They/Them or She/Her

My daughter is coming up to see me this weekend. Just in time for a blizzard. I guess I’ll have some help shoveling. She’s bringing her new girlfriend with her. I’m looking forward to meeting her/them. Especially with all that my daughter has been going through lately. I delved into her mental health in a previous blog, her recent “identifying” as gay doesn’t bother me. Despite my gruff exterior and Conservative manner I’m a pretty mellow guy about social issues. Love is love and I would never presume to opine on what makes someone happy if they aren’t harming animals or children. This girl (person?) makes her happy and therefore she is important to me. I may go so far as to say that I need this person around because I think she is the glue keeping my daughter together.

But I’m uncharacteristically nervous, no that’s not the word, anxious maybe about meeting her/them. She/they is very nice, I’ve talked to her/them on the phone and I like her/them. I do know that she is very liberal, which is fine by me, I don’t make an assumption about someone or look on them any different as long as people are equally tolerant of my views. My trepidation is about the pronoun thing. So, my valued reader I will be ending the she/they and her/them stuff for now. Not out of insensitivity, it’s my blog and I can do what I want in the interest of brevity. My concern is that I feel that I may have to tiptoe around her for fear of saying the wrong thing, which I am notorious for. I hope that she is not the type to be offended by something that I say. Walking on eggshells is not a good look on me. I usually don’t worry about offending people. My old-school mentality is that people need to toughen up and stop being offended by everything. In fact, I would say that it is one of the biggest problems in our society today. People aren’t tough anymore. Feelings trump reason and truth and being offended is a lose/lose. When you are offended do you know what happens? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
I’m afraid that I may cause problems for my daughter.

So here I am, asking myself if I am able to use pronouns. I fucking hate pronouns. It’s just identity politics and despite its dominance of the political and cultural landscape, it is dangerous. We’re all people. We don’t need anything else to divide us. When everything you do and think is based upon what you’re into or what you identify as fractures society. Long story short, I think it is to make people feel special in an increasingly anonymous world. I have no interest in making people feel special. I will not build you up artificially because that just sets one up for a fall. Artificial status makes it harder to be tough and I value toughness. I am all about reality. Life is not wonderful and even though it is in the Declaration of Independence, the pursuit of happiness is just that. A pursuit. It is not guaranteed. Life is hard and the world is a dangerous ugly place with flashes of beauty and brilliance with a increasingly smaller chance of a smattering of humanity here and there. Bottom line, she, and my daughter as well, need to learn that nobody cares about your sexuality much less what you want to be called. I’d like to be called Bill, the man with the largest penis in the world, but it’s not true (sigh). I am happy to be called by my name, I even answer to “shithead” sometimes. I don’t get offended because I don’t care. I’m not special. I’m sorry but it’s true. This is not a Conservative old man opinion, it’s a fact.

So, in about half an hour I will meet my daughter’s new love interest and I know that I will like her. I also know that I will fuck up somehow. How will it go after that? Will the fact that I’m really a good guy at heart that wants nothing but the best for both of them be lost in the shuffle if I call her “she?”

I hope it goes well. For a lot of reasons. Mostly for my daughter.