Using gender as a weapon

I often wonder what I would say to someone who tells me, face-to-face, that teachers are grooming kids. The vast majority of teachers don't even have time to groom themselves! Religious groups are using their values and beliefs, to harness this topic as a weapon.  Some are being accused of 'radical gender ideology.' Such nonsense. These are kids and their lives, and well-being, is at stake. 

 Teachers work hard to create classroom communities where all kids are valued.  This is an excellent video, in response to wannabe trustees who oppose this fake issue, with great comebacks: 

Moms for Liberty loses EVERY SINGLE election in five of the six states where it ran its candidates. pic.twitter.com/Zoiov2cyFF

— 𓂀 𝕋𝔼𝔸ℍ 𓂀 (@TeahCartel) November 8, 2023

There is much intolerance in the world. This storys gives me hope, though.

There was an amazing piece in the NYTimes. JB told me about it. If you do not have access to it, you can read the CBC article about the situation:

Trans kids lost roles in Texas school musical — until their parents went to bat for them 

School board nixes decision to restrict Oklahoma! casting based on gender assigned at birth

To summarize, the school board chair decided that a transgender student couldn't take a lead role in the play. The community came out and supported the kid. If you know anything about high school musicals, and acting, you know that they cast according to ability, not gender. In Shakespeare's time, men often played female roles. 

And, more from the US about the famous Macy's Parade. They always feature Broadway show performances, and I taped it to watch it. They had lots of numbers from the various shows that are currently running. But this year:

Macy’s Parade Shuns Boycott Demands From Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Group A right-wing group that has been designated a hate group is planning to protest the Thanksgiving parade because of the inclusion of two non-binary performers.

There was a 'road rally' in B.C.,  "Stop SOGI 123" means to stop discussing Sexual Orientation and Gender Issues. 

Bill Shoker, a farmer in an expensive tractor ($200,000?), driving in the convoy, ran from the police. The tractor flipped and he was hurt (CBC). 

When Global News went to the Shokers' home, a woman who identified herself as his wife said Bill Shoker was participating in the “STOP SOGI 123” protest that was a scheduled “Road Rally” starting in Chilliwack and ending in Vancouver.

The man broke a bone in his back, and will need back surgery. Hooray for universal healthcare, as he won't have to pay for said surgery, despite being self-inflicted. 

The videos are epic.

Emboldened RWNJs attempted an anti-Sogi Convoy on the highway. They recklessly drove, flipped, and destroyed a police SUV.

Author's note: Insurance does not cover intentional reckless behavior; damage/costs easily reach upwards of six figures.#rwnj #cdnpoli #convoywatch https://t.co/EmUEzaaWbU pic.twitter.com/AyO7naCCxB

— TheMayor.TV (@tMayor_McCheese) November 26, 2023

Gender-inclusive language

There are those who pooh-pooh inclusive language, gender neutral language, and blame change on a 'few' feminists from the 70's who began to stand up for equality.

I am shocked that male writers seek to 'blame' this vocabulary on feminists.

• Why I do not use Gender Neutral Language
• Why I No Longer Use Gender Neutral Language

The opposition tends to be by males, and these are theologians. Very interesting!  The fundamentalist right seem to fight hardest over theology. The backlash seems to appear from those who resent referring to Mother-Father-God, eschewing the goddess, the goddess movement, the crone, the Wiccan, witch, and the wise woman elder, and embracing the writings of dead white men.

" And this is precisely why Christians cannot allow a secular form of egalitarianism to determine the way Christians think and read Scripture," writes one male theologian. 
(You, she, aren't the boss of me, he!)

If a reader feels that 'he', or 'man', or firewoman, leaves them out of the writing, I think it a valid argument.

Many argue that the Bible was written by God, and we use 'man' in the Bible,yet, the Bible was TRANLATED by scholars who lived in gender-biased eras in which the previously acceptable 'they' was replaced around the 17th century by 'he'.

The blame, it would appear, is Ann Fisher (1719-1778) , an 18th-century British schoolmistress. She was the first woman to write an English grammar book, according to the socio-historical linguist Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade. Fisher’s, “A New Grammar” (1745), ran to more than 30 editions. More importantly, it’s believed to be the first to say that the pronoun he should apply to both sexes.

Now, this woman was a prominent business-woman. She ran a boarding school, and seemed not to have been infected by the proverbial glass ceiling in an era when it was the husband's place to support the family.  How shocking, then, that she set the woman's movement back 200 years - well, gave it momentum, perhaps, by removing the previously accepted universal pronoun of 'they'.

