John C. Wright sees through the SJWs and their little speech-policing tactics:
A reader with the euphonious name of Ecreegan hold forth an opinion on the courtesy owed to transvestites, transgendered, and transrationals.
Sometimes there’s no polite option. Tell me, what pronoun do I use for a pre-operative male-to-female transexual? “She” is a lie. “He” is considered highly offensive, and “it” is considered beyond the pale. (I try to use names. The new name is not a lie, even if it doesn’t make any sense.)I very strongly disagree, so much so that I cannot tell if you are making a joke.
When you say the words “considered highly offensive” I cannot imagine anyone having any right to be offended at such a thing, nor any honest man taking such offense seriously.
Highly? Really?
To the contrary, it is highly offensive even to assert that an honest man should lie like a dog, a lie no one believes and no one can believe, merely to please the arbitrary whims of some petty tyrant trying to demean your soul and rob you of dignity.
The rule in English is that males and male objects are “he”, and persons whose sex is unknown or undetermined is also “he.” One says “he or she” only in a legal document where that degree of precision overwhelms the need for good grammar. Otherwise is it an error. “They” used in a singular merits horsewhipping.
A man who cuts off his penis and has false breasts implanted is not changing his sex, that is, his biological reality, but is attempting to change his social role: he is a man who wants to be treated with the honors and titles of a wife and mother. He also suffers from profound mental illness, so much so that he cuts off parts of his body.
But since the pronoun deals with the sex and not with social roles, he has no right to be offended if he is a “he”.
It is like being offended that A is A or being offended that twice two is four. If twice two were four, then there would be four lights. There are five lights!
More to the point, it is like being offended if a prole says Oceania was allied with Eastasia last year. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!
Saying a he is a “he” is not what offends.
The political correction officer is playing a social dominance game with you. He is making himself to be offended with you so that you will obey him.
Precisely. The correct pronoun for both a man and an individual of indeterminate sex is “he”. This is a long-established grammatical rule and also happens to be in line with science. One no more need call an amputated man wearing a dress “a woman” than one need call a costumed man wearing a furry lupine outfit “a wolf”.
One can, of course, quite reasonably elect to indulge one’s friends if one sees fit. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with addressing a friend as “Emperor” if he happens to sincerely believe he is Napoleon. But etiquette does not demand that we automatically defer to the delusions of others.