Retraction of the Week

The Harvard Crimson:

An earlier version of this article used the pronoun “she” to refer to Vanidy “Van” Bailey, the newly appointed director of bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer student life. In fact, Bailey prefers not to be referred to by any gendered pronoun.

[HT: Mark Steyn]

Tom Van Dyke

Tom Van Dyke, businessman, musician, bon vivant and game-show champ (The Joker's Wild, and Win Ben Stein's Money), knows lots of stuff, although not quite everything yet. A past contributor to The American Spectator Online, the late great Reform Club blog, and currently on religion and the American Founding at American Creation, TVD continues to write on matters of both great and small importance from his ranch type style tract house high on a hill above Los Angeles.

211 Comments

    • English does not contain a third person singular gender neutral personal pronoun that applies to people. Raging against the machine over that fact is what it is, but it is kinda silly.

      • Perhaps I am mistaken, but I sense that Tom wasn’t lamenting the lack of a gender neutral personal pronoun in English. I await his clarification of what this post was meant to illuminate.

        • That if Bailey’s goal was to perpetuate the stereotype that Harvard people think too fishin highly of themselves, Mission Accomplished.

          • I don’t really know what Bailey’s goal was, and I suspect none of us can do anything but speculate to that end. If I were to speculate, I would guess that Bailey’s experience of gender is different from most people’s, and Bailey has had to reckon with it in ways that most of us are lucky enough to have avoided. Obviously, Bailey’s experience is going to be foreign to most of us, but (and this also pertains to your comment below) I’d like to think there are other, kinder and more respectful responses that we might choose other than mockery. Engaging in the latter certainly doesn’t redound to our credit as thoughtful people of goodwill.

          • Hi Russell, this is a valuable viewpoint.

            Still, when public figures (and I would argue that Harvard Faculty are so) do something unusual, it’s human to laugh about it.

            I mean, when Prince started calling himself…uh….I can’t find the key for that symbol, it must be on my other keyboard…and insisted we all do the same for a while, we all had a good laugh, didn’t we?

            And we LOVE Prince (hint, that’s partly where my username comes from).

          • Perhaps you’re right, Glyph. I don’t know that I think it’s entirely apt to compare Bailey and The Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince (“Prince” for short.) Prince is a superstar whose name change was an attention-getting stunt mounted in protest against his record label. As far as I am able to gather from the excerpt above, Bailey is a much less public figure who is asking not to be identified by gendered pronounces because neither speak to Bailey’s particular experience. Is it linguistically clunky? Sure. Is it inconvenient and off-putting? Undoubtedly. Does that mean we should laugh at it? I suppose that’s one possible option.

            But just because it’s human to do something doesn’t make it commendable. I don’t know Bailey’s life, or why gendered pronouns are an uncomfortable fit. But it costs me nothing to respect a person’s wishes with regard to how they wish to be addressed, and I can’t imagine it costs Tom anything, either. I suspect Bailey’s life might have been rather harder than those of people who find “he” or “she” easy and obvious, at least in some respects. Maybe it might suit our better natures to be compassionate when we consider that possibility, and what it might mean for how we treat other people.

          • Russel, this is fair and reasonable. Even my mom, who is deeply religious and very condemning of homosexuality, is unable to summon up any antipathy toward people with gender issues.

            She (like me) can’t imagine what it would be like to wake up every day in a body that doesn’t feel like it’s ‘yours’, or to have people constantly call you the ‘wrong’ thing or treat you the ‘wrong’ way. It must be completely alienating and unmooring. So I get what you are saying.

            On the other side, I think it behooves those who have had unusual experiences to accept that not everyone is going to understand them, and try to remain good-natured if people make wrong assumptions or jokes, and try to illuminate with good humor.

            As I stated below, if Bailey had written a letter to the editor, taking it upon ***self to present the explanation and correction to people, I would be more sympathetic. But (and this could be a mistaken assumption as to what occurred) forcing the paper to make a ‘correction’ that isn’t one by standard English journalistic practices seems kind of unreasonable.

            This may not be a good analogy either, since it doesn’t go to identity, but if I decided that some commonly-used word around here – say, ‘externality’ – is really more accurately expressed as ‘flibbert’ (e-mail me for the complete definition and history of the term, it looks like the Unabomber manifesto) and I took to correcting commenters here every time they used the word ‘externality’ – how far would I get, and how would I be viewed, unless I clearly made my case, and convinced enough commenters of the rightness of that case?

          • I will admit to seeing how some might think something to the effect of “I have had it hammered in my head over and over and over and OVER AND OVER that I need to treat these people no differently than I treat anybody and next thing you know I’m now getting a lecture about how even if the English Language as it has been used since its birth is not sufficient for how I need to treat these people and now I’ve got to go out of my way to treat them differently.”

          • I don’t think we need to belabor this point, Glyph, since I think we probably agree more than we disagree. The only thing I’d add is that we really don’t know how the concern was addressed with the Crimson, or what Bailey’s demands (if any) were with regard to the correction. Neither Tom’s post nor the exceptionally snide piece from which he lifted it give us any indication.

          • Now, of course, the easiest way out of that thought is to see folks as individuals and that way you can avoid the obvious fallacy contained in the thought. (This member of Group G likes Coke… but that member of Group G likes Pepsi? LIFEQUAKE!)

            But, as fallacies go, I can see how someone might succumb to it.

          • @ Russell again, upon further reflection, I don’t think the Prince analogy is as far off as you do. Prince wanted to draw attention to purported record label malfeasance, Bailey to harmful gender stereotypes in society. Both used the media to make their case. Both may be right in their complaints. And both are using terms which have no English equivalent to make those complaints.

            I just can’t get too worked up about it if people laugh a bit. Laughter often indicates confusion.

          • It’s been decades, so I don’t recall which is correct:

            Das Fraulein ist hier und sie ist schoen., or
            Das Fraulein ist hier und es ist schoen.

          • I lived briefly in Germany and have some German friends, but don’t speak the language (though by the end of my time there I could very occasionally catch the gist of something if spoken slowly enough or repeatedly). Sorry, can’t help –

          • Russell, language will not win its war against reality.

            In discussing the question, [Mr. Lincoln] used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called its tail a leg, replied, ” Five,” to which the prompt response was made that calling the tail a leg would not make it a leg.

          • The reality is that there are people who fall outside the usual gender definitions. Language can adjust to this or not.

          • Wrong. The reality is that certain people use language as a weapon in furtherance of their politics.

            But their hegemony of the language extends to their name—and no further. She can bull and bully the Harvard Crimson, written by and for idiots, but she has no power over the NYT.

            Come to think of it, scratch that last bit: I would not want to see the NYT put to that test.

            She is a she; we accord a level of mercy to the poor transgendered who mutilate their bodies in counterfeit of the other sex, and go along with the charade. But that is a mercy, not reality. As for this passive-aggressive Harvard thug, we make proper note here. You will not tell me how to use the English language, ma’am.

          • TVD:

            Exactly, which is why the left tried to manipulate language to call or redefine every semi-automatic rifle as an “assault rifle.” Once you are able to use language to define things your way, you have won half the battle.

          • Really, I like to stay out of such things; but I have two main thoughts here.

            1). Where did we get this idea that gender is a psychological issue rather than a biological one?
            On a psychological basis, isn’t that known as ‘disassociation of self?’
            I mean, like in the same manner in which not having s strong sense of self is indicative of certain personality disorders.
            The function of the sex organs themselves is completely beside the point– as it is in this example.
            This is completely a psychological issue.

            2). I really think that if we had gendered articles and nouns in English rather than simply pronouns, this probably wouldn’t be so much of an issue.
            In fact, it seems foolish.

          • Mike,

            My German is not that good. I suspect is that “es” is grammatically “correct” (by which I mean, standard for formal language) but that “sie” is what people often use colloquially. I’d like to hear from others who know more, however.

          • Will H.,

            We do have gendered nouns in English, although I think I get what you mean, because in English, the genderedness of nouns usually tracks to biological sex, except for the rare “she” for a car or a boat, for example.

            As for gender being “psychological” over “biological,” the “psychological” aspect has at least something to do with the expectations and norms placed on people of a certain biological sex (ignoring, for simplicity, hermaphroditism or other non-typical features). So, for example, a “man” isn’t just someone with xy chromosomes, but also (depending on the culture/situation and to draw on the more common stereotypes) “strong,” “stoic,” bread-earner, assertive, doesn’t cry, etc.

            That is partially what is at issue, although perhaps it’s not wholly what’s at issue.

          • Russell,

            My inclination is to be skeptical of the supposed pretensions of anyone at Harvard and therefore to make quick assumptions about where they’re really coming from.

            Thanks for your comments here, which remind me that I need to be more accepting and less derisive.

          • There are a few problems with this German. Das Fräulein ist hier is simply bad German. Some oldsters might say Fräulein Mutter ist hier but then it forms a titular, like Miss Mutter is here.

            There’s only one case left where such a neuter diminutive appears in regular, as in Das Mädchen ist hier und sie ist schön. Not to be a nag, but there’s a difference between schon and schön. You could say Das Mädchen ist hier und sie ist schon angezogen, the girl is here and she is already dressed.

            Only the titular would take the neuter.

          • Speaking only for myself, I am likely to use “schon” only because it’s hard to write in the umlaut. (However, I guess I could always write “schoen.”)

          • She is a she; we accord a level of mercy to the poor transgendered who mutilate their bodies in counterfeit of the other sex, and go along with the charade. But that is a mercy, not reality.

            This is precisely the logical hole that Natural Law falls into. Having proclaimed a Law, you become duty bound to ignore any evidence against it.

          • Nag away (I do it to you often enough), but then proceed to answer the question 🙂 When referring to a word that’s grammatically neuter but logically feminine, does German use es or sie?

            (And I spelled it “schoen” because I expected that I’d fish up the HTML for the umlaut. Let’s give it a try: schön).

