Monday, July 07, 2014

Xey Are Insane

What possesses people in education to do such things?
The Vancouver (British Columbia) Board of Education has approved a sweeping new policy for accommodating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, queer, questioning and “all sexual and gender identities,” including the creation of three pronouns, replacing masculine and feminine with xe, xem and xyr (pronounced ze, zem and zur)...

The Vancouver Board of Education's policy also includes making restroom and sports activities accessible to all transgender students, regardless of their biological sex.

“Absolutely,” Mike Lombardi, vice chairman of the board told CNSNews.com when asked about the new policy as reported by the Vancouver Sun. “We’ve been very, very progressive."
They've been something, but "progressive" isn't the word that comes to my mind.

Hat tip to reader PeggyU for the link.

13 comments:

allen (in Michigan) said...

"Self-indulgent" is one word that comes to my mind. "Self-aggrandizing" is another.

How about "irresponsible"? Graceless? Vulgar? Shallow?

Darren said...

I *knew* I could count on you, Allen, to comment on this one! And I'm glad you did.

PeggyU said...

This should last all of a couple of weeks, I think. The student body and most faculty won't get on board with talking this stupid just to appease a small group of students.

pseudotsuga said...

Perhaps we need to go back (WAY back) to Old English, in which "wer/guma" referred to a male, "wif/wifmann" referred to a female, and "mann" could mean adult male human but is also gender neutral.
So it could refer to itself as a "mann" and avoid all that nasty wer, wif gender pigeonholing.

maxutils said...

Parts is parts. to quote some old fast food chain slogan ...
If you have penis, you're a man. If you have a vagina, you're a woman ...And, if you decide that that is not the correct sex, there are now remedies ... but until you take that opportunity ... you are what you were born with, and you need to abide by what the ... I don't know...99% of population agrees with.

I've been having this argument with my daughter ... who is a woman, and I think, straight, but very into this dichotomy ... I maintain that there is a difference between 'female' and 'woman' ... as one is an adjective, and one is a noun. Have you ever heard any one use the term "Man voters"? Of course you haven't, because it's ridiculous and wrong ... but, said daughter has been 'educate' that you can be both a woman and not female ... so it's perfectly okay to not use proper grammar or common sense ... frustrating. And, as an aside, the convention in the English language is when a gender is not specified, one uses the male pronoun. And, yes, that's sexist. But do it anyway, because it's simple and correct. I'm reading a book on Game Theory from a Professor at Smith ... and she literally alternates the usage ... he/she/he/she... it's completely distracting from her otherwise impressive book.

allen (in Michigan) said...

Yeah well, I've got a bit of a jones about the use of the word "insane" as an insult. It's rarely accurate and it's never effective. That being the case I prefer more accurate descriptors which, if people choose to take them as insults, have that accuracy as an unassailable virtue.

Auntie Ann said...

Xey have vays of makink you talk!

maxutils said...

That's a good point, allen ... I will cut some slack, because insane has come to become goth metaphorical ( as Darren used) and clinical (its literal use). At least it still remains an adjective ... and I think most take it in the spirit intended.

Ellen K said...

What will they do when athletics teams are filled with girls that were born boys? What will happen to the scholarships destined for women in athletics? I'm sorry, but there are certain inherent strengths-males having more upper body strength and women having more leg strength.

maxutils said...

Ellen K ... I'm pretty sure that's a straw man that won't come up. Seriously ... even if I agree that you might have a point? What percentage of men do you suspect will have their genitals chopped off so that, hypothetically, they can play on women's teams? You could offer scholarships to Harvard for both me and my two kids, and theirs in perpetuity ... and it wouldn't happen.

allen (in Michigan) said...

The point I was making with my objections to the use of the word "insane" in this context is that it precludes looking for a better explanation. If you're happy with "insane" as an explanation, even if it's self-evidently untrue, you don't look any further.

But if the Vancouver Board of Education isn't clinically insane, which I'm pretty sure they're not, then the real reason for them to embrace the nonsense they've embraced isn't revealed and is thus more difficult to counter.

In fact, they're just lefties which means all that xe, xem, xyr stuff is about themselves.

"Look at me and how infinitely understanding and compassionate I am!", is the purpose behind engineering these custom built pronouns. At least as important is that, being sufficiently ridiculous, they help identify the morally inadequate, i.e. the folks who roll their eyes at this crap.

maxutils said...

Then again ... think of all the languages that denote certain objects as masculine or feminine ... it could possibly be worse. I never really appreciated 'the' until I took French. Honestly, how do you determine whether a table is a boy or a girl, and why would you care?

neko said...

"Honestly, how do you determine whether a table is a boy or a girl,...?

Simple. You look between it's legs. ^_^