This is a thing now. Elderly (no-longer-young) people are thanking their lucky stars that they’ll soon be able to opt-out of Madness gawn Absolutely Mad. Enough already. Please, may we be excused?
Brendan O’Neill and Douglas Murray are not alone. Lots of us are exasperated by gender-non-specific individuals requiring plural pronouns and butchering language and grammar. Then they add insult to injury by carelessly calling them/selves “I” rather than ‘we’. Even Afua Hirsch, an earnest supporter of the plural pronoun malarkey caught herself out by accidentally using the explicitly masculine terms “he” and “him” in the course of arguing the case for ‘them’ and ‘their’ We/I am/are are not amused. None of us are. Including me.
Genuine question: What do they do about languages where inanimate objects have genders? Animals? What about, say, “La France”? Must they be plural now? Are France plural?
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What about that virtue-signalling investigation into Islamophobia that the Conservative Party was bumped into announcing, live on TV? In particular, what about Boris “calling Muslim women ‘letter-boxes and gangsters’?“ Didn’t the lady from Vice UK (As per Craig’s piece about today’s Daily Politics) comprehend that - for some serendipitous reason known only to him - Boris was arguing against the wretched Burka ban, and when he likened the appearance of the Muslim uniform to a letterbox (which, with its slits-for-eyeholes, it kind of is) he wasn’t actually calling Muslim women letterboxes or bank robbers?
Are people so terrified of causing offence that they’re actually arguing for a blasphemy law these days? No bloody wonder we see our hastening demise as a blessed release.
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Here in Cornwall, there’s a tradition called “Darkie Day”. I haven’t witnessed it personally, but I heard that it was tagged ‘controversial’ some time ago and (to avoid being racist) was re-titled “Mummer’s Day” and granted a reprieve. (Not banned)
“In spite of the fact that the police were brought in twice to film the events, and both times declared that there was no evidence of offensive behaviour, the spectacle of an entire town taking to the streets with blackened faces and singing about 'niggers' was understandably deemed by some to be inappropriate. In response, the festival organisers agreed to change the name of the event to Mummers Day (which brings it into alignment with England) and to try to change the songs back to the original Cornish ones.
We don’t know if the event is/was/will be currently permitted to go ahead, or if blacked-up revellers risk being convicted of hate crime.
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Quick, Dial 999! I’ve had a racist /Islamophobic/transphobic/homophobic/politically incorrect thought and I want to turn myself in and maybe go gentle into that good night.
I believe there are equally extreme moves to "reform" and degenderise languages with genders on the continent.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly one of the first disputes Stalin ruled on was one over language...the more extreme Bolsheviks expected the whole of the Russian language to be reformed to reflect the revolution.
Stalin decided against them. Might be where Orwell got the idea for Newspeak.
This of course connects with "Islamophobia". The purpose of Newspeak is to make impossible non-approved thought. This is exactly the purpose of the "Islamophobia" concept. It's not there to protect a few Muslims from instances of genuine persecution.It's there to protect Islam from critical analysis, since it cannot survive if subject to such analysis. So the aim is to (a) describe all attacks on Muslims as "Islamophobic" (b) extend the concept of Islamophobia to cover areas that are legitimate subjects for debate in a free society (c) associate legitimate critiques of Islam with hate crime and (d) create legal and social penalties (e.g. impact on employment) for allegations of "Islamophobia" so that ordinary people and people in the public sphere become fearful of expressing their views on Islam.
This is a form of Sharia policing of our culture and should be called out. But even the Brexit Party won't go there!
I love the way these opinonated lefties from tiny social media outfits give themselves fancy titles - Executive Editor at Vice UK...Senior Editor Novara Media.
Neither Vice nor Novara feature in the top 50 social media news related outlets:
https://www.similarweb.com/blog/index-top-u-k-media-publishers-and-publications-of-2015