          • Russell, getting personal is cheating—as is manipulating the language to reject reality. It’s rather all of the same fabric. It’s intellectual bullying, and frankly, I don’t appreciate people playing dirty like this.

            I do feel bad for the so-called transgendered, the gender-dysphoric, whathaveyou. I do want to be kind to them.

            But I’m with one of the originators* of sex-change operations @ Johns Hopkins, and his conclusion that it is mutilation. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

            I’ve given the subject much thought and study, and I thought that you and I know each other well enough by now that I wouldn’t just throw grenades.

            For those interested in the other side of the question, Dr. Paul McHugh:

            http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/surgical-sex–35

            [*Correction: McHugh was a psychiatrist in residence @ JH, then shrink-in-chief. His argument stands.]

          • Mr. Schilling, cutting your pee-pee off will not enable you to manufacture eggs. Until that day, natural law says you’re a boy. Sorry for the inconvenience.

          • Nor does amputating all the complexity from a subject make it genuinely simple. Tempting though that may be.

          • “Russell, language will not win its war against reality.”

            Exactly!

            Plus, I don’t know what what all the coloreds problem is about me calling them coloreds. They have pigment, right? Why won’t the Crimson get off its PC high horse and call their African American students colored?

          • Agreed. I’d have already deleted it had I that option. It was totally done out of anger. Apologies to everyone.

            What I’d hav rewritten over that last one, if I could edit, would have been something like this:

            I get that conservatives don’t like it when they see the world becoming PC, and often times I find myself agreeing with them. But what I don’t get is this:

            Why does it so bother you that someone (or a group of someones) that isn’t you, that you have very limited interactions with, decides that they want to not want to be called by a gender specific pronoun? And why does it bother you that other people – again, that are not you – are willing to respect that?

            In another universe, that’s what I would have said to the post, and I would have drawn a comparison to the conservative freak out when blacks asked to be called African Americans.

            It was the threads, which I took as kind of a “They’re freaks!” giggling, which sent me over the edge and apparently transformed me into a momentary version DD.

            For which, again, I apologize.

          • Hey, we all slip up sometimes.

            As mentioned below, I am perfectly cool with referring to someone by their preferred pronoun, provided that they supply one. I think Tom is off-base with defining womanhood by the making of eggs. He might consider it sophistry to ask about women who have had a hysterectomy, but I consider it a valid point. Even if we resist referring to those who haven’t changed their plumbing, it seems like a no-brainer to accommodate those who have have (I’m not sure objecting to the procedure-of-transformation changes this).

            I wish they’d do us all a favor and lobby the MLA or whomever to get that much-needed gender-neutral pronoun in circulation. For the Jumping Bean, if no one else.

          • @Pierre:
            Yeah, I remember that from Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang: That ships are referred to as ‘she,’ even the H.M.S. Prince of Wales.

          • @ Tod – can you point to a comment that seemed like a ‘they’re freaks’ giggling? Because I haven’t seen any of that, anywhere in these threads. I think that some of the heat that is being generated is because people are seeing things that are not necessarily there?

            As I said elsewhere, sometimes laughter indicates malice; sometimes merely confusion. It’s good to distinguish between these (incidentally, this whole thread is causing some idea for a guest post to percolate in the back of my brain about laughter & humor in political discussions – where it is helpful/useful, and where it can go very, very wrong. Maybe one day).

          • Oh, I’d rather not actually. I feel like I’ve already gone farther down that rabbit hole than I wanted to on a League post.

            FWIW, though, it was in no way directed at anything you said, Glyph.

          • Fair enough, and a relief. I tried to choose my words carefully to avoid even the appearance of this, because it’s not how I feel. It’s obviously a touchy subject (actually multiple touchy subjects – gender/identity, ‘PC-ness’, language & uses thereof, potential coercion).

          • It’s the Orwellian quality that unnerves me. I reject the rejection of reality by remaking language.

            WillT, I appreciate you apologizing for me, but I’d hoped I should not have to write every exception to the rule, hysterectomies, menopause, etc. regarding the production of eggs. What I wrote was having a sex change does not make a woman.

            Sorry, that’s reality. Out of compassion, we play along with the charade that Chaz Bono is a boy, but biting our tongues is a mercy here.

            As for Ms. Bailey’s attempt to commandeer the English language for a socio-political lie—that gender is fungible, merely a social construct—I say, in the words of Gen. McAuliffe, nuts.

            And that goes for any of the rest of you would-be O’Briens: I see four fingers, not five, because there are only four. Lord, this whole world is becoming Room 101.

          • “And that goes for any of the rest of you would-be O’Briens: I see four fingers, not five, because there are only four. Lord, this whole world is becoming Room 101.”

            so pronouns engaged incorrectly, by your understanding, in the pursuit of self-identification is a form of torture so great that it puts you in mind of the most melodramatic dystopia ever put to paper?

          • But Tom, is that not overstating the case more than just a bit?

            I do not see that the Crimson’s correction reflected any kind of internal policy by the paper of the school. In doing a search on the site, I do not see any indication that a change is being considered. I do not see the Crimson apologizing, saying they erred, or making any statement whatsoever about Bailey’s sex or how issues surrounding it should be addressed either at the Crimson or elsewhere.

            Rather, I simply see that were contacted and told that Bailey prefers not be referred to with the pronoun “she;” even the correction you quote does not appear to state that Bailey complained the pronoun was incorrect or wrong, so much as indicating a personal preference that it not be used in a story introducing her. The Crimson respected her wishes and changed the one word on their online edition; they then explained below – on the same page – that the story had been changed by a single word, and why. They do not seem to have sent out any kind of announcement; it does not appear that this “correction” was printed in the paper; it was simply noted at the bottom of the electronic copy that was changed.

            I am just not seeing the Ivy League conspiracy to eliminate gender; nor am I seeing this as an attack on the King’s English; and I am certainly not seeing the torturer demanding we capitulate under duress. I don’t see anyone claiming anything about a number of lights or a tail, even metaphorically. (Except for you and Mark Steyn, that is.)

            I’m just not getting it. Seriously, I’m totally not understanding. I mean, if Harvard had just announced they were eliminating gender-specific personal pronouns I would get it; or if Bailey had announced that she was filing suit because the Crimson had used a gender-specific personal pronoun. But this?

            The only way this outcry – both here and at NRO – makes any sense to me is if I assume there was a lot of other unspoken baggage about both Ivy League schools and LGBTs being brought to the table.

          • Or, if you prefer, Orwellian can mean an intellectual honest critique of the movement of your own “side.” In this case, it might be probing what assumptions you and your conservative colleagues are bringing to the table and asking–honestly asking–how you and they might be wrong in their tactics or in how they imagine their goals and aims. That’s also “Orwellian.” In fact, it’s one of his best legacies, in my opinion.

          • I do wish we knew what pronouns were preferred.

            If it is a case of the person in question saying “I have been male-identified for as long as I can remember, the pronoun ‘she’ means nothing to me (when it refers to me, anyway), I really prefer that you use male pronouns when you speak about me” then that’s something that I have no problem with on any level whatsoever.

            If, however, the person in question is saying “high school level English is insufficient when it comes to finding the right pronouns to refer to me”, then I am more willing to roll my eyes and say “whatever”.

            Though, I suppose, if one is going to have a discussion about new and improved pronouns to refer to people for whom high school level English is insufficient, Harvard seems as good a place to have that conversation as any. Well, as any meatspace place, anyway.

          • “Ms.” came from people saying “Neither Mrs. nor Miss works for me, because it’s basically not the business of everyone who sends me a form letter whether I’m married or not. So here’s an honorific I like.” We all use it now, with few if any complaints, and no one died from the change. If “he” and “she” don’t work for a significant number of people, that’ll probably be OK too.

          • Jaybird:

            On a somewhat related note I find that my word processing program always suggests I replace “their” with “his or her,” regardless of context. Like, if I write “The Mayans were unaware that their biggest legacy would be their moles,” my computer will be pretty priggish about insisting I change it to “The Mayans were unaware that his or her biggest legacy would be his or her moles.”

            Every time it does this, I wonder what the hell that’s about.

          • Tod, Michelle Bachmann would prefer you not call her a right-wing extremist, but she doesn’t control your use of language to that extent: she has a right—that is, we accord the courtesy—to ask you spell “Michelle” and “Bachmann” correctly. We even accord further courtesy if she prefers it be pronounced “Christona” “Cracker.”

            But our hegemony over how others use the language extends no further. If Ms. Bailey has a problem with that, she can go to hell.

            And that this is the least bit puzzling to this inside the PC bubble is quite chilling, actually. An analogue would be insisting that others capitalize “He” when referring to Jesus Christ, thus stipulating His divinity.

            Um, no, that ain’t gonna fly and neither is any attempt to delegitimaize the concept of gender.

            And FTR, you no doubt know I was unhappy with your dragging race into this; you apologized, I suppose it was to me. Very well, then.

            Race is not a trump card that wins all debates. For one thing, race is fungible, gender is not. Analogies to race are only that, analogies, and they are insufficient ones.

          • If “he” and “she” don’t work for a significant number of people, that’ll probably be OK too.

            Hey, I’m a libertarian. “One” is a significant number of people in my book.

            That said, the creation of a new set of pronouns strikes me as a tall order. It seems to be in a different category than the “Ms.” one because “Ms.” gave something approximating equality. The new pronouns (if that is indeed what the person in question wanted) seem to fundamentally communicate “I am Other.”

          • Tom, I hadn’t meant to play a race card. I was trying (badly) to point out that there is nothing inherently evil with respecting people’s wishes about how they want to be labeled. It would certainly be terrible if someone told you that you didn’t have a right to call Bailey by a certain pronoun, but no one is.

