Pronouns Reveal Their Religion
Even just a few short years ago, you would not find professors announcing their pronouns in work email signatures. But now, it is more common than not to find an email from a professor ending with an assertion about pronouns. What happened? How did this become a fad among the radical elite?
It is a clarifying step due to philosophical ambiguity. Ambiguity is due to the reality that words can have multiple meanings. We look at context in a sentence, paragraph, or chapter to help us figure out which meaning to give to a potentially ambiguous word.
Philosophical ambiguity operates in a similar way, except we don’t look at the sentence we look at the philosophical assumptions. Take the word “God.” This word means different things in different religions. To say that everyone believes in “God” is misleading because of how many meanings the word can have.
This same philosophical ambiguity applies to “male” and “female.” In Christianity, general revelation and then chapters in the Bible like Genesis 1 define what is meant by “male” and “female.” But what if you reject Christianity? These same two words have different meanings in other religious-philosophical traditions.
The secular professors have looked for ways to distance themselves from Christian belief for some time. This occurs in teachings about origins, human development, human society, and morality, and it isn’t surprising it would be applied to gender. There is a good reason for this because of how personal gender is. The non-Christian sees that the use of “male” and “female” in our culture borrows from Christian ideas and rejects this by rethinking gender.
That part isn’t surprising at all. Nor is it surprising that theological issues like the nature of God aren’t at the forefront of the cultural debate. Sexuality is a personal and experiential subject that comes into people’s minds in a way that the knowledge of God does not. In the history of new religious movements in the United States, you will find that many times they involve not only a different concept of God and Christ than does orthodox Christianity, but they also try to change how humans approach sex and marriage. This can be by prohibiting sex, or by doing away with monogamy and with other variations. We are simply seeing the continuation of this practice in our day.
What is different now is the attempt to make everyone conform to this new movement in public education. Announcing your pronouns is a way of alerting others to your religious beliefs. And others are expected to do the same. So far at ASU, we have not had a mandate to include pronouns, but it is an expectation among the secular professors. It is a way of identifying who is part of the group and who is not “going along.”
In the past, the secular humanist approached the liberal arts with the appearance of neutrality. That appearance is gone. Christian beliefs about God creating man and woman for a purpose that includes marriage are now deconstructed as biased. But what is put in their place? And is it coherent? No. It is just another return to the will to power and rejection of God’s revelation.
Parents and students, you need to know what to expect from these professors. You can see from their sponsored events and class titles that equal time is not given to competing ideas. Pretended neutrality and toleration are gone.
This gender nonsense and all the rest of this culture warfare is ridiculous of course. But what if, strategically, these rebuttals that you write are ultimately the wrong approach? In other words, the correct way to defeat such ideas is a different tactic. If you are always reacting to what these "woke" people are doing and saying, they are leading you around. Your energy and intelligence can be predictably directed however they want in this way. And when you constantly and vocally protest something, you actually help it grow. Imagine telling a child everyday, "Remember, don't be shy at school!" What will the effect be? He will be thinking that he is shy. The highest strategic thinkers in culture warfare understand this. In fact, this is how they increase division and conflict amongst Americans, which is the ultimate goal of culture warfare, with all the "anti-racist" propaganda. It actually increases racism. All they have to do then is put a sign on a men's bathroom door encouraging you to check your male privilege, and they can reliably turn a smart man's energy into fertilizer for their woke garden. The department of defense, for instance, has instructional material about not giving the enemy your energy. At first glance, it seems appropriate to describe a serious and dangerous enemy in those terms, after all, it is true. But by doing so, you actually make them more dangerous, and the threat they pose more serious. Think about this: they have a high level university professor reacting to every stupid thing they do or say! The alternative strategy is not always clear, but these stupid things that soft, egotistic and sycophantic virtue signalers project on a daily basis are beneath the dignity and ability of someone with your education and intelligence. Your energy and wisdom should never be following around behind these stupid people! I wanted to leave this comment because I believe your cause is good and just but your strategy is not correct. Have a happy and safe Christmas.