Photo via @GadSaad/Twitter, @cd_hooks/Twitter
October 28, 2021, 1:57 pm
A professor and self-described “Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist” became Wednesday’s Twitter main character after he posted a thread telling a story in which his wife was allegedly “frozen in fear” over pronouns because she thought a cafe server might be transgender. He used this anecdote of a brief moment of cisgender discomfort to claim that “language policing” is some kind of massive “problem” causing “everyone” (by which he means cis people) to walk “on egg shelves” (we assume he meant “shells”).
Featured Video
Hide
“Fighting for a world free of bigotry does not imply that we must suppress perfectly natural categorization mechanisms that are built into our brains and our languages,” wrote Gad Saad. “I can be free of bigotry without being compelled to celebrate your unique personhood.”
Advertisement
Hide
For the record, just because you call something “natural” or “built into our brains” doesn’t mean it’s good or incapable of causing harm. Categorizing people into in-groups and out-groups is natural for the human brain, but left unchecked can and has led to bigotry of all kinds. Also, the basic respect of trying not to misgender someone is not the same as a whole celebration of “unique personhood.” Nobody asking him to throw a party.
Those who have chosen to face their minor discomfort of breaking away from another socially-reinforced binary on human experience instead of acting like it’s the end of humanity have come out in droves to condemn Saad. Many have pointed out that there is no reason to use third-person pronouns for the person you’re speaking to in a simple conversation, and even if it does come up, the gender-neutral “they” is always there.
Others suggested that perhaps a moment of mild discomfort for Saad’s cis wife isn’t quite equivalent to what trans people have to go through daily while trying to exist as their true selves. It’s also pretty incredible to imply that the suffering of trans folks doesn’t matter because they represent an “extraordinarily small minority” only to immediately follow up with what he thought was some kind of get-out-of-bigotry-free card.
Advertisement
Hide
Here are some of the best responses:
1.
2.
I don’t understand why grown adults engage in such bad faith about something so easy.
1. Simple: “I’m so-and-so, and pronouns are such-and-such. May I ask yours?”
2. If you feel you somehow can’t ask, just use the gender-neutral “they/them”.
There. Fixed. You are very welcome. https://t.co/GHizA6gl2a
— Charlotte Clymer
(@cmclymer) October 27, 2021
3.
4.
if your wife was frozen in fear about ordering a latte, i think the issue is less language policing and more one that a physiatrist might be more qualified to address https://t.co/602oQvOQsH
— Ivyprofen
(@IvyKungu) October 27, 2021
5.
Coffee has no pronoun!
just for this guy’s wife next time she’s ‘frozen in fear’.
“Hi, can I have a coffee please?’
‘Yes no problem’
‘Thank you’I can’t even work out where you would need to put the pronoun in to this conversation!
— Jason Manford (@JasonManford) October 28, 2021
Advertisement
Hide
6.
7.
8.
A modern tragedy. Thoughts and prayers for this madeup wife and her condition of being unable to say “Hi, could I have a large coffee? Please and thank you.”
https://t.co/fLJhT5YuKi
— XIRAN (@XiranJayZhao) October 27, 2021
9.
‘Hi’ ‘Pardon me’ ‘How are you this morning?’ ‘May I please have’ ‘Thank you’ Language you can use without worrying about someone’s pronouns. But you don’t really care about that, do you? You’re just looking for targets, then you can cry victim when people come to their defense. https://t.co/eZ2LrJZpvk
—
Valerie Bertinelli (@Wolfiesmom) October 27, 2021
10.
Advertisement
Hide
*First Published: October 28, 2021, 1:57 pm
0 Comments