Apparently the Annoyed, Angry and Pretend Progressive Crew has a new target in their ongoing quest to turn everyone off from the very idea they’re trying to promote. Not content to attempt to merely confuse us with plural pronouns or to get us all to renounce standard human ideas like gender (which is a lot like denying gravity – you can deny it, but it’s still real and gravity doesn’t care what you think), this bizarre militia of angry young white women and the pathetically henpecked men who follow them around have now taken aim at yet another fundamental aspect of gendered humanity — Motherhood and Fatherhood.
I’m not joking. This probably trend is beginning with passport applications, replacing “mother” and “father” with “parent 1” and “parent 2” (and they’ll get around to removing those numbers in a few years too, I’m guessing). They now want us to give up two more cherished and useful words in their unquenchable attempt to get everyone on the planet to never say anything out loud without first looking around in fear of who might be listening. Children’s passports used to list mothers and fathers, because, well, it’s probably a useful thing for a lone seven-year-old on a transatlantic flight to provide their parents’ names should something go wrong. The parents are still listed, just not their genders. It’s a baby step toward destroying gender as we know it, but they won that battle, and now, like all conquerors, they’re hungry for more. Beware, Mother Goose, they’re coming for you, girl.
Dr. Alice Rose and I are on the same page about this particular brand of heretical nonsense. Since she’s an actual academic and I’m really just a mildly-philosophical comedy writer, when we agree on a topic we sometimes team up. She adds intellectual heft to my rants and I make her academic writing slightly more readable. Even academics know that academic writing is terrible.
Alice has iconoclastic friends all over the world, a smattering of wonderful weirdos who populate her inbox. One of them sent her an article about this phenomenon and we talked about it one afternoon. While both of us like to think of ourselves as somewhat liberal, certain idiotic aspects of modern liberalism get under our skin like a really successful tick, burrowing in, laying eggs and then, one fine autumn day they sprout and fly off, horrifying us both and anyone in a ten-foot radius. This recent trend of linguistic fascism is one such area of agreement. Masquerading as conscientiousness, Alice and I both know it by its actual name — Thought Control. Everyone over the age of thirty hates this Woke crap. Everyone over the age of fifty doesn’t even understand it. And, sadly for the future of humanity, about half of everyone under the age of twenty-five buys into this fascist nonsense 100%. Frosty the Snowman, despite his love of dance, his nutritious if strange carrot nose, and well-out-of-fashion ocular energy choice of coal eyes, once he’s inevitably renamed Frosty the Snowhuman, is going to lose what made him so magical.
DISCLAIMER: Dr. Rose wanted me to say…. No, you know what? Before we get to the disclaimer, I’m going to add a personal DISCLAIMER ABOUT THE DISCLAIMER.
DISCLAIMER ABOUT THE DISCLAIMER: The following disclaimer is totally Dr. Rose. I don’t feel the need to disclaim this. She does. I respect her, so I’m including it.
DISCLAIMATIONAL REVELATION DISCOVERED WHILE WRITING MY DISCLAIMATION ABOUT HER DISCLAIMER: Dr. Rose is probably a better person than I am.
ACTUAL DISCLAIMER (Dr. Alice Rose, phD): “I consider myself a liberal. I support anyone’s sexuality and how they choose to express it. Other than pedophilia, I have no issues with anyone’s choice of sexual behavior or expression. What makes this dogma dangerous is that when a person objects to this new controlling speech, he or she is immediately labeled a right-wing bigot. The left is now as controlling as the right. I want equality for all people and I’ve fought for that all my life, but I can still recognize crazy when I see it.”
What is victory in this War on Gender going to look like? Other than the slight possibility of this trend eventually leading to everyone on the planet getting sex change operations to make us all hermaphrodites, what’s the point of this battle? If we want to continue to create future people, then gender differences are a pretty important thing to keep around. Once the new people are born, we still need gender. Even if we change its name to “Chestfeeding,” male nipples aren’t going to do the trick. If I held a newborn up to my chest and let it suckle my nipples, even if it weren’t freaked out by my chest hair, I still can’t lactate. It sounds like a disappointing scenario for all parties involved.
Men and women are different. Deal with it. I am never going to sit around with my best friend and complain about the way the cashier at Ingles disrespected me. Alice is never going to let the outcome of a football game affect her mood or feel the need to fantasize about Merry Maids. (Ahh, Merry Maids, you’re the gift that keeps on giving. Also, thanks for cleaning up my apartment.)
Getting rid of pogo sticks, lawn darts and dwarf tossing hasn’t completely upended our society, but getting rid of gender is a much bigger task…and not only will it drastically change society as we know it, but it’ll also be confusing as shit for at least one generation.
You can’t nostalgically sing songs about the Fatherland anymore. Germans are really fucked.
Gender Reveal Parties are going to be a lot more anti-climactic.
The tombstone industry is going to need some new verbiage.
Father Time is going to have to do something about his old, saggy penis. Plus, if these “activists” think his hourglass looks a little too much like a pair of boobs, then what is he? Just an old eunuch with a beard and no props.
Hallmark is totally screwed. Florists are going to lose their biggest earning day. Mother’s Day can’t exist in a genderless society. I’d say that about Father’s Day too, but honestly, nobody really cares about Father’s Day anyway.
What are we going to call computer motherboards? Parentboards? Hermaphroboards?
Psychotherapy is in all kinds of trouble. “Tell me about your parent. No, not that parent, the other one.”
