Guest Opinion: Gender-neutral and mind-numbing
As the chair of the Senate judiciary, state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson and her fellows on the committee voted to eliminate gender pronouns during committee hearings such as “he” and “she” in favor of a gender neutral pronoun, “they.” They will now refer to everyone as “they,” and that is that. Accordingly, I pose a serious question: Has Ms. Jackson completely lost they — I mean “her” — mind?
Supposedly, this was in response to Gov. Jerry Brown signing into law SB179, the Gender Recognition Act. The act allows California residents to select an “option x” or “non-binary” option on driver’s licenses, birth certificates, marriage licenses and other state-issued documents. However, though Mr. Brown offered both option x or non-binary, the governor did not eliminate the traditional gender designations of male and female. It makes you wonder how inclusion of the non-binary inspired Ms. Jackson to exclude the use of gender pronouns?
Finally, how did Ms. Jackson decide on the use of the pronoun “they” versus “it”? Everyone who has a dictionary knows that the pronoun “they” refers to two or more people. Whereas “it” is literally defined as the pronoun to be used when the sex is unspecified for the noun it is replacing. Moreover, the trans-activists have made up dozens of pronouns they can personally demand to be used while referring to “they.” Some even want the right to change their chosen pronoun as often as their mood changes throughout the course of a day. Why not accommodate everyone, including us old-fashioned him/her/he/she of this world?
Unfortunately, this is business as usual for tyrannical progressives. Because some people are confused by their gender, they want to make the rest of us suffer the same fate by subjecting us to confusion. If somebody wants to be called zir/er/they/them, etc. that is their business, but don’t tell me I have to join them or be like them.
George Orwell’s famous book, “1984,” coupled with his other essays, describes what is happening here. He warned how language could be controlled by a government for nefarious purposes to the extent that telling the truth would be considered a revolutionary act. The desired level of control could be accomplished by eliminating independent thinking while controlling the population via propaganda. That is, language would no longer lucidly express the nature of things, but rather obscure and distort them, facilitating deception and manipulation. Finally, such political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Thus, Orwell figured out a long time ago that if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought, and that a government that creates the language and mandates how it can be used can control the minds of its citizens. The goal of the government is to use propaganda to control language in order to control thoughts and, eventually, values.
Hannah-Beth Jackson rose to the top of the judiciary committee and the people who elected her are now getting their just “desserts” — just like they want it, with nuts on top.
