Off on a Gender-Bender

Today’s entirely predictable and un-satirizable headline comes from the Puffington Host:  “Nadine Schweigert, North Dakota Woman, ‘Marries Herself,’ Opens Up About Self-Marriage.”  The only questions here are: what took us so long, and will the IRS allow an additional dependent exemption on the Form 1040?

I mean really, I had to double-check to make sure the Puffington Host hadn’t merged with The Onion:

A 36-year-old North Dakota woman who married herself in a commitment ceremony last March has now spoken about her self-marriage choice in an interview with Anderson Cooper.

The marriage took place among friends and family who were encouraged to “blow kisses to the world” after she exchanged rings with her “inner groom”, My Fox Phoenix reports.

“I feel very empowered, very happy, very joyous … I want to share that with people, and also the people that were in attendance, it’s a form of accountability,” Nadien Schweigert told Anderson Cooper.

Maybe there’s a better clue in this passage:

Schweigert said the ceremony was a celebration of how far she’d come since her painful divorce six years ago that led to her two children to decide to live with her ex-husband.

Kids wanted to live with the ex-husband rather than her?  I can’t imagine why.

This is all prelude to the “Notable and Quotable” segment of the WSJ editorial page today, from Jason Morgan, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Wisconsin, complaining about the mandatory “diversity training” for new employees:

At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students.” At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.

Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.

It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion.

I had to sit through the exact same thing here at the University of Colorado orientation for new faculty.  It was an interesting and tense moment: I’m sure I was among the only—if not the only—conservative in the room of roughly 100 new faculty, yet the sense of discomfort in the room over the gender-self-identification whim-wham was palpable.  Several people asked whether the gender-re-identification privilege couldn’t be abused as a classroom disruption tactic.  The answer the university’s diversity lawyer gave was, “Use your best judgment.”

I’m more curious to learn whether there have been many students—or any students, ever—who have demanded to be addressed in class by a different gender pronoun, or called by a different gender name (like “Loretta”), let alone turn up in class in wardrobe by Corporal Klinger.  My guess is the actual number of such students approaches zero.

So why is this gender-bending diversity mandate so prominent at universities these days?  The most likely explanation is that it is simply yielding to the demands of the folks who dislike any constraint of human nature in what goes by the LGBTQRSTUW (or whatever letters have been added lately) “community.”  I place “community” in quotation marks here because the very idea of community requires a certain commonality based ultimately in nature, while the premise behind gender-bending is resolutely to deny any such nature, including especially human nature.

But by all means, we must let the new royal baby choose its own gender, rather than having it “assigned” arbitrarily by the “patriarchy” just because the infant has a penis.  Makes me wonder how the “human rights” community stays in business, since we can’t seem to tell what humans are any more.

JOHN adds: It is astonishing how much time and energy are devoted to such nonsense. Still, while the gender-bizarre may be rare, they are not entirely unknown. My oldest daughter had a professor who claimed that he did not believe in gender, and to illustrate the point, sometimes wore a dress. Inmates/asylum.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses