The Molehill of the Pronoun Thing: A BUGHOUSE! Dialectic
The following essay was originally written and performed for BUGHOUSE! #40 in Las Vegas at the Bunkhouse Saloon on February 10, 2020. The topic of debate was The Pronoun Thing: Mountain or Molehill? Don Hall went up against Erica Kuharski. Hall lost the argument.
Out of the entire 330,000,000 Americans residing in the United States:
0.8% are Oscar Mayer Weiner enthusiasts.
1.6% are Knitting Enthusiasts.
0.3% Americans have webbed toes.
5.9% have scoliosis.
0.7% wear dentures.
0.4% are vegans.
0.6% are transgender.
If all of America was 100 people in a room, 65 of them would be white, 16 would be Hispanic, 13 would be black, 5 would be Asian, and the remaining one person would be everybody else. 52 would be women, 48 men. A whopping 95 would be heterosexual. Of the five left, just over half of one of them would be transgender.
This is not to say the issues of, say, CosPlayers (2.3% of Americans) are not to be taken seriously. It is likewise not to say that the transgender community has the same choice of identity as, say, Furries (people who only enjoy sex if dressed up as an animal comprising 0.5% of the population). It is, however, a series of issues that truly only benefit the most minuscule percentage of the tribe.
So, in the vein that size matters, the heightened hysteria over which pronouns we are supposed to use and how we know which ones to use and if it’s hate speech if we use the wrong ones, is a response to a pretty tiny issue affecting less people than celebrate the Jerry Seinfeld faux holiday of Festivus (0.7% of Americans) or participate in dress up screenings of The Big Lewbowski (1.3% nationwide).
The argument that this issue is small, however, isn’t sufficient. Only 13% of Americans are directly affected by racial slurs against blacks and, while these slurs are not outlawed, when accompanied by a crime that crime is rightly elevated to the level of a hate crime. The severity of breaking the new normal of they/theirs/she/he/it/Bob and Tyler should likewise be considered.
Now, dead naming (the practice of calling a transgender person by the name they were born with) is pretty much a dick move. It’s not harmful, it’s not violence, (because hurt feelings and offense aren’t the same as violence) but it is fucking rude. A guy who walks into a gas station and tells the clerk “That N-Word told me to pay in here.” is a rude piece of bigoted shit. I think we can all agree there.
The same guy who comes in and says “the colored guy told me to pay here” is skirting a grayer area. Perhaps he’s just a little thick or old. “Colored” is crappy vernacular but hardly packs the wallop of the word that shall not be uttered.
Same for the pronoun thing. In the gender fluid deal, everyone gets to choose their pronouns but to make it illegal to respect that choice is a bridge too far (legislation outlawing incorrect pronoun use has been introduced in seven states and a bit of online research shows at least 25 university employees fired for it). Cluelessly rude is not a crime. Intentionally rude is not a crime. If being rude were a crime, the prisons would be filled with 20-year old white people instead of colored men.
But what mountains to compare this molehill to for perspective?
We, as Americans, hell, as Earthlings, face a host of mountains. Societally, we have income inequality that eclipses that of the 1920’s, voting disenfranchisement, white supremacy is all in vogue again. We have a savant media whore with the scruples of a six-year old sociopath as our current presidential suite occupant. Half the country has been attacking reproductive rights like scarab beetles on the face of that fat guy in The Mummy with Brendan Fraser and why didn’t I say with Rachel Weiss — patriarchy!
On a global scale we have a climate apocalypse coming, Coronavirus is here, and the oceans are a toilet that covers three quarters of the planet. The Iranians want to kill the Jews, the Jews want to kill the Palestinians, and the Russians want to destroy us from inside our goddamned smartphones.
These are the mountains.
Your pronouns are a molehill in comparison even if, in your mind, the world is just a movie starring you and your issues.
