For You, Ze War Is Over
Riddle me this: which words is the ODE going to extraordinary lengths to avoid using in the following excerpt from an otherwise blah story concerning a minor infringement of state law? Here‘s a clue.
Senator Toby Hill-Meyer was unaware that the executive sessions were a violation of the law, the senator said. Because they were held to discuss hiring practices, Hill-Meyer was under the impression that the executive sessions were “implicit,” the sentator [sic] said.
Good job, that sub-editor. The deliberate typo is a particularly nice touch, used as it was in many ancient cultures to convey disrespect. (Which is why you see so many of them around here, obviously.)
But how will Hill-Meyer respond? Well, you’ll have to ask hir.
It’s pretty much a given that anyone who runs around calling hirself “transgendered” is actually a total attention whore. I hapen to be transsexual. Like, I went to a bunch of doctors, got diagnosed, take hormones, had surgery, and live full-time in my ‘new’ gender. I don’t run around yelling about how I used to be something else–in fact, I’d rather nobody knew. Why? Because it’s weird, and I don’t want people thinking I’m some kind of freakshow attention whore.
Like Toby Hill-Meyer.
It certainly is pointless, but trading Toby Hill-Meyer and sundry Vagitators for Bush’s National Guard service and the Swift Boat Vets doesn’t necessarily strike me as an upgrade…
Michael Newdow, the anti-Pledge guy, is an advocate of “re” as a non-gender-specific pronoun. That isn’t a word either, of course, but at least it’s a prefix!
Do I ever miss pointless controversies like this one.
Olly: I can understand your premise, but I don’t think it will ever realize how silly it is to be called “ze”. Therefore, the best option, is just to use a non-gendered pronoun that already exists. Sort of an “if you don’t pick we’ll pick- for you and you won’t like it” strategy. I guess you could argue that Hill-Meyer has picked “ze”, but that’s not a real word.
Ah, this brings back memories of when a Korean student reported me (as ME of the Emerald) to the Bias Response Team because I told him that I didn’t think the paper printing a picture of students practicing martial arts at Korea Night was a blatant exploitation of racial stereotypes. You really gotta take these complaints with a grain of salt. Personally, I think informing the public of Maddy Melton’s potential penis-cutting threat was a public fucking service.
To expand on my last point, perhaps unnecessarily:
I find this story amusing and worthy of running-joke status because Toby Hill-Meyer, in protesting that the gendered pronouns “he” and “him” fail to do justice to his (dammit!) specialness, is being amazingly pretentious and silly. “He” and “him”, as applied to Toby Hill-Meyer, do not constitute dehumanizing or even inaccurate language; ze just wants to draw attention to hirself.
I think the appropriate response to this is to overindulge him, up to and beyond (especially beyond) the point where ze realizes how ridiculous it sounds. I don’t think the appropriate response to this cry of societal injustice is to actually start using dehumanizing language to describe hir. The whole reason this is funny is that ze doesn’t have a legitimate complaint.
Tim, I appreciate that you can be as obstreperous as you like now you’re no longer a student, but it would be nice not to totally alienate Anne Leavitt (given that she doesn’t seem to be attacking us unnecessarily, unlike the “certain administrators” Tyler alludes to).
I am also not down with calling people “it”, as I said the last time this topic came up.
I hope you told her, ever so politely, to go fuck herself.
Watch it there, Tim. Your words may be perceived as a threat by UO administrators.
During a meeting with Anne Leavitt a few days ago, Dan and I learned that certain UO administrators thought that our OC Asks bit in the last issue was out of line because it marginalized Toby Hill-Meyer and created a threatening environment for him on campus. According to the administrators, having Maddy Melton declare I cut off Tobys penis may provoke some people on campus to, um, try to cut off Tobys penis.
Personaly, if “he” or “she” isn’t good enough for you, I think “it” is perfectly acceptable. Screw you, Hill-Meyer.