Not much, except to demonstrate that the natural state of modernity is something closely resembling mass lunacy. To explain.
Swedish Pronouns
Via Sam Schulman â€(Twitter: @Sam_Schulman) we infer that 1984 has not been translated in Swedish. This is an inference, mind, and not a direct claim. But you’ll agree it is a likely one after you learn that in Sweden, “it is now considered a distinct discrimination if one is addressed as a man or woman.” So reports Kopp Online.
Sweden is angling to de-genderify their pronouns so that use of he or she is officially discouraged, to be replaced by something resembling it (hen). Not only does this move strip useful information from its language, the Swedes have made an important step in subtracting from a person’s humanity, since to be called an “it” is to be equated to a chair or a bug. Now that, dear reader, is true equality. And it is under the banner of Equality that these changes are being made.
Ho hum you say? Then consider that “Nyamko Sabuni, currently Minister for Integration and Gender Equality, is now trying politically to free children from the constraints of gender roles.” Sabuni is leading an effort to de-genderify names, so that if he succeeds Sweden will be no longer have the equivalent of Bills and Janes, but will be a nation of only Pats and Chrises.
There is in Sweden a kindergarten with the telling name of Egalia where “gender-free” children are taught the joys of homosexuality and to play house, imagining, for instance, that there are “two or three mothers.” In a separate article, the wardens of this institution justify their experimentation by claiming that “gender” is not something which you are born with, but is something which can be “changed at any time.” This being so, the little tots should learn early how to do this morphing.
Organic Boors
Today reports of new “research” which confirms what everybody who has shopped in an urban farmer’s market already knew (“research” is needed because everybody did not have a p-value to accompany their belief). The news is that organic food boors are often bullies, that they are often self-satisfied “snotty and arrogant” moralists.
“There’s a line of research showing that when people can pat themselves on the back for their moral behavior, they can become self-righteous,” says author Kendall Eskine, assistant professor of the department of psychological sciences at Loyola University in New Orleans. “I’ve noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not.”
Eskine found that “organic people judged much harder” than ordinary humans, that when “it came to helping out a needy stranger, the organic people also proved to be more selfish.” The money quote:
“There’s something about being exposed to organic food that made them feel better about themselves,” says Eskine. “And that made them kind of jerks a little bit, I guess.”
The only surprise is that Eskine found his results surprising: “You’d think eating organic would make you feel elevated and want to pay it forward,” he said.
He (I assume Eskine is a “he” because his first name is Kendall) should have gone to any Whole Foods…
HT Hot Air.
The Exorcist
Stay with me for a long story made short: Health and Human Secretary and self-labeled Catholic Kathleen Sebelius was invited to speak at one of Georgetown University’s commencement ceremonies, which was, or is, kind of, affiliated with the Catholic Church. This was controversial because Sebelius instituted a “mandate” which said that Catholic employers must provide (via “health” “insurance”) their employees abortion-inducing drugs and contraception. Recall poor Sandra Fluke and her plea for somebody—anybody but herself—to fund her birth control.
Abortion and birth control, whether you are for them or not, are against Catholic doctrine, meaning that any Catholic institution had no business honoring a woman like Sebelius who knowingly “mandated” a removal of religious freedom. Sebelius, in a weak attempt to justify her curious behavior and stick in the eye of her critics, in her speech said,
[President John] Kennedy talked about his vision of religion and the public square, and said he believed in an America, and I quote, “where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against us all.”
Like many other things in the Obama government, Sebellius got it exactly backwards. There was no fear the Catholic church would foist its views on an innocent and unwilling public, but instead the reality of an omnipotent government forcing the Church to abandon its core beliefs. Shame on her for misusing Kennedy’s words.
Enter William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist and alumnus of Georgetown, who is organizing an official protest against Georgetown, which Blatty believes (if I may) is possessed by a spirit of idiocy.
Even if you are not Catholic and earnestly desire abortion for free, Blatty’s fight is yours. Kennedy was right: “an act against one church” is “as an act against us all.” If you let the government encroach upon our freedom because you lust for free contraception, you must know that this will not be the end and the government will soon come for what you treasure.
As I see it, the use of “hen” makes it easier when you don’t know the gender of the person you are talking about (it takes longer to write “he or she”, and it disrupts the flow of the text), but I find it totally ridiculous to use when you do know the gender. I likewise think it’s (possibly) wrong to raise the children like they to in Egalia. Of course we won’t know the long term effects, and it is an experiment that cannot be done on rats… However, that is not to say that gender roles should be forced on children either. Perhaps making girls play with dolls and the like, instead of Lego etc, is partly to blaim for the lack of women in many of the hard sciences.