 The 14th edition of the Chicago manual of style: "the 'revival' of the singular use of they and their, citing...its venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare."

Chaucer used it for singular and plural, masculine and feminine. Nobody seemed to mind that they, them and their were officially plural. As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, writers were comfortable using they with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because it suggested a sexless plural.

There is no All-Purpose Pronoun in many modern pieces of writing, yet there are options.
I often use s/he, or deliberately include he or she in a piece if it is needed. But I truly prefer 'they'. Language is meant to be fluid, adaptive and flexible as humankind learns more about the world. It is criminal that we cannot refer to firewoman, but fireman is acceptable. My pet peeve is chairman, when chair will suffice. Or spokesman, when the speaker is clearly a woman! If in doubt, be specific.

Put some thought into your writing. Your daughters will appreciate it.

Examples...


*"Development of the Uterus in Rats, Guinea Pigs, and Men" (title of a research report)
*"The Pap test, which has greatly reduced mortality from uterine cancer, is a boon to mankind."
Even when authors insist that "man" is a general term of all humans, they can lapse into meaning it as a term for only males:
*"As for man, he is no different from the rest. His back aches, he ruptures easily, his women have difficulties in childbirth . . . "
*In James Baldwin's essay "Stranger in the Village" Baldwin refers to "white men" and "black men" (seemingly generic terms), but then he eventually refers to "that peculiar, intent, paranoiac malevolence which one sometimes surprises in the eyes of American white men when, out walking with their Sunday girl, they see a Negro male approach."

 Examples taken from Sarah Werner, and *The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing* by Casey Miller and Kate Swift (New York: Lippincott, 1988)

Gendercide

I read the most interesting article in the Economist the other day:

The war on baby girls: Gendercide | The Economist

4 Mar 2010 ... Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared and the number is rising.

After International Women's Day, it really hit home: how much our lives are affected by our gender, and how much our lives are controlled by societal morays around this issue.

We know, of course, of the bias of certain extremist religious groups that do not want to educate girls. We know about the glass ceiling in big business.

Many reputable services agencies and NGOs understand the importance of teaching women, because then you educate a family. In cultures, as in some African countries, where it is acceptable for older men to rape young girls, it results in the spread of AIDS.  NGOs are going in and teaching the girls to demand condom use. Anti-discrimination laws and media campaigns are making a dent in some countries.

But, Gendercide, is the systematic choice to abort baby girls in, for example, China and northern India. China, with their former one-child policy (now 30+ yrs old: established in 1979), depended upon boys to inherit family responsibilities, as well as property, while girls marry and go to the husband's family. The anchor of the birth of a boy meant that elders knew they would be looked after in their senior years.

This magazine cites these reasons for gendercide:

1. The ancient Asian preference for sons
2. A modern desire for smaller families
3. New, inexpensive technology that identifies the gender of a fetus.
4. Declining fertility rates.

For $12, a family can have an unltrasound in China and choose to abort a female. In their new economy, this is affordable. In pre-Communist China, families (rich or poor) would have 4 or more children and could expect a boy somewhere along the line. Over the years stories have abounded about baby girls disappearing.

In India, where dowries still exist, families are importing women. And the bride-price is lowering. In South Korea there are more interracial marriages.

In China and South Korea, the WHO tells us that suicide rates amongst women, are the highest in the world.

The consequences of this gender war is that gender ratio of a natural ratio of 105 boys to 100 girls, are skewed to 124;100 is some places. The natural ratio works since baby boys are more fragile than their female peers. This means that the anchor of a wife and family, for young men, is no longer there. Without a 'stake in society' (The worldwide war on baby girls, p. 77) young men are different than those with a vested interest in values. Young men are responsible for more crime and violence than women, and in China and India social acceptance depends upon being married and having children.

Consequences ensue: crime rates have increased in China, bride abductions, trafficking of women, rap and prostitution are on the rise.

I am grateful to live in a country in which my granddaughter will have choices: education, career, family, rural or urban lifestyle. A little girl, taught well by her parents, who uses the word 'Yes', rather than the ubiquitous 'Yeah', or 'No problem', and understands the values we bashed into her mother (just kidding!). I have high hopes that she will be whomever she wants to be, with freedoms that go unrealized in many countries. She will be able to pursue the answers to the questions she ponders.
Oh, Canada!
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Gendercide Watch

Confronts gender-selective atrocities against men and women worldwide. Includes a growing database of historical and contemporary case-studies of gendercide