            The example I wish I had thought of was the one Mike came up with, Ms. I certainly remember the derision Ms. Was treated with when some women asked to be referred to with that word. People were as angry about that as you are now Bailey, and there were similar discussions about how if we started using Ms. the mortar that held everything together would crumble and everything would go to pot. Then we all had a similar conversation when Native Americans asked us to stop calling them Indians. Or when the coloreds asked everyone to call them blacks, and then again when they asked to be called African Americans. Or when the gays told us to stop calling them fags. Or when the parents and families of developmentally disabled people asked us to start calling them developmentally disabled.

            But somehow, we have survived. We grumbled that we shouldn’t have to do things differently because someone was offended, and then we acquiesced begrudgingly, and then we didn’t care.

            And wonder of wonder, the world did not stop spinning.

            Also, regarding the Bachmann analogy:

            You are correct that a newspaper has every right to call Michelle Bachmann an “extremist” in a fluff piece about Michelle Bachmann.

            But I would bet a pint if she was quoted asking afterwards that she not be referred to as one by the paper and the paper replaced the word, your reaction would be quite different than the one I see with Bailey. So I don’t think it’s your best possible analogy.

          • Mike, it’ll only work if we are given something to replace it with.

            Agree 100%.

          • Then we all had a similar conversation when Native Americans asked us to stop calling them Indians. Or when the coloreds asked everyone to call them blacks, and then again when they asked to be called African Americans. Or when the gays told us to stop calling them fags.

            Was there a conversation when the obscenely rich asked people to start calling them “job creators”, or was it the usual where they just bribed people?

          • On the Native American front, I’ve noticed an extreme indifferent on the part of those on the reservations. They call themselves by their tribe, or Indians. Which to me makes the NA tag feel condescending (in addition to the inaccuracy, of course). I’ve switched to “the tribes” or “Amerindians”.

          • So I’ve been drinking, and should probably avoid any more commentary (I already lost one comment to iPad mishap:-), but here goes:

            @ Tod & Tom – see, I think you are both right.

            This is why us small -l libertarians are not at home on the left or the right – we appear to condone rightwing reactionism to the liberal wing, and we appear to condone perversion (linguistic/logic or other) to the conservative wing.

            In the words of the immortal Dr. Rodney King, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ 😉

            To Tod’s point, it seems to cost little to refer to things or people in whatever ways most anyone wishes us to. More importantly, to me, the only people who seem to have any stake in Bailey’s chromosomal or psychological makeup are Bailey, Bailey’s lover, or Bailey’s MD (or the school that pays Bailey, or the students that pay the school). I just don’t see why anyone else should care, at all.

            But to Tom’s point, just as some people refuse to capitalize God (and if others pressure them to do so, I consider the pressurers to be in the wrong), I will not be appending the honorific acronym (PBUH) after L. Ron Hubbard’s name anytime soon.

            That is, just because someone else prefers to refer to a person or concept in terms that they feel most comfortable with, it does not automatically follow that all others must or they are in the wrong.

            Humans have a difficult-enough time understanding one another using long-established terms upon which we still disagree w/r/t definition or limitation.

            If someone brings an unprecedented term to the eternal debate of the human condition, it is not unreasonable to expect them to use established terms instead, or else take on the burden of justifying the change in terms and achieving a new consensus (which, to be fair, is sort of what we are doing here).

            If extraordinary* claims require extraordinary evidence, so too do extraordinary terms require extraordinary justification.

            * I use this word literally here.

          • Tod, the thing is, I understand you completely here.

            “Sorry, TVD, but we’re well into an attempted transition to an elective, non-procreative definition befitting the general decline and decreasing perceived value of procreation itself…”

            I’m bilingual. I understand newspeak. Sort of.

          • Substance? Are you joking? What substance do you imagine was contained in the OP? This is getting either absurd or pathetic, and I can no longer tell which.

          • Well, that reply is obviously in the wrong place. Apologies.

          • I’m not oppressing you, Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?

        • TVD,

          It’s the Orwellian quality that unnerves me. I reject the rejection of reality by remaking language.

          That’s not Orwellian. Orwellian is saying “freedom is slavery” and enslaving people if they don’t agree, and then calling the enslavement “freedom,” and if they still don’t agree, then torturing them until they really do agree, and then killing them once their will is broken.

          In this case, at most, what we have is someone contacting a newspaper saying that this person prefers not to be referred to by a certain pronoun.

          Let’s keep some perspective here.

          • No, Pierre, in a word, no. Turning it around doesn’t hold in the least. There is nothing Orwellian about calling a spade a spade, a tail a tail and a leg a leg.

          • I didn’t say there was anything Orwellian in calling a spade a spade, etc….

            I said there was nothing Orwellian in someone wanting to have a different personal pronoun other than the standard one(s) available.

            I did say that “Orwellian” was something different, assuming we’re following the model of 1984, which your comment was clearly following. I said,

            Orwellian is saying “freedom is slavery” and enslaving people if they don’t agree, and then calling the enslavement “freedom,” and if they still don’t agree, then torturing them until they really do agree, and then killing them once their will is broken.

            I don’t see any place in there where I suggested that someone who, as you say, is simply calling a spade a spade, etc…. is being Orwellian. If you can point out where or how what I wrote does so suggest, then I’ll simply say that’s not my intention and wasn’t my intention.

          • I will acknowledge that my insistence that “Orwellian” ought to track closely with the spirit of 1984 and Animal Farm might be a bit pedantic. I know full well that it is often used more broadly to mean “insisting that something be called what it clearly isn’t.”

            I do apologize for my willful pedantry. Yet I will repeat that I did not respond with a tu quoque. That was not and is not my intent, and, I believe, an honest reading of what I wrote does not lead one to infer that intent. If the intent is so inferred, I’ll just repeat that the inference is wrong.

          • Thx for that, Pierre. 1984 must not be assigned reading anymore, and that is regrettable. In Room 101—

            O’Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the
            thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

            “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”

            “Four.”

            “And if the Party says that it is not four but five– then how many?”

            “Four.”

            The word ended in a gasp of pain.

          • So how often have you been tortured for disagreeing with Bailey’s pronoun preferences?

          • Unless you were being forced, the word is masochism.

          • It’s a rather perverse comparison, isn’t it? In 1984 it’s the state torturing someone who doesn’t agree. In the real-world example it’s a citizen trying to persuade other citizens. It would be almost exactly the same, except that it’s completely different.

  1. This isn’t a retraction; it is a correction. And a proper one at that. Basic respect requires that we call others by the names and terms which they prefer.

    A post like this does not promote the type of community we seek to have. And we wonder why we are overwhelmingly white and male here…

      • I appreciate that, Mr. Kohole, which is why it’s here. Although that it would be even more controversial on the FP as an Off the Cuff gave me great consternation: Clearly some of the kind commenters here deem it a necessary civility to see five fingers even where there are four, emperor’s new clothes where there are no clothes atall.

    • Kazzy, this was not a case of the paper referring to someone as ‘she’ when that person prefers ‘he’ (which I agree, it is disrespectful, and would warrant a correction, particularly if the paper had prior knowledge of the fact).

      This is a person who prefers neither ‘he’ nor ‘she’ (as noted, a case for which there is no English pronoun) who then presumably requested that the paper print the retraction and explanation, at their time and expense. Basically forcing the paper to admit an ‘error’ which isn’t one, really, not in English.

      Maybe Vanidy could have just written a Letter to the Editor or something.

      I mean, it’s sort of like if I show up at the next League meetup insisting that ‘Glyph’ is unpronounceable using English phonemes (only the Tuvalu can pronounce it properly!) and getting huffy when you attempt to read my nametag aloud.

      It’s a little ridiculous, and subtly aggressive, to chastise other people for not utilizing a concept that is known only to oneself, or try to make them the instrument by which you attempt to popularize your new concept.

      My two cents.

      • Þ — the glyph formerly known as “Glyph”.

        • The thorn in the flesh is the instrument by which you attempt to popularize your new concept.

          • Again, write a letter to the Editor for publication. Take out an ad. Write it on your t-shirt with a Sharpie. Do whatever you want, I don’t care. It really doesn’t matter to me what Bailey wants to call ***self, or how **/*** feels.

            But if I make the ‘mistake’ (which is perfectly understandable and there was no obvious way to avoid given the strictures of the language), do me the favor of not attempting to force me to say I ‘erred’, and try to use my soapbox (paper/website) to do so. Get your own soapbox, you know?

            If a newspaper refers to me in print as a human being, when *I* feel that ‘Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter’, that’s not a correction the paper needs to make. That’s on me.

            The more the thorn ‘pokes’, the more people will attempt to remove it.

          • Ah c’mon, the character is a “thorn”. You’re entitled to your opinion. He/she/it, whatever, it was just a pun.

      • Who chastised who? As Tod points out, neither Bailey nor anyone else is waging a broader war on language, gender norms, or anything else. One person appears to have respectfully made one request of one paper about how that individual is referred. The paper can choose to oblige, individuals can choose to oblige, everyone is free to do as they wish, including what Tom has done here. And I am just as free to call this post out as petty and disrespectful and hateful.

        • Kazzy, your use of “we” was creepy. Say “I” and stand on your own two feet.

          You’re the one out of line here, hiding behind the “community’s” skirts to express your own opinion without defending it.

          So let’s just be crystal clear about what’s going on here, brother. This community is about the exchange of ideas, not suffocating them. Think this one over. The “I disagree with what you say but will defend your right to say it” is like some forgotten liberal toilet paper.

          • If you remember, there was a conversation here, involving a great deal of us, about the demographics of our community here and what it meant. Reasonable people can, will and did disagree on what our demographics (largely white, largely male) meant. But many of us, the “we” to which I referred, did wonder why things were as they were. I hold posts like this as evidence to why that might be. Agreeor disagreeas you like.

        • Kazzy, in case it was not clear, I was not referring to ‘you’ as in you in that last para. I lost track of my pronouns (!) and can see how it could be read that way.