By the way, “he” in Swedish is “han”, “she” is “hon”, so I guess “hen” is the natural choice for something in-between.
I, for better or worse, have a resistance to both organic foods and recycling because of the jerks. But speaking of poor studies, that was a pretty shaky one. I already knew it in my heart. I enjoy your site.
Amazon reports that there exists “1984 (Swedish) [Paperback]” which is “currently unavailable.” They are offering a used paperback copy for $62.07.
Yes indeed, being an Aussie science teacher living in Sweden it seems that the EU says “Jump!” and we Swedes say “How High”. We like to be first in line, showing the way.
So, here in Sweden, the Gender Wars continue. A few radical Gender Studies social scientists had lobbied some fluffy education politicians and so are now infiltrating kindergartens, schools, universities and teacher training courses across the kingdom. However the ranks of The Gender Resistance are swelling 🙂
Mathematician Tanja Bergkvist’s blog and IT speaker Pär Ström’s blog Gender News are leading the charge against this ideological and unscientific Gender Studies attack on schools. Even the world’s Media is shaking it’s head in amazement that Swedish teachers must oppose the facts of biology.
Does treating boys and girls differently mean treating them unequally? … unjustly? Are there too many triangle or square shapes in a room? Hmm … Like green eyes and blue eyes: Different ≠Unequal. This is the Gender Ideology fallacy that all its feel good evidenceless moralising cannot cover-up.
Whenever I see the gratuitous “she” reeking of self-righteous smugness, I ask myself why the author just didn’t use “it” considering gender reference is so uppermost in “its” thoughts. Maybe the Swede’s are onto something here. Speaking of 1984, though, I wonder if they plan to rewrite their history books to eradicate “han” and “hon”**.
How did the world get along before the invention of the PC?
Someday (if ever) people will realize that you can’t change the way (other) people think by adjusting the language. Creeping euphemisms prove this. “Retarded” was a euphemism for “stupid” that had to be replaced by “mentally challenged” which in its turn eventually will be replaced.
I think “Honest Tea” is a preemptive answer to the most common question “What is this crap?”. It’s the shortened version of “Honest! It’s tea”.
you must know that this will not be the end and the government will soon come for what you treasure.
Of course, you must also know that can never happen here. Uh-yup.
**In Baltimore (Bal’mer to the natives), it appears everybody is a “”hon” as in “How you doin’, hon?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Baltimore#Hons
Maybe “Honest Tea” is really “Hon-est Tea”?
I am all for getting rid of gender. It caused me problems when iI lived in Germany. In German the nouns have gender and the gender is arbitrary and determined by the article, so you had to memorize the correct article to go with the noun. Even worse, the gender could change when you went from singular to plural and there were other situations where the gender of the noun changed. l found gender confusing and I wish the Germans would get rid of it.
Not wishing to offend anyone I almost avoided pointing out the obvious, but then I said to myself, says I, “Self! Go ahead and say it. This is Brigg’s blog and he’ll be fine with it.” So here goes.
This has all been foreseeable. What color hair predominates amongst Swedes? That’s right! What color hair has been associated with ditzy folks (dames) for generations? Yes, you got it! PC and ditzy were made for each other. This will all self-correct in less than four generations, because without gender there will be no decedents with which to continue that society. Ergo. Just be patient.
There used to be no gender distinction in both writing and the spoken language in the Chinese third-person pronoun. At the beginning of the 20th century, writers quietly started using the third-person character â€å¥¹â€ (instead of “他â€) with the female radical “女.” Just a new fashionable character then. The interesting thing is that the purpose was to recognize the importance of women and give the right place to women in modern society.
A gender-neutral word for the third pronoun…just a word but big deal… modern politics?
Dav: I got a good laugh out of your honest tea crack. Too funny. 🙂
Somewhere around the early 1990’s it became obvious that if the Western European democracies in general and the US specifically were individuals they would be locked up for their own protection.
Since then I have seen no reason to modify my opinion, other than to note that claiming that we are collectively as mad as hatters would be libelous to hatters.
Sheesh!
Individuals who think for themselves are difficult to manage. It is much easier to manage a population that is noncritical and analogous. It’s called ‘Social Progress’.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
I don’t think a study with a sample size of 60 should be taken seriously even if its conclusion (that “organic people” act like jerks) is plausible.
I won’t more than mention that it was the sight of the organic food that had the effect, which might have been due to us anti-environmentalists getting annoyed.
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Joseph,
Right. I don’t trust the study either, which like many sociology/psychology experiments is too convoluted and says less than what the researcher thinks. I instead trust the observational evidence provided in the linked article, which are consonant with what many of us have experienced.
I blame Sweden’s insanity on lack of sunlight and overly-expensive booze.