The Crowhill Journal

I’m seeing it more and more. On LinkedIn. In email footers. On discussion boards. People are listing “their” pronouns.

Count me out.

If someone I know asks me to speak to and/or about them a certain way, and to use some non-standard pronoun when referring to them, I will try to do that, out of basic courtesy. But there are several aspects of this “my pronouns” business that I think are wrong-headed.

First, I reject the idea that you can simply adopt an identity on your own, based on how you feel about yourself. It seems too much like a kid insisting that you call him Batman.

Identity is more than what you feel about yourself. It’s related to what you do, and how you live, and it’s something that involves some negotiation with your peers. It’s not something you decide on your own and insist everyone else has to believe.

Second, language is not any one person’s property. It’s something we collectively agree on.

When I was a kid, it was accepted that “he” was the neutral pronoun, meaning a man, or a person without specifying sex. Somehow (and I completely don’t get this) that was considered sexist, and we’ve been through a few decades of wrestling with various awful ways of not saying “he.” It seems as if we’re moving towards “they,” which I don’t like, but … again, I don’t own the language. It’s a collective endeavor, and if that’s where we end up, so be it.

If the culture decides “they” is the correct pronoun for a person of non-specified gender, am I allowed to say “no, in my version of the English language, it’s ‘he'”?

That sounds like something Calvin (the cartoon character) would do.

There is no “my version of the English language,” and it’s narcissistic to think that.

Third, think about what it would take to go along with this pronoun thing. For every person I know, or might possibly refer to, I would have to remember “their” pronouns. I would have to create a new map in my brain, and this new map would basically be telling me, constantly, that gender identity is one of the most important things to know about a person.

I don’t believe that, and I think it’s a mistake to go in that direction.

A few decades ago, the “liberal” position was that work was work, and what (or who) you did on your own time was your own business. We weren’t even supposed to judge Bill Clinton for having an affair, so long as he was doing a good job as president. We were supposed to be “mature” like the French, and not worry about such things.

The liberal position has done a complete flip. Now we’re supposed to keep everyone’s sexual business top of mind.

No. I don’t want to know what you do behind closed doors, and I’m not going to reorganize the way I think and speak to accommodate that.

If you’re my friend and you ask me to speak about you a certain way, I will accommodate you. If you’re going to be a Stalinist and demand that I speak a certain way, I have two words for you, the first of which I don’t use.

The idea that a person can insist that everyone else has to change their understanding of identity and language, just to satisfy some sort of political / social agenda, is absurd, and I won’t play that game.

Yesterday I watched a few videos from the doc I linked in a thread below. I really like his videos. He doesn’t scold. He doesn’t accuse. He just lays out the case in a clear way.

That sort of an approach from our government officials would do way more to eliminate “vaccine hesitancy” than this finger-wagging, “our patience is running out” nonsense.

Honestly, Biden’s approach is so bad, the devil on my left shoulder is telling me he doesn’t actually want to encourage people to get the vaccine, he wants to use “the unvaccinated” as a wedge issue.

The extremes on this issue are absurd.

Some people on the right act as if the virus isn’t serious. No, folks. It’s deadly serious, and it’s killing lots of people.

Some people on the left act as if the solution is for a small collection of authorized people in white coats to tell all the rest of us what to do, and to ridicule anyone who has questions.

As I’ve said before, I would like to see a seminar where all the questions and the more prominent conspiracy theories are laid out on the table and examined. Calmly. Without accusations.

I know a young woman who has fears how the vaccines would affect pregnancy. That’s not a crazy fear, and wagging your finger at her and saying, “what else do we need to do?” is not going to solve it. Neither is some pat answer about a study. We all know there hasn’t been time for that, and you generally can’t do studies on pregnant women.

I know a young couple who both had Covid, and therefore have natural immunity. They don’t know why a vaccine is going to help them.

You can’t lump those sorts of fears in with the Bill Gates conspiracy theories and such. The “unvaccinated” are not all the same.

Let’s have a clear-headed, honest national discussion that treats this issue like a public health emergency it is and not like an opportunity to score partisan points.

Mike Pence wrote a decent editorial about education. Time to end government’s monopoly on education

[O]nline learning has allowed parents to peek into their child’s virtual classroom, where for the first time, they can see and hear everything their children are being taught. As a result, many parents are now rightly concerned that the primary mission of many public schools is no longer to educate America’s youth but to indoctrinate them with a radical left-wing political ideology.

The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the growing wokeness epidemic, created a perfect storm in America’s classrooms – forcing countless American families to flee in search of shelter elsewhere. The Census Bureau reports that homeschooling has tripled.

I think the education establishment has come to the conclusion that the American family is too lazy and too addicted to “free” education to do anything serious about the situation.

Some few have pulled their kids out, but most — when faced with the choice of lowering their standard of living to afford their kids a better education — will choose the higher standard of living.

I think the only way to make progress is to change the terms of the debate.

First, from a constitutional perspective, the issue is not ending government’s monopoly control on education, but ending the federal government’s involvement in education. (Many people believe education is a proper matter for state and local government.)

Second, focus on the corruption of the teacher’s unions and break their control.

Third, emphasize a “back to basics” approach and squeeze out all the ideological nonsense.

161: Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy

Here’s a straight answer from a doctor who works with an excellent organization I know.

Yes, vaccinated people can catch Covid and spread the virus, but they’re less likely to than un-vaccinated people because they’re not going to be contagious as long.