June is Pride Month

Conspirituality = conspiracy theories

When we know better –we do better. Some of us. Some use click bait, and use confirmation bias to mine conspiracy theories. This is why we need diverse sources and a means to identify unreliable sources. This is a new book on the market:

    Conspirituality takes a deep dive into the troubling phenomenon of influencers who have curdled New Age spirituality and wellness with the politics of paranoia—peddling vaccine misinformation, tales of child trafficking, and wild conspiracy theories. ... Google Books

🌈 I watched an interview with someone who is part of Stand In Pride. These are people who will stand in during Gay marriages, for *nearlyweds who are alienated from their parents who do not accept their choices. There is a Canadian Facebook group for them, as well. 

Stand In Pride Canada 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

:  I think it is brilliant! 

         *Gender neutral terms for non-binary or LGBTQ weddings include marriers, celebrants, nearlyweds. Bachlorx, best person, person of honour, attendants, are some other handy terms.

There was an incident, in Kelowna, B.C., east of Vancouver. Thankfully, we can learn from it. This grandfather, Tesar, accused a pair of girls (gr. 4, age 9) for being boys or trans kids. Such ignorance. Prior to puberty, kids are pretty equal. They said the man's wife then started calling her (the parent) "a genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile." 

We of the older generation must do our best to learn about young people and society today. We cannot 'judge a book by its cover.' Those accusing people of being groomers, are hurting innocent children. The poor 9-year-old was distraught. You cannot convince someone to be gay. Let's worry more about actual predators. 

Alright, back to nature. Tuesday afternoon I visited my client. We watched the Trump indictment. It was entertaining for both of us! 

Breeding season unfolds

The geese are raising their goslings, who are growing!

House Wrens!

House Wren June 10 from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Canada Geese June 12 from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

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)