          To be consistent I should have said:
          “It’s a little ridiculous, and subtly aggressive, to chastise other people for not utilizing a concept that is known only to oneself, or try to make them the instrument by which one attempts to popularize one’s new concept.”

          To the point, I do think that requesting a retraction for something that can not reasonably be called an error, counts as chastisement. But I may be making assumptions about how that went down.

          I didn’t see Tom’s point as hatred of an individual at all; rather I saw it as a hatred (if the word is too stong, substitute a milder one, I am simply using it to maintain continuity with your use of ‘hateful’) of using languange imprecisely; a sin of which we are all obviously guilty at one time or another, but which usually leads to less understanding, not greater.

          • Glyph-

            My point is we don’t know the details of the objection. It might have simply been an FYI. It might have simply been a request goig forward and the paper opted to correct. Or it could have beena strongly worded chastising. We don’t know. And to assume and the react as uncharitably as possible to tha assumption on fair. Furthwr, to mock, as I think Tom clearly did here, is hateful. He offered no legitimate commentary save for a snarky title.

          • Kazzy, I think we are all having different conversations here and all sides are making a bigger deal than is probably warranted over this (and I include me in that).

            I have probably explained my views as well as I can all up and down this thread at this point, and I may be mistaken as to how things went down, or as to Tom’s intent, so after this one last attempt, I’m gonna drop off.

            Let’s say that from now on, I decide I want to be referred to as ‘His Royal Highness Glyph, Defender of The Realm and Supreme Commander of the Fleet’; or some equivalent to the Jewish way of writing G_d (say hello to G___h!); or, *no written or spoken name at all actually applies to me, because I just feel this fits me & my experience better for whatever reason.*

            Let’s then say that you start out a comment addressing me simply as ‘Glyph’ according to your prior experience and common convention, to which I reply with ‘Don’t call me that, Kazzy’, and don’t really provide you with any good alternative.

            In that scenario, which of us is being unreasonable? I’d say me. And I would expect some mockery.

            As long as mockery’s all it is, and the state is not mandating or proscribing any particular term’s use, I think it’s just life.

          • Kazzy, His Royal Highness Glyph, Defender of The Realm and Supreme Commander of the Fleet has this exactly correct.

            Further, the diversity we lack is conservatives because political correctness and words like “hateful” applied to dissonant views have driven them away.

            Mr. Diversity Consultant. In a forum of ideas, it’s ideas that matter, not the color or gender of those who speak them. [I’d create a “Safe Space” for righties but the very thought makes me ill.]

          • Glyph-

            We have no idea as to the content Of whatever precipitated the correction. For all we know it came from a third party. As such, all we are doing is speculating and assuming, which is shoddy and stupid…

          • Actually, it’s been a very good discussion. Mostly.

          • Says you. At least myself, Mr. Kelly, and Dr. Saunders appear to think otherwise. But, hey, we’re just two leftists and a gay… who cares what WE think.

          • We’re cool, Tod—I wasn’t thinking of you.

          • “Further, the diversity we lack is conservatives because political correctness and words like “hateful” applied to dissonant views have driven them away.”

            I consider this post hateful not because you are a conservative, but because it needlessly mocks someone for defying naming conventions that have likely caused them a great amount of consternation throughout life. Is there room for a conversation over the way in which the objection was registered, the linguistic issues, or a whole host of other issues for which a conservative voice would be warmly welcomed? Hells fishing yes. Is that what you did here, at least in the OP? Hells fishing no.

            And if you truly think the LoOG’s biggest issues with “diversity” is the plight of the conservative, your imagined victimhood is showing again. And with that, I’m out.

            Glyph, good talk, as always!

          • “Dr. Vanidy Bailey speaks about their experience as a masculine of center, person of color, working in higher education.Vanidy has a significant amount of experience and expertise in student leadership development, multicultural affairs, and mentoring. However, their most recent experience is working with the wonderful UC-San Diego, LGBT Resource Center as the Assistant Director for Education.Vanidy is a Masculine of Center Caribbean-American. Vanidy received their bachelor’s degree from Denison University in Ohio and their graduate degree at The Ohio State University. Vanidy also received their Doctorate of Education from California State University, Northridge. Vanidy recently accepted the Director of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Queer (BGLTQ) student life at Harvard University.”

            http://vimeo.com/45364113

            Please translate this into English.

          • It’s just clunky academia-speak. Here’s my rewrite:

            Dr. Vanidy Bailey’s academic background is grounded in personal experiences, and the bulk of Dr. Bailey’s career has involved working directly with students. Dr. Bailey recently served as the Assistant Director for Education at UC San Diego’s LGBT Resource Center, and has recently accepted a position as Director of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Queer (BGLTQ) student life at Harvard University. Dr. Bailey holds a bachelor’s degree from Denison University, a graduate degree from OSU, and a Doctorate of Education from CSUN.”

            Now, if Dr. Bailey actually self-identifies as “masculine of center,” that suggests (to me at least) that the pronoun “he” ought to be preferable to the pronoun “she.” But equally importantly if one wishes to avoid being identified with gender-specific pronouns, the rest of us ought to labor to respect that request to the maximum extent possible. The English language is such that good style frequently uses gender-specific pronouns, but it is not impossible to eschew their use.

            If your except is from an autobiography, then Dr. Bailey has failed to use good style but strikes me as no more garbled in syntax and usage than pretty much anyone else whose daily literary diet is steeped in professional jargon as opposed to English.

            Speaking for myself, I would discourage the use of “their” as a third-person singular pronoun because it is too easy to confuse with the third-person plural.

    • Who’s “we,” brother? This is getting interesting.

  2. I guess the Crimson should have referred to Baily as “it.” PC BS, always good for a laugh.

  3. At lambdamoo, we had the spivak gender. Ahem:

    The spivak pronouns were developed by mathematician Michael Spivak for use in his books. They are the most simplistic of the gender neutral pronouns (others being ‘neuter’ and ‘splat’) and can be easily integrated into writing. They should be used in a generic setting where the gender of the person referred to is unknown, such as ‘the reader’. They can also be used to describe a specific individual who has chosen not to identify emself with the traditional masculine (male) or feminine (female) gender. The spivak pronouns are:

    E – subjective

    Em – objective

    Eir – possessive (adjective)

    Eirs – possessive (noun)

    Emself – reflexive

    (Generated by the command: ‘help spivak’ at LambdaMOO, accessed April 2001)

    • Thanks, I’d never seen these.

      Spivak wrote absolutely classic texts, by the way. If you want a brief but rigorous introduction to vector calculus, there’s nothing better than his Calculus on Manifolds.

      • Depends how it’s pronounced. “E” may sound very, very Canadian.

          • “E ain’t dirty! E washed eir face and hands before E come, E did”.

          • Shouldn’t that be “…washed eir face and ands…”
            Some people might be touchy about genderizing digital stimulation.

          • That’s not why it’s called “Cockney”.

    • As I said on Twitter this week, nothing drives home the need for a gender-neutral pronoun like a pregnant wife with a baby of unknown gender.

      Maybe I should go with Spivak…

    • the first time i ran across spivek on the internet, i thought the writer’s keyboard was broken. and then i thought they were a temple of psychick youth type on a bender.

  4. This isn’t some weirdo thing one person just did, as some commenters have suggested above. There are plenty of people who’ve tried to get a 3rd-person-singular pronoun into the English language over the years – not just the spivak set mentioned above, but 5 or 6 different variants. People are, generally, very resistant to accommodate anything other than a gender binary, and it does, generally, cause difficulties to present oneself as anything other than “clearly female” or “clearly male”. Even when one is fairly confident that one does actually identify with one of those most-common genders, at the end of the day; I’ve experienced gender policing on days when I wasn’t even thinking about it until I got lectured or shouted at.

    I can only imagine the difficulty that identifying with neither presents in the world, and I expect that Bailey, in a position where one is explicitly SUPPOSED to pay attention to these things, felt that asking for such a correction was not only reasonable, but a responsibility zie has to live openly and honestly, and by doing so, set a model for Harvard students who might otherwise feel excluded. Regardless of the sniping, everyone reading that correction is getting a message that you don’t have to pick a gender to be part of the Harvard community. I imagine that’s a message Vanidy Bailey feels particularly responsible for communicating.

    • It was Adam and Eve, not Adam, Eve, and decline to state.

    • People are, generally, very resistant to accommodate anything other than a gender binary, and it does, generally, cause difficulties to present oneself as anything other than “clearly female” or “clearly male”.

      I agree, but I’ll add that in addition, people are generally also very resistant to accommodate changes in the most basic parts of a language, such as personal pronouns. This resistance, regardless of any of the other issues about gender identity, makes it hard to develop and promote alternatives.

      • I believe ‘They’ would be gender-neutral, although that raises other issues.
        Of course, when speaking to Its Highness, no issue exists.

        • I use “they” sometimes, or “one/one’s”… but those (the first will get you “corrected” and the second sounds awkward after a while) don’t work as well when you’re talking about someone or something specific. It doesn’t feel right to refer to my soon-to-be son/daughter as one of those two things, or as “it”. Saying “he or she” or “his or hers” is clunky. We need a dang word.

          • If you read the Crimson article that was changed, you can’t tell where it said “she,” but it seems pretty obvious the word they used to replace it with was “Bailey.”

        • I have my problems with “they,” but that’s where I usually trend, especially when the gender is unknown. Usually, I operate under the assumption that the gender identity preference is “obvious.”

    • While I agree with everything you just said Maribou, there’s another angle here for those who see these issues as too PC. When you talk about a doctor or a plumber or most people-related concepts we don’t have separate words for male and female versions. That’s because most of the time the gender of the doctor / plumber / whatever is irrelevant. Well the same is true when referring to people in the generic sense. It is a deficiency of the English language that we lack such a word because it makes it harder to communicate certain concepts. Anyone who finds the PC stuff hard to deal with should just think of it as another tool in our linguistic toolkit.

