The University of Colorado (Boulder) is under fire this week for a statement on the “Pride Office” website stating that misgendering people can be considered an “act of violence.”
The guide on pronouns is reportedly the work of students associated with the office and states that “choosing to ignore or disrespect someone’s pronouns is not only an act of oppression but can also be considered an act of violence.”
It is a familiar position for many in higher education. Opposing viewpoints are now routinely declared to be violence. That allows professors and students to rationalize their own act of violence or censorship.
The most vivid example was recently seen at Hunter College, which is part of the CUNY system. Professor Shellyne Rodríguez recently was fired after holding a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter and threatening to “chop you up.” However, Hunter College decided not to fire her over a prior incident in which she trashed a pro-life table run by students.
Rodríguez spotted students with pro-life material at the college. She was captured on a videotape telling the students that “you’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.” Even after a remarkably polite student said that he was “sorry,” Rodríguez would have nothing of it. After all, espousing pro-life views is now “violence.” Rodríguez rejected the apology and declared “No you’re not — because you can’t even have a f–king baby. So you don’t even know what that is. Get this s–t the f–k out of here.”
Just a week earlier, a professor stopped another “violent” display of pro-life views in New York. Professor Renee Overdyke of the State University of New York at Albany shut down a pro-life display and then resisted arrest.
At the University of California at Santa Barbara, feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller Young criminally assaulted pro-life advocates on campus, and later pleaded guilty to the crime. She was defended by faculty and students, including many who said she was “triggered” by a pro-life display and that pro-life advocates were “terrorists” who did not deserve free speech.
It is that easy. You simply declare opposing views “violent” and then you can justify your own violence as a matter of self-defense.
The Colorado controversy does not involve acts of violence over misgendering. Moreover, the guide reflects a deep-felt concern that using someone’s pronouns incorrectly, even unintentionally, leads to “dysphoria, exclusion and alienation.” There are also some positive recommendations in dealing with these difficult situations.
However, this is a university site and there are countervailing free speech costs to characterizing opposing views on pronouns as violence. We have previously discussed how other countries are prosecuting those who “misgender.” Schools in the United States have promised disciplinary action against any misgendering despite some court cases ruling for faculty with opposing views on pronouns. Even passing out “he/his” candies can result in a university investigation.
Conservative sites like Campus Reform have reported on the Colorado controversy and sought clarification.
Universities are often presented with difficult countervailing interests. On one hand, it must maintain a welcoming and tolerant environment. On the other hand, it must protect free speech values, including the right to express unpopular views or values.
Colorado students have every right to declare misgendering as violence in their eyes, even if many of us disagree. However, the university has an obligation to clearly establish that such views are not the policy or approach of the university itself. The site states “This information was created by students, for students. The university supports an inclusive environment.” It should state that “while the university supports an inclusive environment, the statements on this site are not official statements or policies of the university.” Otherwise, the university should address the free speech implications of declaring misgendering as a violent act.
“Misgendering” is neither oppression nor violence. It’s just a difference of opinion. The left believes in “diversity,” but their behavior betrays an obsession with conformity.
OT
China is prepping for war while Elon Musk is making a “Deal with the Devil.”
Elon Musk is making a deal with the Prince of Darkness.
Musk can also shape-shift and tele-transport. There’s a likely chance he could be in your closet of under your bed at night.
People have the right to claim the moon is made of green cheese.
That does not make it so.
I found it really odd that those upset that others will not use words as they wish are themselves misusing the word violence.
I am not “disrespecting” people by failling to recognize a non-existant positive duty to acknowlege the existance of another person much less their name or pronouns.
A Man Said to the Universe
Stephen Crane
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
It is immoral to impose a positive duty on another person – especially by force.
To those who seek to do so – I DO NOT RESPECT YOU.
I do not give a schiff whether you are gay or straight or ….
Those are your free choices. I am not obligated to respect them – or even care.
I am merely obligated to afford you the same rights as other humans.
There is no right to be called whatever you wish. There is no right to control the speech of others.
Those who beleive they are entitled to force others to do so are underviving of respect – not because they are gay. or trans,
but because they would use force to compel others.
But this is typical of the modern left – even when they get things correct – they must go WAY to far and actually violate the rights of others.
So yes, you are correct – I do not respect you.
That is not violence.
No one is entitled to respect – you must earn it.
Just as you can earn disrespect.
Conflating speech you do not like with violence earns my DISRESPECT.
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
-Excerpted from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800.
Well said, JW Logan
As a retired professor when universities were not the same as insane asylums, I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in today’s madhouse. I’m afraid I’d have had to use generic neutral terms such as, “shmuck, moron, idiot, pest, and my favorite neutral, A..hole.” Time to stop this madness by no longer being the least bit polite to these jerks.
They wants to take your daughters spot on the swim team. They wants to expose themselves to teenage girls in the locker room. They wants to beat up your sister in a boxing match. They wants you to be allowed to mutilate your children. They wants your children to put dollar bills in their g-strings. They wants to give pornography to your kids in school. Understanding who they really are is not very hard to do. They should transfer their grooming skills to Supercuts and leave them kids alone.
