My day job is to run online educational programs for families with young kids. At one of the meetings, we asked families to briefly introduce themselves. One woman stated her name, then her three preferred pronouns. Then she stated the name and three preferred pronouns of her partner, who was not present at the meeting. Then she stated the name and three preferred pronouns of her 8 months old baby boy (who was present but wished he wasn’t because his mom bored everybody to death).
It’s safe to say the boy did not know what a pronoun was. Nevertheless, his mom has chosen one for him and proudly shared it with a dozen strangers. Even though many liberals claim that assuming a baby’s gender (let alone a preferred pronoun) is tantamount to child abuse, maybe the members of the alphabet community are exempt from this rule.
The preferred pronoun exhibition made that woman’s introduction 10 minutes long. The program is only 45 minutes long. So, a dozen other families just lost a good chunk of their program to learn the preferred pronouns of a woman they’ve never met, the other woman who was not even present, and a baby who may change his pronouns very soon. If I was attending this class, I would ask to be compensated for the time I lost. But the woke crowd thinks that picking your “preferred pronouns” is an exercise in courage and creativity, and if they took time to carefully pick one among the multitude of options, the least you can do is invest time in memorizing them.
The purpose of listing your “preferred pronouns” in your public communications has always eluded me. When you address a person directly, in an email or a conversation, when do you ever use a pronoun? The only thing that you need to know is a person’s name: “Hi John, how is your day going? What about those five bucks you owe me?” Disclosing your “preferred pronouns” is like declaring your favorite color: except for your interior decorator, it helps no one.
In times when there is no pandemic, declaring your preferred pronouns has the effect of wearing a mask while driving alone. Disclosing your preferred pronouns is a way to declare your political affiliation without investing in the “Biden – Harris 2020” bumper sticker. When you hear a person declaring their preferred pronouns, tell them they owe you money for gas.