      • Newspeak is indeed another tool in the toolkit—versus reality. That’s what this discussion was about.

        The attempt to abolish gender linguistically is ideology writ large, and in this case, with risible clumsiness.

        Oddly—or not so oddly—Vanidy Bailey makes her race, which is fungible, part of her identity even as her gender is not. The resulting assault on the English language is risible; that’s it’s rewarded by a post at Harvard even more so.

        This isn’t some weirdo thing one person just did, as some commenters have suggested above.

        Well, it is singular work of a singular weirdo, Maribou. Were her expertise not in newspeak, the genderless “doctor” or “plumber”—or in the case of Deirdre McCloskey, “economist” would be sufficient. In Ms. Bailey’s case, without her “toolkit,” she’s nobody.

        “Dr. Vanidy Bailey speaks about their experience as a masculine of center, person of color, working in higher education.Vanidy has a significant amount of experience and expertise in student leadership development, multicultural affairs, and mentoring. However, their most recent experience is working with the wonderful UC-San Diego, LGBT Resource Center as the Assistant Director for Education.Vanidy is a Masculine of Center Caribbean-American. Vanidy received their bachelor’s degree from Denison University in Ohio and their graduate degree at The Ohio State University. Vanidy also received their Doctorate of Education from California State University, Northridge. Vanidy recently accepted the Director of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Queer (BGLTQ) student life at Harvard University.”

        http://vimeo.com/45364113

        • I think you have the wrong end of the stick here Tom. For one thing there is effectively no overlap between transgendered people and people who think there is no biological difference between the sexes. If there were no biological difference between the sexes, the very concept of a transgendered person would make so sense.

          • JamesK, she’s a she. Bailey is playing with gender definitions with the “masculine of center” bit, but that doesn’t add up since she’s simultaneously trying to obliterate the language of gender.

            But calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. She’s a she. Sorry, Ms. Bailey.

            And it may come as a shock to the enlightened 21st centurian that it’s not self-evident that “transgenderism” does make sense.

            http://www.sexchangeregret.com/research

            Contrary to some sentiments, the science is not settled.

            I see your point that gender is of ultimate importance to the gender-dysphoric, but deny it as she tries, Bailey doth protest too much herself.

          • “She’s a she. Sorry, Ms. Bailey.”

            This is grossly offensive.

          • To some, the truth often is. Welcome to the point.

        • “The attempt to abolish gender linguistically is ideology writ large, and in this case, with risible clumsiness.”

          Who is attempting to abolish gender linguistically?

      • “It is a deficiency of the English language that we lack such a word because it makes it harder to communicate certain concepts.”

        It is indeed a deficiency, even if we completely ignore (as some will opt to) the existence of people like Bailey.

        I send daily writeups to parents about what we’ve done in class that day. It is mindnumbingly frustrating that we don’t have a gender neutral third person pronoun. I hate using “he/she” and “one”.

        • Write “he” or “she” as the case may be. Works every time.

          • What if you don’t know which one applies? Such as on the internet where you can’t always tell someone’s gender by their handle?

            It’s the same deal with the invention of “Ms”. Ms has become the standard female salutation for government letters because generally you don’t know the marital status of the people you are writing to. Rather than being a feminist statement, it’s actually more precise to be able to address a women without specifying her marital status.

            Equally there are situations were you wan to refer to a person without specifying their gender, possibly because you don’t know their gender. I get this problem occasionally too where the person I’m corresponding with has a non-English name (often Chinese or Indian) that I don’t recognise and I can’t tell if they’re male of female. Have some generic terms would be really useful in a situation like that.

          • Agree, JamesK, but that’s not Bailey’s point.

            We do use “they” and “their” colloquially; “one” or “his or her” is a pain, but formal writing isn’t easy anyway.

          • Let’s make it easier.

            “They” and “their” works for an undefined individual, but less so with an identified individual of unidentified (or unidentifiable) gender. I’m not going to refer to my kid as they, their, or one (also generally an undefined individual) until we know the gender. It’d be neat to have something to define it as that’s not multiple choice or doesn’t imply (to me, anyway) an unknown or hypothetical entity instead of merely an unknown gender.

  5. The reality is that certain people use language as a weapon in furtherance of their politics.

    Tom, who in some way doesn’t utilize language like you describe? For every example from liberals like Scott mentions w/r/t the meaninglessness of “assault weapon” there’s a Frank Luntz style “call it this and people don’t like it, call it THIS and they do!” thing on the right. I even admit I use different words at times based on my view of what the commonly used term exposes or hides. Really, who that is politically engaged in some form doesn’t?

    • My Dear Mr. Psycho, your objection is sustained.

      Tom, who in some way doesn’t utilize language like you describe? For every example from liberals like Scott mentions w/r/t the meaninglessness of “assault weapon” there’s a Frank Luntz style “call it this and people don’t like it, call it THIS and they do!” thing on the right. I even admit I use different words at times based on my view of what the commonly used term exposes or hides. Really, who that is politically engaged in some form doesn’t?

      B-Psych, that’s a tu quoque, eh?—‘And so’s your mother’ is not the same thing as truth; it’s not even a decent argument.

      Frank Luntz pisses lefties off because he’s even better at manipulating language than they are, beats them at their own game. Why do you think they go so nuts on him? He’s a better sophist than they are.

  6. Mr. Schilling, cutting your pee-pee off will not enable you to manufacture eggs. Until that day, natural law says you’re a boy. Sorry for the inconvenience.

    This leaves out a lot of how sexual identity is influenced, maybe even outright defined by society. Yes, being born with a schlong means you are *male*, but we have certain things culturally we define as coming with boyhood/manhood versus being a girl/woman. There’s always to some extent friction since everyone doesn’t neatly fill those holes, but for the most part we muddle through. For the few who can’t, of what use is it to tell someone who doesn’t even come close to fitting their spot that to try another one is inherently nuts?

    Responding to pegs that obviously don’t fit with “mash down harder!” sounds like the real madness. Or maybe that we see identity in black & white rather than gradients. You don’t have to be transgender over even gay to run into this hassle, men who can’t stand combat sports & beer or women with short hair & knowledge of auto body work get it all the time to some extent.

    • Au contraire, Mr. Psycho, it shows that words are not reality. Das Mädchen is still a girl.

      Punkt.

      • Have you ever stopped and thought about why the concept of a “real man”/”real woman” exists? If simply having the fishing plumbing isn’t enough to someone then they’re acknowledging the social/cultural nature without realizing it. And if that’s the case, then someone can switch if they want.

        • I believe that only confuses the issue, and as such is a form of closeting.
          If person of sex A chooses to engage as if of sex B, then it is still a matter of a person of sex A engaging as if of sex B.
          It’s the self-hatred of the body that concerns me; even more that the manner of self-hatred should extend into the social sphere.
          On its face, it’s simply another avoidant behavior; and surely it shares commonality of traits with other avoidant behaviors.

          As a bi-racial person, I can relate, to some extent. Before some degree of maturity sets in, you’re taught to cling to the one or the other. You’re taught to alternately be ashamed or proud of the ‘other side.’
          Neither is true, or healthy. In the end, you have to give it up; be who it is that you are– the ‘class of one.’
          There’s a deep meaning in that.

          • So, if I understand you properly, you’re saying transfolk are exiting one closet only to enter another?

          • Perhaps that is the case, though not one of necessity.
            But it matters, as an instance of dissonance, the intimate disassociation of oneself with one’s physical presence, and of the accord to which society-at-large should properly enhance that dissonant relation.

            It’s a matter of function.
            Suppose a person is transgendered. Very well then.
            How might this person attain any manner of gratification, sexually?
            By whatever means available, it is not?
            Through those organs currently in existence.
            (Note: As I’ve said so often before, the mind is the most powerful sex organ of the body– it has no recovery time, and its possibilities are near-limitless. However, this is an issue of dissonance between the mental aspect and the physical aspect of a person at issue.)
            If a person then gain gratification by means of functional organs of Sex A while there exists that portion which demands Sex B– there is no gratification, but each afterglow an emptiness; that longing of self to otherness precludes any manner of effective attainment.

            In this case, it doesn’t matter who or what particular a person may be, or may be in the process of becoming– what matters is the realization of personhood in current status.
            Unalterably: A denial of the self is never healthy.
            There is no benefit in that.

            In short, the answer is neither ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ but rather ‘Could be.’

          • Will, in case you missed it, Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins, which pioneered sex change surgery. Hopkins no longer performs sex changes, largely because of McHugh. You seem to have a similar approach and assessment.

            “The first issue was easier and required only that I encourage the ongoing research of a member of the faculty who was an accomplished student of human sexual behavior. The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jon Meyer was already developing a means of following up with adults who received sex-change operations at Hopkins in order to see how much the surgery had helped them. He found that most of the patients he tracked down some years after their surgery were contented with what they had done and that only a few regretted it. But in every other respect, they were little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled.

            We saw the results as demonstrating that just as these men enjoyed cross-dressing as women before the operation so they enjoyed cross-living after it. But they were no better in their psychological integration or any easier to live with. With these facts in hand I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.”

            http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/surgical-sex–35

          • Tom:

            We saw the results as demonstrating that just as these men enjoyed cross-dressing as women before the operation so they enjoyed cross-living after it. But they were no better in their psychological integration or any easier to live with.

            Is McHugh here referring to their psychological state in terms of how they still approach sexuality, or a more general sense (as in “their gender isn’t the real issue”)? I read the article & found that part of his remarks a bit vague.

          • Dunno, Mr. Psycho, never got into the, um, nuts and bolts of it. My point would be that it might shock our 21st century gender Orwellians that there might be principled opposition to their notion that gender is fungible, that it is a societal construct.

