I recently received a change.org petition from someone who attends Berklee College of Music who felt slighted because their professors could not keep their pronouns straight in identifying the person according to their desires. They were petitioning in order to push Berklee to come up with a more effective way to correct pronouns within whatever databases they might maintain in order to protect non-binary people from being disrespected through undesired pronoun usage [although I daresay it may be useful for anyone whose appearance does not affiliate in an obvious way with the pronoun(s) with which they identify]
I signed the petition because I believe that everyone deserves the respect to be identified in the manner of their choosing. I also understand that as an older cisgender white guy there’s a sense that I'm no longer allowed to have opinions since apparently the history told of so much of the western world is all about guys who superficially share a resemblance to myself & it’s time for the rest of the world to get their fair due. OK, enough of my whining. My understanding is that the goal is equal opportunity & equal respect for all humans. A worthy goal & the direction in which I believe most of us who read the Daily Kos have exerted our efforts.
I only ask you to be tolerant and less sensitive to perceived slights when you are the one who has been stretching the boundaries. Stretching is good but intolerance & lack of acceptance readily moves in two directions. As I was taught in my youth that it is not nice to hit someone below the belt, I have sometimes encountered people who wear their belt above their ears. If you want to lead people to a better place, please show compassion for those who move more slowly. Many of us are “slow” merely because as an older person, I have to keep track of 6 decades worth of information & experience rather than just the two or three decades of many of the younger folk who are leading the way on many issues. Standards have always changed & people have always had to adapt. I understand the basis for impatience with the too many people who seem to be fighting change:
but there are also plenty of us who aren’t fighting, we just aren’t as quick as you might like.
The impatience & intolerance of youth is a cliche’ that need not be. Let’s not mimic the intolerance of some of the Trump supporters with our own intolerance. Ignorance is part of the human condition & it is inherent in the fact that each & every one of us suffers from limitations to our knowledge & wisdom. To think otherwise is just an indulgence in narcissism within a society which is already too narcissistic. It has taken us thousands of year to get this far (let’s face it, just 5-6 centuries ago in feudal societies ~95% of everybody were essentially slaves). In some parts of the world, it may seem like things haven’t changed very much at all: www.npr.org/…
While we still have a ways to go, let’s allow that it may not happen overnight. Revolutions as a whole tend to produce worse situations than the ones they were trying to correct. Evolution takes longer but it has greater endurance. We can see the backlash represented by the Trump cult. A lot of those people didn’t need to go there but they just couldn’t move fast enough & so they turned around & decided to go backwards. Keep the pressure on for change but if you can keep the pressure more gentle (relatively speaking) the change will more likely endure. I understand that some things cannot be tolerated & must be changed as quickly as we can but other issues — such as proper use of preferred pronouns, may not be as vital as just the need to not be persecuted for being different in the first place. Though I may not appear different from a stereotype that exists in your mind upon first glance, every one of us is unique & deserves respect for our uniqueness & to not be pigeonholed by stereotypes. I’m not suggesting that we should be tolerant of intolerance, just more tolerant of ignorance. Ignorance, unlike stupidity, can be corrected. Maybe we can do better at correcting ignorance by showing the compassion which we ourselves would like to receive.
And while we are at it, perhaps we could make life easier for everyone by developing a viable neuter pronoun that can be used for everyone without insulting anyone.