How quiche are the progressives of Canberra? Yesterday the ABC reported the ACT Legislative Assembly was considering removing gendered titles such as “Mr’’ and “Ms’’ following a submission by the local Labor caucus which expressed concerns that the traditional titles were “exclusionary”.
Should standing orders be revised accordingly, representatives will no longer use oppressive and restrictive titles such as “Madam Speaker’’. Chief Minister Andrew Barr would no longer be referred to as “Mr Barr’’, but “Member Barr’’.
Surprisingly, no-one in caucus has cottoned on to the fact that “member’’ also has phallic connotations and hence patriarchal overtones. It would be unkind to point out that its four-letter slang synonym is a dysphemism for a particularly stupid person, a fact that seems to have escaped the genius who came up with the proposal. Nonetheless it has the support of the easily offended and humourless types, which these days is all but guaranteed to ensure its passage.
“When we use titles like Mr and Ms, what we’re really saying … before this person even opens their mouth, the most important thing to know about them is whether they are a man or a woman,” said gender policy adviser Peter Hyndal in support of the proposal.
Undoubtedly adviser Hyndal’s intentions are good, but unfortunately his language demonstrates an unconscious bias. You see given this subjective free-for-all lunacy shows no sign of abating it will not be long before the good burghers of Canberra elect a member who identifies as a kangaroo, or a sea urchin, or even a bisexual budgerigar. If we are to cease using exclusionary terms we must also check our anthropocentric privilege and replace references to “person’’ with “sentient being’’. Even that term is a stopgap measure, for I am sure some deluded types eschew the biological world and feel a kinship with objects such as a rock or a garden hose.
If you can sprout the proverbial along those lines, you can be sure of a job in Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services. In less enlightened days, its predecessors devoted public resources to bourgeois concerns such as hospitals and housing, but the main priority now is the eradication of politically incorrect pronouns. Last week The Australian reported the agency was promoting the first Wednesday of every month as “They Day”. Encouraging such neutral pronouns as “they’’ and “them’’, the department will ‘ask’ employees to avoid “gendered” language.
Wacky Wednesday, you might say. Imagine composing an email along the lines of “Could you ask Barry if they can retrieve the file on such-and such?” Or “Emily has had their performance review today, and I have given them feedback on how they could improve themselves (themself?).”
In attempting to justify this measure, the department advised in an email to employees: “There may be a gap between a person’s gender identity and your perception of the person.” You could retort there may be a gap between a person’s gender identity and reality, but in tolerance utopia that observation would probably result in your dismissal. As Centre for independent Studies senior research fellow Jeremy Sammut stated, this initiative is “politicising the language of everyday social interactions to promote the gender ideology and embed identity politics into daily life.”
Sammut’s concern is well-founded. In June the online LGBTI newsletter them. announced with much indignation the results of a survey which revealed that few cisgender people (those whose gender aligns with that “assigned’’ to them at birth, or put bluntly, matches the genitalia they were born with) were willing to date transgender people. Of the 958 participants, only 7 of which were non-cisgender, just 12 per cent indicated they would consider dating a trans man or woman.
So what was the organisation’s take on this? “The fact that most cis people would not consider trans people as potential dating partners,” said author Dr Zhana Vrangalova, “is yet another serious risk factor for increased psychological and physical health problems among the trans population.”
You would think that transgender people, as with the rest of us, must respect that consenting adults are free to select their partners according to their sexual preferences — call them biases if you must — but Vrangalova implies otherwise. “The high rates of trans exclusion from potential dating pools are undoubtedly due in part to cisnormativity, cissexism, and transphobia,” she says, “all of which lead to lack of knowledge about transgender people and their bodies, discomfort with these unknowns, and fear of being discriminated against by proxy of one’s romantic partner.”
Even in the midst of this waffle there is the occasional epiphany. She continues: “It is also possible that at least some of the trans exclusion is due to the fact that for some people, sexual orientation might be not (just) about a partner’s gender identity, but attraction to specific body types and/or judgment of reproductive capabilities.” You don’t say. Did she really need her PhD in Developmental Psychology to work that out?
Disconcertingly, the demands of the minority threaten to intrude in the most personal way upon that of the majority. As the founder and editor of the online free thought magazine Quillette, Claire Lehmann, aptly tweeted in response to Vrangalova’s article: “Yesterday: ‘no means no’. Today: ‘your sexual preferences are discriminatory’”.
Yesterday: "no means no"
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) 8 August 2018
Today: "your sexual preferences are discriminatory"https://t.co/5KBvLxa7Df
Speaking of discriminatory, those of you intending to travel overseas may have noticed that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is doing its best to remove any trace of heteronormative bias. Register your family on its Smartraveller website, and you will discover the system does not provide for either “wife’’ or “husband’’, but instead “spouse’’. Presumably it is only a matter of time before gender is removed from passports.
And for those who held a forlorn hope that our armed forces would remain free from the dictates of the gender commissars, forget it. Only this week the ADF denied reports that its personnel had been directed to avoid using terms such as “him’’ and “her’’. Whether or not this is true, it does not bode well for public confidence. As confirmed by The Daily Telegraph this week, the ADF’s director of people and strategy, Justine Greig, told a Senate Estimates Committee in May: “Today, one good example of that is we currently have, at the Australian Defence Force Academy, a guide for managers in terms of how to lead and be inclusive for people that have various gender orientations.”
“We have really pushed now towards a place where commanders — leaders — are being held to account, not only for a positive workplace climate but an inclusive one,” she said. Not exactly the insightful language you would find in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, is it? But if such statements become the norm in the ADF, we may as well resign ourselves to our servicemen and women becoming public servants in uniform. When it gets to the stage where a beaming Australian naval officer holds up a painted pink fingernail in support of a gender equity campaign, you have to wonder whether our new-found obsession with neutrality means giving all future wars a miss.
As with many other aspects of identity politics, the militant demands for institutions and individuals to conform to gender and sexuality doctrines have led to disquiet, uncertainty, inefficiency, and disunity. It is a combination of the narcissist forcing the world to make adjustments to suit herself; the aggressor emboldened by those who try to placate him; and the perpetual victim keeping his employers in a perpetual state of unease to manipulate them.
Complementing this plague of self-indulgence is an entire industry in the form of handsomely-remunerated human rights tribunes, equality consultants, and sexuality and gender studies lecturers. Its continued existence does not depend on resolving grievances for the wretched in vogue, but inventing new ones.
Why do people tolerate this? They do so because they know that anything other than acquiescing in these increasingly nonsensical demands will result in their being ostracised, bullied and shamed. To quote (ironically) the words of former Chief of Army and gender champion Lieutenant-General David Morrison, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”
Aust. of the year David Morrison donning his high heels for the White Ribbon Foundation @9NewsMelb pic.twitter.com/opr78Ozg70
— James Talia (@Jamestalia75) September 2, 2016
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