            Or that gender-reassignment surgery is no more than cosmetic mutilation.

            Now, Lord knows I don’t want to be guilty of “hatespeak” [as Jaybird calls it], and indeed I feel bad for the gender dysphoric. And I’ll go along with the charade that scalpels and implants can make a boy out of girl and vice versa when it comes to individuals. I have no desire to hurt anyone, especially these poor damaged children of God.

            But that’s not quite what Vanidy “Van” Bailey is up to, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sit still for her linguistic charade. It’s a laughable piece of “theory” and I don’t apologize for laughing.

          • that’s not quite what Vanidy “Van” Bailey is up to, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sit still for her linguistic charade. It’s a laughable piece of “theory” and I don’t apologize for laughing.

            For what it’s worth, I laughed at that too. It’s ridiculous to expect people to effectively address you by a term that has yet to even exist, regardless of reason. My issue is not that, dismissal registered and even agreed with to an extent (the “damn egghead librul academics corrupting our young people” angle stretches the dismissal way further than it deserves to go). It’s just since you brought up transgender people this “dammit, they’re a boy/girl!” thing while what it means to be one carries assumptions that have zilch to do with biology.

            All I’m saying is, if gender identity isn’t a social construct, and as such is as simple as XX=girl & XY=boy, then what’s all this extra stuff have to do with it? It can’t be both chromosomes AND “girls are like this, while boys are like this”.

          • Mr. Psycho, CK put it best, sort of:

            “we’re well into an attempted transition to an elective, non-procreative definition befitting the general decline and decreasing perceived value of procreation itself…”

            See, the problem is that I understand that gobbledy-gook. “Marriage and family” has very little to do with actual children—now it’s about the “self-fulfillment” of the adults.

          • There is reason for that other than liberalism though, Tom. Economic progress and its accompanying systemic shifts changed the value of children. That’s why the places globally where people tend to still have lots of kids and an emphasis on them as valuable also tend to be comparatively poor.

          • That’s sort of interesting.
            My point was more basic; that denial, even if we take it to the deepest, most intimate level, is not the tool of acceptance.
            That is, if something serves as an impediment to self-actualization, pretending that things are otherwise isn’t the solution.

            I’ve only known one post-op fairly well, and there are a number of things I learned about the functionality of the womanhood of a constructed woman; eg they tend to prefer butsecks to vaginal sex, because they don’t naturally lubricate, the darned thing hurts, and they’ve already grown a bit accustomed to the idea of butsecks.
            The individual that I knew was prone to depression and substance abuse. She ended up being killed in a park known for its unsavory crackhead types; a terribly sordid, unsafe place.

            Are we supposed to treat people that are suicidal, or just do them in?
            To what extent is society just supposed to go along with someone’s wishes for the sole fact that someone wishes it? And why should criminal behavior be excluded from that list of things wished for? Why do we even have a thing like ‘liability’ when instead we could simply have ‘because I want to?’

            In answer to B-psycho’s question is XX=boy and XY=girl, the answer is yes, definitely.
            As to what that actually means, the matter is open for discussion; but to say that something is not what it is isn’t really a solid position.

          • Will: I’m not saying it isn’t what it is. Obviously XX=female & XY=male. I am not challenging that. But society doesn’t leave it there.

            This isn’t to say I expect society to leave it there, or even to say it can. I’d be alright with us simply acknowledging what we’re doing.

          • For some reason, the issue of gender as identity rather than biological certainty made me think of Chapelle’s routine about the blind racist.

  7. The solution seems pretty obvious. Ask the person in question how he ought to be addressed. Every time I meet new people with a difficult name, especially South Indians, I usually pull them aside and quietly ask for the correct pronunciation of their names, often going back and forth, me mispronouncing it, him repeating it, until I get it right.

    Nothing sounds stupider than your own name, mispronounced.

    Got a problem with the pronoun? Use the given name. Then ask which pronoun that person might prefer.

    • Nothing sounds stupider than your own name, mispronounced.

      See, I would rather have someone use a pronunciation that they are comfortable with than the right one. I had a Japanese boss who did the L-to-R thing and was off-key on some of the vowels. He kept trying. I wanted to tell him that I was fine if he would just go with “Weir” instead of “Will.”

      (Okay, Will isn’t my name, but you get the idea.)

      Got a problem with the pronoun? Use the given name. Then ask which pronoun that person might prefer.

      I agree with that right up until they say “neither.” I mean, I wish we had a gender-neutral pronoun. And if they want me to use Spivak I’ll use Spivak (after I look it up and memorize it), but like white crosses on the side of a road, we don’t replace something with nothing.

        • “It” is neuter, but also implies inanimateness. Imagine (if you will) a friendly and intelligent alien from a species that reproduces asexually. Neither “he” nor “she” is appropriate, for the obvious reasons, but “it” would be disrespectful and dismissive. The alien is a person, not an it.

          • Perhaps we could give It a promotion. Many living things exhibit characteristics of both sexes. Some even change sex.

          • The transgender folk I know prefer to be called by their new pronoun rather than by their old pronoun and, lemme tell ya, “it” would be considered *HUGELY* inappropriate to the point of hatespeak.

            (This is why I want to know what the pronouns we were supposed to use in this situation were.)

          • I’m sure they would be offended. I’ve already observed we ought to ask what they’d prefer and avoid giving offence. So Van Bailey doesn’t want to be attached to a gendered pronoun. Meet Pat.

            I’m simply being obtuse, observing we do have a neuter pronoun. People taking needless offence where none was offered are not exactly helping their cause along.

          • This taking “it” as offensive suggests to me a degree of prejudice against the non-biological.

          • You were right the first time. People don’t think of their pets as “it”.

          • Non-living, then? Ot at least non-living and non-mammalian.

          • And let’s not forget the bigotry applied to abstract concepts and gerunds. It’s heartless. Nobody stands up for them.

          • Well, I was thinking of amoebae, some insects… plus the convention I was taught regarding “lower” (yes, my darling doggie, I know it’s hurtful, thus the quotes) animals and babies is that they’re “it”‘s until named or otherwise recognized.

            Now, if you all referred to me as an “it,” it might make me think I had qualified as some kind of transcendent or transhuman or transbiological force or spirit… or sumthin…

      • “See, I would rather have someone use a pronunciation that they are comfortable with than the right one.”

        Will-

        I’d argue it is both/and.

        I have a very difficult to pronounce last name. When I work with young children, I spend a few minutes having them practice it, emphasizing the importance of ATTEMPTING to pronounce the name correctly. Most get it, some don’t. I don’t belabor the point with those who don’t; this would not only be fruitless, but would seem to punish them for something largely out of their control. If a name is exceedingly difficult to pronounce properly, demanding that it be done so can border on the needless and the extreme. However, it is still common courtesy that a good faith attempt be made. As Blaise said, I’ll often ask a few times the proper pronunciation. I’ve had some folks respond with immense gratitude, as they’ve often had their name butchered for years without so much as folks even trying to get it right (and I once observed an old, white Jewish librarian inform a young black boy with a traditional African name how he *ought* to pronounce it… shuddershudder).

        So, basically, yea, do your best to say the name, understand that not everyone will be able to, and mutual respect is secured/maintained. Make no attempt, or go so far as to mock folks for preferring to be called something other than what you’d prefer call them… dick move, plain and simple.

  8. Bailey has a position of some responsibility. That position may be one that, for all I know, Mark Steyn and TVD wish did not exist, but, all the same, the Crimson and the office of “bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer student life” – or whatever it’s actually called – have some kind of parallel status in the Harvard community. Furthermore, this is Bailey’s turf.

    As Tod Kelly points about above, the Crimson politely assented to Bailey’s apparent request, and offered an explanation. It didn’t cost anyone anything, and gave Mark Steyn an opportunity to do what he does for the people who like it.

    As for what gender is or how it ought to be understood, sorry, TVD, but we’re well into an attempted transition to an elective, non-procreative definition befitting the general decline and decreasing perceived value of procreation itself – as bizarre a notion as the last might seem on the surface. Until and unless the transition is deemed a failure, discovered impossible or undesirable, you’re just going to have to get used to the fact that the culture as a whole just doesn’t care enough to prevent people like Bailey, who do care very much, from more or less having their way.

    • Here’s the thing though, if it was supposed to be a teachable moment, what was actually taught?

      The only thing one would get from the article is that new member of the Harvard University Staff should only be referred to as ‘Bailey’ when referring to the soon to be former UCSD administrator in the singular. (Presumably, one can still refer to a group of multiple UCSD staff members that includes the current but soon to be former Assistant Director for Education* of UCSD as ‘they’).

      It does not actually provide a useful thumbrule or heuristic going forward. Should one refrain using a singular personal pronoun for all LGBT persons? Only those who meet certain criteria in the acronym? Through out singular personal pronouns altogether? Randomly take a stab at some of the alternatives that were provided in this thread? (but not in the article or the correction itself).

      *btw, speaking of style manual, aren’t official titles supposed to be capitalized like this and like the Crimson does not?

      • Are we sure it really was supposed to be a “teachable moment,” or much of a moment at all, or, that if it was supposed to be and failed to be, that it should matter much to anyone? Basickly, the Crimson is willing to adjust its practices on request, and even retroactively, at least when the request comes from fellow Harvardpersons, perhaps more generally. Don’t know that a rule has been put down, or that, even if it was, it would come up very often going forward, unless some century or another it becomes fashionable and practicable for humanoid entities to change out their pseudo-sexual equipment for the fun of it.

        • Well, let’s say that I want to write an article about the person in question. Perhaps merely a comment about this particular person.

          What pronoun is the appropriate pronoun?

          If we don’t know, I’d say that all we’ve established is that the person in question does not like particular pronouns used in reference to the person in question which does raise the question of “what obligation does this create on the part of all of us?”

