not be entirely helpful on the mental health front. If everyone around you is playing the same game, and pretending the same things, and doing it competitively, you could easily lose your bearings.
Ah yes, the woe of not being immediately and telepathically perceived as “non-binary,” and thus being denied the status of terribly interesting. As agonies go, it’s pretty niche. But given Ms Wright’s apparent lack of interest in how her Game Of Self may impose upon others, I’m tempted to suggest that respect, a reciprocal virtue, may not be the most apt card to play.
Update, via the comments, which you’re reading of course:
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