Restore Honorifics : Ignore Entitled Pronouns

"Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity ... will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education."
Ontario Human Rights Commission

"Some senators [Senate of Canada, Parliament] expressed the view that forcing the use of non-gendered pronouns was reasonable because calling someone by their preferred pronoun is a reasonable thing to do. That position reflects a profound misunderstanding of the role of expression in a free society. The question is not whether required speech is 'reasonable' speech. If a statute required people to say 'hello', 'please', and 'thank you', that statute would be tyrannical, not because 'hello', 'please' and 'thank you' aren't reasonable things to say, but because the state has dictated the content of private conversation."
Dr. Bruce Pardy, professor of law, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

(Image: Marta Iwanek) : Dr.Jordan Peterson

The Senate of Canada a week ago saw fit to support the elected Members of Parliament in passing Bill C-16, reflecting the Liberal government's legislation adding "gender identity or expression" to discriminatory grounds in the Canadian Human Rights Act. It has already been enshrined in the Ontario Human Rights Code. Which translates to no longer using pronouns society has long been familiar with, simple ones that distinguish between the genders, male and female. He and she have always been recognized as references to male and female individuals.

Free society, however, has transited toward recognizing a cornucopia of new and for many puzzling genders; from being free of any association with any gender, to a confusion of a combination of genders and alternately a transfer of birth gender identity to a completely 'other' gender, one traditionally familiar and many conceived of in the feverish minds of those dissatisfied with the choices nature has given humankind. But then, nature is herself sometimes confused in her assignments.

It is no longer to be viewed as optional if one is informed that a completely new and nonsensical (to the traditionalist) identification is to be used in everyday speech designating an individual in a wide array of personal and intimate choices for recognition. Some of the choices appear to the uninitiated silly and fanciful, like "ze", "zir", or "they", grammatically incorrect, but insisted upon lest someone's feelings be hurt and the negligent speaker is deemed to be a churlish lout.

Academic Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, took personal offence at this strangulation of language and identity and in a rebellious move causing great consternation to students at University of Toronto where he is a -- or was -- a highly respected lecturer and teacher and posted several YouTube videos explaining his perfectly reasonable refusal to join the non-gendered pronoun bandwagon. He must have known there would be a backlash; immediate, vociferous and damning. From students, and from his own academic community.

It has become a human right to declare oneself neither male nor female, or both if the designation appears to fit the individual's view of self. It is a human right to call oneself whatever one wishes, in fact. But it stretches matters somewhat to insist that all of society must accede to the same recognition at the behest of the entitled and perhaps somewhat confused individual who views their gender with disgruntlement and confusion. Feeling perhaps that everyone should share that confusion in a spirit of support, leaving the condescension at home.

Perhaps no one has yet approached the Human Rights Commission, nor tabled a private member's bill in Parliament to make it a legal offence to flout convention and polite societal interaction by taking such liberties as speaking to and of the elderly as though they are children. Take, for example, the common occurrence of a receptionist in a medical centre or hospital calling an elderly patient by his/her first name; no salutation of "Mr." or "Mrs."; eschewing the courtesy of using the last name for the convenience of calling out the given name.

Now that is offensive to the meek and forgiving elderly who simply do a mental shrug bemoaning what has become of society that a social courtesy has been trashed in favour of treating the elderly with the disdain of ill-manners. Elderly women may not think much of "Ms." but even that might be preferable to having callow, perfect strangers address them as familiars. And elderly men who may be struggling with feelings of disempowerment in the thrall of agedness don't really relish young whippersnappers' entitlement to addressing them by their given names.

But the young and the genderless do feel entitled to being addressed in their ridiculous choices. Which is fine, their choice, but it is beyond absurd that the entire society must enter into a contract with them to support their choices.

I reckon 100-150 people out on the Hill for #C16 rally. Dylan Robertson, Twitter 17 May 2017