          If the request is to move from “she” to “he”, then that’s a small thing indeed and easily done. This is an obligation easily met.

          But we don’t know what is being asked of us.

    • I’m the culture, too, Mr. MacLeod, and I stand athwart.

      “we’re well into an attempted transition to an elective, non-procreative definition befitting the general decline and decreasing perceived value of procreation itself …”

      Jesus, that was painful. You have to go to university to learn to talk like that. Which is sort of my point here. I’m hoping your cheek has a tongue in it here.

    • The notion that the culture doesn’t care enough to disagree seems accurate, if odd. Bailey, presumably, is “correct” until the rest of us care.

      The obvious follow up is at what point (if ever) will we care. Does a person need to self-mutilate? Or can they just declare their own preference? (Why would it matter?)

      Do we object at: Personal pronouns? Bathroom access? Athletic competitions? Hiring preferences?

      I dunno. Why would it matter?

  9. As a point of order in this excellent discussion, this “3rd pronoun” is not “they” and “their” replacing the clumsy “hes and shes” and “his and/or hers.”

    This ain’t about that.

  10. Good lord, my Monday morning check ins are always disorienting. You people get up to some shenanigans on the weekend.

    Also, Tom Van Dyke continues to be a poisonous wound to this community and a thoroughly despicable asshole. Plus ca change…

    • WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘YOU PEOPLE’?!?!

      More seriously, Ryan, really, this is pretty uncivil.

      • The post itself is both uncivil and cruel. This kind of sadistic mockery of people does not deserve a civil response.

        • If you say so. If I were coming into a conversation late I might try to read the threads for context, and see if maybe the issues are any more complex than they appear at first. I might also look at the OP and see that it was presented with no real comment, cruel mockery or otherwise.

          Or you can just go with your gut, I guess, and assume that your prior dislike of a person or their ideas automatically means you know exactly what they are attempting to get at and they are obviously a thoroughly poisonous cruel despicable sadistic mocking wound of an asshole.

          I think people read into things, a lot. Particularly when they have a prior personal dislike of someone.

          That’s life, I guess. I’m just not sure I have ever seen Tom (or pretty much anybody) use that kind of language on here before. I’m no prude but it seems excessive to me.

          • Pretty sure it’s the comment thread that makes it clear what TVD was attempting to do here. I believe when he called this person a “passive-aggressive Harvard thug”, we had most of the context we needed to figure out what his plan was. I guess you’re free to disagree, but it’s not nearly as opaque as you claim.

          • “passive-aggressive Harvard thug”

            You don’t think that was meant affectionately?

          • Hi Ryan, thanks for allowing me the freedom to disagree, I must be either stupid or lying to ‘claim’ I see any ambiguity in the issues here, though I did my best to explain what I see them as above.

            Can I ask a question, and make a weird confession? Pardon me the digression.

            When you see Tom’s gravatar, the guy with the big glasses – how do you *feel*, immediately in that second before you even read a word?

            I’d be willing to bet you feel anger or tension, a feeling in your stomach.

            At best, an exasperated ‘here we go again’.

            That is, I’d bet you have an involuntary emotional response, immediately.

            Now, the confession – when I see your gravatar, I often feel like I am being condescended to/patronized/disapproved of, before I read a word you have written (true story!).

            It’s an interesting reaction, since your actual viewpoints are generally not too far off those of many people I know and like.

            But I still read your comments in that ‘voice’, and it is off-putting to me. It ‘rubs me the wrong way’, I feel I am being lectured and looked down upon.

            I don’t know if the picture itself prompts the instinctive reaction in me (the pursed, downturned mouth, cocked eyebrows), or if your writing/tone/word choice prompts me to see the gravatar that way.

            It doesn’t really matter, now, which came first – the point is, I often have an emotional association now, that I have to consciously fight to give you a fair reading.

            But I always attempt to do so, and usually find something in there that is at least worthwhile or some common ground. Like I say, your viewpoints are not unusual in my milieu. I don’t doubt that if I randomly sat down next to you in a bar we could enjoy a beer together without ending up with broken steins at each others’ throats.

            (As an aside, I can’t find it right now but there are studies that show what humans do with face recognition – once you dislike someone, their face always brings up that negative connotation – what’s more, you are then predisposed to dislike any future person you meet who facially resembles that person you dislike. I think it likely that gravatars serve as ‘faces’ for us. Which unfortunately means, if I ever meet a dude IRL who looks like your gravatar, I am more likely to think I am being condescended to and take his comments personally.)

            Is it possible, at all, that any of this this goes on for you when it comes to Tom?

          • Glyph-

            While you make a fair and reasonable point, I also think it is fair for us to consider context, including prior experiences with the author. See Dr. saunders above, who gave Tom ample oppourtunity to explain himself and prove the assumption wrong, only to have Tom confirm it.

            We all cultivate our online personas, some better than others. Tom is a smart guy. I tend to assume he knows what he’s doing when he makes a provacative post, which is often borne out, as it was here, in the comments.

            Would Ryan or myself have responded the same way if someone else handled himself exactly the way Tom did? Probaby. But that is reality and that is wise. Burn me once, shame on you… Burn me twice, etc.

          • And that is all I’ll say re: Tom. My objections were largely and primarily informed by the content and not by the author, which is why I pushed back against more than just Tom but the message (see: our exchange above).

          • Hey Kazzy, thanks, but I was hoping Ryan would reply, as he was the one using the intemperate language, and not really addressing on substance, as you clearly did.

            But maybe I am just disarmed by those rosy cheeks. Damn you and your secret weapon Kazzy! 🙂

            Even in his reply to me, I felt Ryan was harsher than warranted – only grudgingly allowing me the freedom to disagree with what looked to me like a knee-jerk ad-hom, and implying that I must share whatever nefarious motive he thinks Tom has (or else be too stupid to see it), stating that I am only ‘claiming’ to miss the blindingly-obvious-to-everyone-point.

            Since I had what I thought might be a relevant personal experience w/r/t visual/emotional cues from his gravatar, I was curious.

            But to my question (pulls out cigar, strokes beard, imitates Austrian accent badly) – how do you *feel*, when you see a pair of giant sunglasses?

            And do you think that over-the-top language is helpful to a civil discussion, from whence hopefully arises some understanding?

          • Glyph, I’m trying to walk away from all this, and will do so immediately after posting this comment, but it is not my intention to condescend to you. If that’s how you think I treat you, my profoundest apologies. You’ve always struck me as thoughtful and valuable. You have things to teach me, which is the whole reason I’m here.

            As for the “substance” issue, I am not objecting to anything you have said here. I am objecting to the OP itself, which strikes me as a malicious attack on someone who isn’t even around to mount a self-defense. It’s classless and of a piece with the general character of this contributor’s posts. That he himself confirms his intentions in his own comments seems to vindicate my impression – which, I should note, was made after reading the comments (hence my “you people” bit).

            I would love to have a civil discussion about issues surrounding transgenderism, but the OP here does not strike me as a serious attempt to do so. For starters, it doesn’t even present an argument. It was left to intrepid commenters like yourself to flesh it out. That’s not a particularly helpful way to do things, especially if the poster is only going to show up later to hurl insults at the poor person whose honor he is demeaning.

            My response is assuredly not helpful, and it is based on a long and tedious correspondence with Tom that benefits no one, least of all the two of us. That’s why I’m stepping away from this now.

            If you want to continue this discussion, please feel free to email me. I believe my email is easy enough to find on this site.

          • Ryan, fair enough if that is your experience and view, I don’t think we need belabor the point.

            I appreciate you taking the time to reply calmly, no e-mail is necessary. And I agree that if emotions are running that high, probably best to just step away. No good comes of doing otherwise.

            I do continue to wonder about visual/emotional cues/triggers leading to, or increasing, misunderstanding and conflict.

            No idea how to quantify that in a blog context – even if we could somehow determine that posters with personalized avatars get into flamewars more frequently/intensely with each other, causation would be very difficult to suss out. Maybe people who are more quick to take offense are also more likely to pick a personalized avatar because they also care more about their public image, or something.

            And anyway, any observable effect would be confounded by the signal loss of us not having access to varying facial expressions, vocal modulations and hand gestures.

            And what about the avatars that are ‘true’ human faces (photos) vs. abstract representations? Do we tend to treat the ‘true’ faces any better (I am trying to think of a really bruising interaction here between two commenters with ‘real’ photo gravatars, and coming up short – it is almost always between 2 ‘faceless’ combatants, or at most only one uses a real photo of themselves); or is it simply if a picture makes one ‘happy’ one is primed to respond more positively than if not (which may account for my differing emotional response to your gravatar, vs. Kazzy’s).

            Anyway, I am wandering far afield here.

            All I know is, for now, I am sticking with the bowler hat.

          • Glyph-

            I apologize for mserting myself. I do not agree with over-the-top language, though what is over-the-top and what is not is subjective. I’m not particularly interested in debating Ryan’s comments… That is more for he and Tom.

            My response to giant sunglasses (and ONLY because you asked)? Generally, something along the lines of, “I have to see what he’s saying.” And I mean that honestly. At his best, Tom provides a perspective that I find thoughtfully challenging and I enjoy when he opts to bring that to the table. He has a wealth of knowledge on topics I am woefully ignorant of (many of which have nothing to do with right-left silliness) and I appreciate the oppourtunity to learn from him. On the other hand, he can be deliberately provocative and borderline manipulative. Whichever it is, it is never dull… Hence, “I have to see what he’s saying.” There was a time when I thought he was almost wholly the latter and did not give the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tried to be better about this, but there is a lot of history (stemming back to other blogs) and more to his delivery (regardless of the content) that makes it hard to be completely even-handed. And this is not reserved for him. I am irked by other commenters, awed by some, perplexed by a few…and all this feeds into how I read and respond to them.