Daddy issues? ===> Parent issues?
Mama’s boys? ===> Weak kids whose non-gender-specific birthers overprotected them?
Dad jokes? ===> (Actually, this one will be OK. It just means bad, lame, inoffensive jokes, often puns, and, unfortunately, bad jokes will never die.)
Stay-at-home-moms? ===> I suppose they’ll let you stay at home, even without being called a mom.
Motherhood was once its own reward. “Hey, you created a miniature human being. Good for you. Now it’s time to screw that kid up in your own unique manner.” The urge to procreate, though expressed differently by men and women, IS the very thing that keeps the species going. Without it, there will soon be no more humans. While that may save the rainforests, you won’t be around to enjoy them, because you’ll be extinct.
What about fairy tales? Cinderella’s Wicked Step-Person just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The Founding Fathers are going to have to renounce their genitalia.
Will we let Uncle Sam stick around? Can we keep aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces in this not-so-Brave New World? Uncle Sam is definitely going to have to lose the beard. Hermaphro-Sam? It just doesn’t feel as patriotic, does it?
The Mother of all Bombs will be stripped of its gender identity.
Weddings are going to need a full-on Etch-a-Sketch shake up. They’ve got way too many gendered words. Father of the Bride? I don’t think so. Maid of honor? Not on my watch. Groomsmen? Without “groom” or “men” this one’s going to need a whole new vocabulary. Bridesmaids? Um, well, again, not so much. People’s people? Indeterminate-Gendered Friends of the two soon-to-be-married people?
What about fashion? The vast majority of the fashion industry revolves around gender. I don’t know a single man who owns a pair of yoga pants and I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t. Tuxedos? Ball gowns? High heels?
What about bras? Are we going to have to start selling manbras? (OK, I’ll admit I know a fair number of men who could probably benefit from the support provided by a good manbra, but I don’t know how they’d be convinced to wear one.) Jock straps will just be straps.
And religion? Oh dear God, religion is going to need a massive makeover. See you later, Mother Superior. Father Mahoney, you’re going to need a rechristening. The Mohel industry, already a highly specific job without too many tangential offshoots available for out-of-work Mohels, is going to be relocated to the dustbin of history.
As with a lot of modern nonsense, this phenomenon feels most at home on American college campuses. College professors are already being boxed in at an alarming rate, and the increased future speed of this ludicrous trend is not going to help anyone. Campuses need to be places of intellectual exploration, free from limits, liberated from prejudice. While the proponents of a genderless society say that they think their mission is one of equality, I not-so-humbly disagree. They’re actually limiting thought, boxing in free expression and trying to organize society under some truly Gestapo norms. Also, kids who have managed to avoid being offended from birth through age 22 are in for an unpleasant surprise after graduation, when they discover that the “real world” doesn’t give two shits about their feelings. Real life has no safe spaces and is littered with warningless trigger words. College is supposed to provide children with the tools necessary to navigate the world, not shelter them to the point that they’re going to be entirely fucking useless when they reach it.
And, finally, must we give up one of our most cherished cuss words? “Motherfucker” is a really useful word, a good word, a necessary word. “Parentfucker” feels like an incestuous category of pornography without mass appeal. Fans of parentfucker porn are people law enforcement should probably keep an eye on. Motherfucker is a great word. I’d miss it if it leaves us.
We’re clearly in the middle of some transitional growing pain period (No, wait I can’t say “period”) era(?) in the history of gender and gender relations. That’s not all bad. Equality is a noble goal. The problem isn’t really even this loud minority pushing their genderless agenda. The problem is the Internet. A minute fraction of people are actually offended by useful, well-worn words like Mother and Father, but though they are small in number, they are loud when heard through the distorted megaphone we call Twitter. This angry core of pretend liberals knows how to design good click-bait Internet headlines. Their nonsense is interesting, and the Internet loves nothing more than interesting nonsense, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…other than providing us a good way to piss off drunk, right-wing Uncle Fred at Thanksgiving.
Dr. Rose wanted me to say that she’s not renouncing her liberalism, just honing it for the modern era. She once accepted the idea that people should be called whatever they want to be called, but now she’s starting to resent it. She doesn’t want to resent equality. She wants to celebrate it. But she’s a psychologist. She can’t celebrate crazy, she has to cure it. That’s her job.
Even if we do wind up with a genderless society, it can’t be something that’s created as fast as these Social Justice Morons want. Change happens slowly. The perfect example is something that’s in their wheelhouse, something that does make sense, but also something that would’ve been considered bat-shit crazy forty years ago…gay marriage. Since 2015, gay marriage has been the law of the land. Five years later the overwhelming majority of the country doesn’t bat an eye at gay marriage, but there were years, decades, of groundwork laid before something that big, something as fundamental to society as marriage, could be changed this fundamentally.
Right now the idea of getting rid of gender entirely looks like the inmates running the asylum. If they succeed and in fifty years there really will be no Mother’s Day, no Father of the Bride, and the little foot-, neck- and hand-less figures that define our bathrooms are relics of the past, this article is going to read like a treatise about the proper way to beat your wife. But, since I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that we can both rid ourselves of gender AND continue to produce future people, then maybe, just maybe, this recent trendy nonsense about the evils of gender will look as stupid to future people as pet rocks or pre-ripped jeans.
Sorry hippies, rocks aren’t pets. They’re just rocks.