The University of Colorado’s guide on pronouns should be corrected as follows:
Pronouns are one of the ways we all portray our identities. When someone requires anyone to use pronouns not their own, they are demanding that person to disrespect their identity. Just as they are parts of speech generally, pronouns are no less parts of free speech particularly. Dictating one’s use of pronouns can lead to a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction causing that person to feel disrespected excluded and alienated. Choosing to ignore or disrespect that person’s freedom of pronoun usage is not only an act of oppression but can also be considered an act of violence.
The University of Colorado’s guide on pronouns is that “something other is going on” that Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson discuss in this 8 minute video clip.
https://youtu.be/O-gkujOEzq4
Ron, that is an excellent video. Peterson makes clear that he does not have an issue with transgenderism until it moves into the realm of politics and the law. Once the government gets involved to write laws to punish dissenters of their prescribed “religious” orthodoxy, they are, as Dr. Robert Malone writes in this essay, targeting heretics of this newfound religion of Scientism.
As scientism has become the religion of the US Government, bureaucrats and government officials act to suppress any other forms of religious beliefs as well as any scientists or medical health professionals who might question the official “scientism” narrative. This makes people who hold religious beliefs as well as dissident scientists/medical professionals heretics in the eyes of the law. Add to that, traditional religious groups have now also become the enemies of the state. Next we can expect the US government to go after professional organizations that do not support the scientism narrative.
Because scientism is a belief system; a religion.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/the-new-inquisition-of-scientism?r=2jwnd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Thank you for the link. I have been an admirer of Dr. Robert Malone since he first appeared on the scene as one among many others who questioned the government’s Covid-19 policies.
Do we all know that these campaigns originate in the propaganda and indoctrination departments of adversarial, global, communist governments, and by the efforts of individual globalists?
Do we all know that they originate in the agencies of, and individuals allied with, the enemy?
All individuals and organizations that further the designs of enemy campaigns are engaging “…in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
American individuals and administrative and functional structures that engage “…in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort…” are committing espionage, intervention in internal affairs and constitutional treason against America.
It is long past time they were prosecuted for such.
Colorado students have every right to declare misgendering as violence in their eyes, even if many of us disagree.
The question isn’t about their free speech rights, it’s what is the appropriate response to the speech. We’ve fallen into this trap of treating what amounts to an emotional outburst as a problem caused by anyone other than the individual making the claim. If a student, or a group of students claim misgendering is violence, then simply tell them if that were true, that they are willfully committing an act of violence against those that don’t subscribe to their views on gender. This sword should cut both ways.
The best quote on this issue that I’ve read says the following:
It’s mind-boggling that the LGBT’s claim that “sexual orientation” (which is essentially a state of mind) is fixed and permanent, while simultaneously claiming that DNA-prescribed gender (which IS fixed and permanent) is completely fluid and malleable. author unknown
Excellent, excellent comment. One quibble. DNA doesn’t prescribe “gender”. DNA determines “sex”, a reproductive role. Not the same thing. People don’t have genders.
Thank you Counsel. While I agree on the point you’re making, I like the quote based on the reverse logic on science.
A good smack in the mouth will demonstrate the difference to them…
So now just speaking against abortion is an act of violence while pulling a baby’s arms and legs off and crushing its skull is somehow an act of charity. In the world of the left cutting off a young boy’s penis or a young girl’s breast is not an act of violence. Giving young men puberty blockers that can result in never being able to have an orgasm is not considered an act of violence. If we want to consider acts of violence lets compare these real acts of violence to the so called trigger warnings to the pusillanimous poor little students who have been so sorely offended. Your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
Misgendering is an act of violence. A machete to the neck is just a loving kiss. So say our friends on the left.
“A machete to the neck is just a loving kiss.”
And an arson-filled riot is just a “mostly peaceful protest.”
This is why the Left gets so agitated anytime, anywhere, someone insists on the precise meaning of words. They wish to get away with word concoctions such as “gender affirming care,” so that they can get away with calling opposing arguments “violence.” They want the public in the habit of swallowing whole their word manipulations.
Their entire MO is: Let me get away with it over there, so that I can get away with it over here. They’re like spoiled children trying to see how far they can push. Next thing you know, dictionaries are superfluous, and you’re dizzy from their word games.
Denying the existence of God is an even worse form of violence.
Trannie ideology isn’t even a trillionth as harmful as atheism!
The males playing dress up; fantasizing they ae females; using female aliases; and demanding everyone else join in their fantasy and address them using female pronouns are the ones engaged in “misgendering”.
What sticks in my craw is when more or less conservative sites like Fox or the NY Post use she for guys like Lia Thomas and Dylan Mulvaney. If they haven’t done the big snip they are still a guy.