            Again, I point to Doc’s initial exchange way up top. As far as I’m concerned, Russ is or ought to be held in as high a regard as possible ’round these parts and I think he handled what I imagine to have been a hurtful exchange inflappably. We should all strive for that. But even he was left with a sour taste by the CONTENT of what was put forth here.

          • No worries Kazzy. And I too am glad the Doc interjected when he did, I think his shining a light on that piece of the puzzle so early on was a moderating influence on the discussion, and probably helped this whole thing not to go any farther off the rails than it did anyway. I just wish he hadn’t seemed to take it so personally (again, it is my perhaps mistaken sense that Tom’s point, right or wrong, was more to do with language, uses of and perceived coercion, than to do with any given persons or their self-conception), but I suppose it is understandable.

            Catch you elsewhere!

        • Wait a second, “the post itself” consists in its entirety of the Harvard Crimson’s correction notice. So are you saying that the Harvard Crimson was engaging in “sadistic mockery”? Whatever you think about it, it’s an interesting reflection on contemporary mores. What’s “uncivil and cruel” about bringing it to our attention? Are you assuming that the Crimson or Bailey has something to be ashamed of? As for TVD and his opinions as expressed in the comments, Despicable Poisonous Wound-Americans are people, too. When I first came out as a Despicable Poisonous Wound-American years ago, it cost my many old friendships. Is it really so hard to cope with a minor gash like TVD?

          • As I mention above, if you were (for some bizarre reason) not sure what Tom was attempting to do when he posted this, he went ahead and cleared it up in the comments. It was pure mean-spiritedness. Like begets like.

    • This being a sub-blog, comment moderation is up to Tim and Tom. Were this on the main page, though, I’d have deleted it by limerick. If you’re not going to even attempt to engage on substance, then don’t engage at all.

      • If you think it was lacking in substance, then there’s nothing to engage with. The proper response in such a situation is most assuredly not to launch into an ad hominem – it’s to ignore the post.

        Tom is part of the community whether you like it or not. I hope he continues to be so. I suggest you learn to deal with it.

  11. I cannot seem to put a reply where I wanted to.

    In response to Glyph’s Comment #167: I don’t feel the Dr.’s response to TVD was overly personal. In fact I found it quite measured. I feel very similarly to Ryan. It may have something to do with actively participating in the Transgender day of Remembrance, where we recall those who lost their lives in crimes of hate violence do to their gender identity or expression:

    http://www.transadvocacy.org/?p=369

    TVD seems to be among those conservatives to whom merely being confronted in comments with the fact that others disagree is equivalent to being hauled into Big Brother’s torture chamber. My sympathies lie rather with the more than a dozen per year (that we know of) who are killed by people acting out of intolerance and ignorance.

    Tom’s (and others’) need to ridicule and belittle and dismiss the struggles of transpeople and the very reality of their lives does nothing to help this situation. And in my opinion, goes a certain way to make it worse.

    • Hi George, I think you may have misinterpreted my meaning. The Doc’s reply to Tom was not personal; it was measured and fair, which I pointed out, at the time and again in #167.

      I meant rather that I feel like perhaps the Doc took Tom’s comments personally, when I am not sure they were intended to be.

      I have already explained my views at exhaustive length and will not be commenting further, I just wanted to clarify that.

    • George, Dr. Vanidy Bailey’s antics have trivialized her [your] cause. Dr. Saunders, my erstwhile pal, did cross the line into the personal.

      A sincere attempt was made to quietly and compassionately discuss transgenderism with two links to Dr. Paul McHugh,

      http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/surgical-sex–35

      As for the others, I allowed them to violate the League’s comment policy so that they would reveal themselves.

      https://ordinary-times.com/commenting-policy/

      Although we recognize that there can sometimes be a fine line between honest but passionate debate and outright ad hominem attacks, we reserve the right to delete comments that do not appear aimed at advancing the relevant discussion.

      In general, a comment will be deemed inappropriate if it makes no attempt to address a point germane to the original post or another comment and instead contains nothing more than a blanket personal attack directed at the author or another commenter will be deleted.

      I appreciate the diplomatic interventions of Messrs. Thompson and Glyph, I really do. If the rest of you are done violating the rules of civility and the LoOG’s comment policy, well, I’ve had my say.

      I was going to close the comments at this juncture, but nothing can be learned from that. Rock on, the floor remains open.

      • “As for the others, I allowed them to violate the League’s comment policy so that they would reveal themselves…. If the rest of you are done violating the rules of civility and the LoOG’s comment policy, well, I’ve had my say.”

        Personally, Tom, I think such broad, non-direct, and non-specific critiques can be just as damaging to the community here as blatant violations of the commenting policy. Not only do you not offer those who might have sinned to respond to the accusation, correct it, and learn from it going forward, but it seems to hang an air of, “You know who you are and what you did and I know who you are and what you did and I’M WATCHING YOU!” Your accusation could be pinned to anyone and everyone because you explicitly opt not to direct it at the parties in question. You need not go on the offensive… a simple, “Hey, person A, I think your comment X was in violation of our commenting policy for reason G.”

        If I am one of the folks you were referring to, I’m happy to hear the criticism and respond to it. If I am not, than being subjected to what comes across as a broad and veiled threat is not fair. If your counter is that I should not feel that way if I know all my comments are on the up-and-up… well, I think that is silly. Folks who are genuinely self-reflective are often sensitive to their own potential foibles, even if they are only imagined. Be direct. Be honest. Name names or say nothing.

        My two cents.

        • Of course I don’t name names, Kazzy. The guilty know. You know. We all know.

          • I disagree. Why name charges if you aren’t going to name names? People don’t always know. It is making an accusation without the willingness to stand behind it.

          • These kind of bickering-about-bickering things are why I disagree with comment policies as a concept. The interpretation of where the line is detracts more than the likelihood of crossing it does.

  12. My, I’ve been neglectful to have missed this conversation. Fascinating discussion. I’d come across the Steyn piece that uncovered the Crimson retraction, and I did have a similar initial reaction as Tom. I do agree there is a difference between respecting linguistic and titular decorum (e.g., “black” instead of “colored,” and perhaps “African-American” instead of “black,” though races are not monolithic and many blacks are annoyed at the inelegance and imprecision and sheer lefty-ness of “African-American”), on the one hand, and “calling a leg a leg” on the other.

    So which is it here? Are pronouns simply a sense of decorum? There’s been no objection to Vanidy’s preference to be called “Van” for short. There probably wouldn’t be any objection if Van effected a legal name change altogether and asked everyone to use a wholly different name. So why the objection if someone wants to be referred to as not a “he” but a “she,” or not a gendered pronoun at all?

    Lots of reasons. As was mentioned, it demands that I stipulate to the view that gender is negotiable, which is not a fair request. The analogy of insisting that Jesus Christ be referred to as “He” is apt, as it forces one to stipulate to the affirmative side of the divinity question. It is quite different from the relatively modest stipulation that we call each other by nicknames, or different names altogether. Names refer only to particulars. Pronouns, in contrast, refer to categories, and it is too much to ask the listener to empty or alter the meanings of entire categories which help us organize concepts and understand the world.

    On a baser level, and as has been pointed out, it does not appear there was ever offered an appropriate substitute for gendered pronouns. Judging by the autobio, Van has not come up with a suitable way to abandon gendered pronouns and still make good English. The merciful conversant is thus forced to redirect significant brainpower to fumbling around with different locutions, not to mention stipulating to the rejection of certain gender concepts mentioned above, just to honor Van’s actually-not-so-modest preference against gendered pronouns.

    But actually the first thing that came to mind when reading the source article was the fact that Harvard poached Vanidy from UC San Diego. Unless UCSD replaces Van, the Director of Education at its Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center will have to muddle through without an assistant. Not to worry, though: the ranks of UCSD’s diversity administration are deep, what with its

    Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
    Chancellor’s Diversity Office
    Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity
    Assistant Vice Chancellor for Diversity
    Faculty Equity Advisors
    Graduate Diversity Coordinators
    Staff Diversity Liaison
    Undergraduate Student Diversity Liaison
    Graduate Student Diversity Liaison
    Chief Diversity Officer
    Director of Development for Diversity Initiatives
    Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity
    Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues
    Committee on the Status of Women
    Campus Council on Climate, Culture, and Inclusion
    Diversity Council
    Cross-Cultural Center
    Women’s Center

    Joseph Stiglitz notes that handing out student loans does not work because “student loans [are] non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, which meant that the lenders had little incentive to see to it that the schools for which the students were borrowing money were actually providing them with an education that would enhance their income.” One wonders whether, if student loans were made dischargeable and lenders turned a more critical eye on where their investments were going, Van, and the rest of the armies of administrators and diversity coordinators, wouldn’t simply be cut without a second thought. Gendered pronouns would be the least of their worries then.

    • Well, query if all of the positions on the list you found are paid, and whether they are filled by people primarily engaged with other administrative or academic duties. But of course it’s hardly news that universities, whether public or private, are top-heavy to the point of self-parody with impressive-sounding titles and few detectable results beyond the holding of meetings in which slogans are recited with escalating degrees of earnestness, and the publication of position papers and mission statements.

  13. This strikes me as a fool’s errand. As long as anti-transsexual sentiment is prevalent, any gender-neutral pronoun will reach a stable equilbrium as an anti-transsexual slur within two years of entering the mainstream.

    • I think any transsexual designation will. An overall gender-neutral pronoun? Not so much. There are enough uses to counterbalance its use to transsexuals specifically (in large part because there are so few transsexuals).

    • I could get on board with yo and yos. (I’m really not particular.)

      Where language fails, school children in Baltimore succeed!

      • Succeed at what, speaking poor English? That will really serve them well when they apply for the job at McDonald’s.

        • Succeeded at implementing a useful term for the English language.

          Much as the south did with “Y’all.”

          • Yeah, but they were fine ladies and gentlemen. The kids in Balmer are just a bunch of yos.

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