What would "Mother Nature" say?

I'm not going to revisit the Trayvon Martin case again unless something even more outrageous emerges.  Today I want comment on a story I heard on National Public Radio yesterday. Now I don't like listening to NPR much these days, because I detect gender bias in the kind of stories it reports, and the general bias of those who are reporting on them. Some of these stories seem to have little relation to most people's lives, but they do seem to have meaning to certain fringe interest groups, and are somehow converted by certain segments of the media into evidence of major social restructuring.

Now, according to this story aired by NPR, entitled "Young People Push Back Against Gender Categories," there seems to be a pushback, at least in some people's minds, against the use of pronouns such as "he/him/his" and "she/her/hers." With all the gender politicking going about,  how women are "superior" to men, you would think that people who are principally pushing this philosophy would want to use pronouns that properly distinguish between the "superior" females and "inferior" males. But since when did "logic" and “common sense” ever enter into such conversations? 

The piece starts out about bisexual and transgender identity, then quickly devolves into the bizarre: "At one college that Joy Ladin visited, things were so fluid you could make up a different pronoun for a different event...So you can be she/her at one event and then you go to lunch and you say, OK, now I am he/him. And then one charming young woman told me, oh, yes, today, I'm just using made up pronouns."

OK, I don't really have an issue about what people want to refer themselves as.  But don't ask me to "play along." If I have to describe someone, I'm not going to say "This person who I am not permitted to describe by gender has shoulder length hair, pallid skin, blue eyes, has hips that somewhat expand outward from the waste, and has two smallish-size projections emanating from the chest area." I could have used the term "female" and shortened this description by at least 27 words. But that makes too much sense for gender politicians. 

The discussion goes on: "We encountered high school students who said, I want you to call me Tractor and use pronouns like zee, zim and zer. And, in fact, I reject the gender binary as an oppressive move by the dominant culture." Frankly, I detect people with severe personality disorders. It gets worse: "In a perfect world, your gender would just be what you want it to be. Gender would sort of just be an individual title, not really a male or female thing." The piece backs off that bullshit slightly only to apply more of it, suggesting that there are far more kids who are "confused" about their gender than commonly assumed, and that if "gender was seen as less fixed," this would result in a lot more kids deciding they wanted to partake in gender reversal surgery. This is what NPR calls young people becoming "innovators." Egads.

As an aside, I recall my first day of basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The drill sergeant gathered the company of new (all-male) recruits together in an auditorium and gave us an orientation briefing. In the middle of the talk the drill sergeant told us that the Army knew “everything” about us—even things we did not know ourselves. For example, he knew that one of us was “half-female.” At the time I was skin-and-bones—only 101 pounds—and I thought my hips were a little too “wide,” which got me to thinking that he was talking about me, which made me feel a little self-conscious. But since then I realized that the sergeant was just trying to underline his “point”—every male has the “X” chromosome normally associated with the female of the species.

To continue on, last May NPR tackled the issue even more bizarrely when it suggested that terms like "yo"--remember "Yo, Adrian" from Rocky?—is a “gender neutral” term, used in place of  words like “he” or she.” I’m not kidding. I quote:

"You know, like yo hit me ... yo took my stuff! Yo, yo! ... yo right there is crazy…Instead of "he" or "she," it's "yo." It's slang people have been using for years in Baltimore…Margaret Troyer, a former Baltimore-area teacher, published the first paper showing that "yo" is being used to replace "he" and "she." Troyer first noticed it while she was teaching middle-school kids in the area…"Some examples would be 'yo wearing a jacket,' " Troyer says, referring to her research. "Another example from the paper is, 'Yo threw a thumbtack at me,' which is a typical middle school example."

Some of us might say that this represents an unfortunate decline in the quality of grammar education our children are receiving, and as their parents received. But more so it is typical gender political claptrap. The person who composed this story must come from the Rachel Jeantel School of Grammar. In past slang, “yo” was used to attract someone’s attention, like in “Hey you.” Now in some circumstances it is a pronoun used to directly address a person, like in “Yo  crazy” as in “You are crazy.” If you are addressing another party who isn’t present, how is it that anyone will understand who you are referencing (sorry for the hard word).

Thus in the difficult quest to concoct a gender-neutral pronoun to satisfy feminists and other gender politicians, the “kids” have invented their own, supposedly. The kids are so far ahead of the adults, according to this theory. Unfortunately, it is the “adults” who have the logic of children, say six years of age (or less). "There have been activists who have wanted to propose something like 'zee' and 'zeer' as an option for something other than 'he,' 'him,' 'she,' 'her,' but that hasn't really caught on,” says one activist.

Alright, if you don’t like those, let’s try these gender-neutral pronouns for size: "Nee"; "Heesh"; "Huh." That latter term sums up the problem perfectly. I mean, just what heights of nonsense do gender advocates wish to take us? The absurdity continues as NPR suggests that “gender-neutral” terms like “Shorty” can be used to describe a female person. I don’t know many girls prefer to be referred to as “Shorty,” but enough of this abject reaching. “Shorty” is what some of us “old school” types still remember as either used as a “nick-name” or as a mildly derogatory term.

Will this nonsense ever stop? Not likely, so long as the media treats gender issues as a matter of “us” versus “them” instead of just the way of “Mother Nature.”