On Jeopardy last week or so we had Ken Jennings calling Matea, a pretty good champion and a lesbian (importantly not a trans person, just a old fashioned lesbian) “THEY”. Every time he talked of her game he would say “they” did this or “they” did that!!! yet because this whole ting is so moronic when Matea was speaking she said “I” did this or “I” did that!!?!??!
One person is not a THEY, stop corrupting the damn language. WE are not amused!!!!
Even if they have done the “big snip”, they are still “guys”. Dan/chromosomes tell the truth. The rest is fantasy.
DNA not “Dan”
The “my pronoun” stuff is sheer nuttiness. It’s also an assault on sanity. The use of pronouns is a fairly regular matter. When I refer to myself, I use the personal pronoun “I,” (or “we” in the plural). When I refer to others, I use “he/him,” or “she/her,” (or the plural “they”). In any case, the choice of which pronouns to use belongs to the speaker. How I speak or write–what words I choose to employ, from verbs to adjectives to pronouns–is something I get to choose. I, not you, own my speech and all the parts thereof. But let’s be honest: the apparent nuttiness reveals a darker, more sinister side: if I can control your speech, I can control your thought.
My, my, we now see what it means to be a “Professor”. And how universities hide.
My niece tells me that this is about people disavowing Gender because gender is a social construct. I tell her that they are confusing gender as a biological structure with gender roles which are a social construct (historically for good reasons). However, in their quest to abandon social structures and conformity they are just replacing one thing they call conformity with another, or at least trying to.
Transhumanism, trans, all the alphabet loonies, and whatever is sure to come next are nothing more than eugenics in a different package. In human terms, it all leads nowhere; it’s a railroad spur of human biology and reproduction.
Perhaps we are watching the final act of this cult as they purposely end, yet unknowingly destroy their gene pools. Maybe we should be be celebrating their fsll ftom realism.
I agree, but what damage will they cause in the meantime?
Perhaps we are watching the final act of this cult as they purposely end, yet unknowingly destroy their gene pools. Maybe we should be be celebrating their fsll ftom realism.
Precisely. I have said as such for a while. For those parents who are awful parents, who unleash into our world snowflake children, they too will be eliminated from the gene pool, much like animals that cant overcome predators pursuing them as prey. Survival of the fittest applies
Estovir,
Survival of the mental fittest, I would say.
For those who fail, I will merely shrug and say, “Saw that coming.”
There is a tragic irony in this column appearing on the same page as the obit of Tom Buergenthal. I’m pretty sure he knew the difference between violence and pronouns. The fact that people are voluntarily choosing to do to themselves that which even Dr. Mengele didn’t think of, i.e. cutting off their genitals and pretending to be a member of the opposite sex, does not mean the rest of us should support them. If anyone remembers the meaning behind the title of “The Catcher in the Rye,” Holden Caulfield’s dream was to catch people before they inadvertently went over the cliff. Those who refuse to play along with the gender make-believe might fill that role in real life. As my ex-husband used to say, “A friend is not the person who tells you what you want to hear all the time. A true friend will tell you when you are making a mistake.”
Good point about Mengele.
The concept of “misgendering” does violence to society. To avoid committing this “sin” against wokeness one must lie to oneself, to society, and to everyone around us to maintain the fiction that swapping genders is as easy as swapping clothes. Normal people need to take a stand against such nonsense and say “I won’t repeat the lie, I don’t believe it, and I won’t spread it with fake pronouns”. This truth the media are incapable of uttering, and universities are too cowardly to acknowledge.
They are able to succeed with this nonsense because normal people are silent and not standing up to this vile bullying. It’s no wonder so few stood up to the Nazis as they murdered millions and decimated Europe. We aren’t standing up to these fascists, so it’s no surprise to me.
“… To avoid committing this “sin” against wokeness one must lie to oneself, to society,
and to everyone around us to maintain the fiction that swapping genders is as easy as swapping clothes. …”
Some ‘use’ the Cause [Wokeness principles] to leverage Their Status/Station-in-Life. Other ‘Use’ the principle(s) to disrupt or disengage the reality of the ‘contention’,
of which in Their perspective is undesirable to irritating.
Suppose that, If ‘Everything’ was empirically ‘Equal’ and there was no need of any kind to differentiate ‘Differences’ (A perfect Woke World – Woke Utopia).
A World as Kazimir Malevich would paint it, White on White. How would the Individual(s) feel then?
I don’t believe that possible. That’s because even in that World, People would want ‘Rights’, if only to be recognized as an Individual.
The concept of ‘Rights’ invokes ‘Differentiation’. BUT Ahhh you say, WE can’t have that is this World of Equality (Woke Equilibrium).
Whos Lying Now? “… To avoid committing this “sin” against wokeness one must lie to oneself, to society, and to everyone around us …”
A Person is “Franchised” if only down to; Themselves, yet alone a Family, Parents, a Community, a Class, a Group, …
So the afflicted ‘Disenfranchised’ Woke seeking to resolve societal injury by Equality, is a Hypocrisy to ideology of Their Social Movement.
Herein; Their Fallacy or Fantasy, Their Fraud upon the World.