I don't know for sure that he's the one who originated it, but writer Matt Walsh has certainly popularized this increasing tendency among online conservatives. Whenever a leftist or progressive revolutionary weighs in on an issue or offers a condemning retort, the response is to quote tweet with the phrase "pronouns in bio."
The point being that someone who fastidiously toes the line of what's-happening-now to the degree that they feel it necessary or even morally responsible to tell everyone what pronouns they use for themselves is not someone in whose wisdom we should place much confidence.
As I said, the trend is catching on, and as much as they pretend it doesn't bother them, it routinely evokes some of the most indignant responses.
Former Gawker founder and New York Times contributor Elizabeth Spiers is very upset about the whole thing.
Wait, what? The conservative remark is pointing out the Left's obsession with personal pronoun declarations. How does this fairly obvious reality evade someone as smart as Elizabeth? Or does it?
There's an element of this that reminds me very much of the debate that ensued around gay marriage and the larger sexual revolution that christened it:
- Leftists engage in a relentless push against societal mores and norms
- Leftists demand policy changes that reflect a reshaping of the status quo
- When leftists meet defeat at the ballot box, they turn to unelected courts to impose their will
- Conservatives object to the Left's tactics
- Left reacts indignantly: "Why are you so obsessed with my sex life?"
This pattern plays out repeatedly, with the most current iteration occurring in debates over school curriculum. Progressives are introducing age-inappropriate topics and content-inappropriate reading materials to schools, but when conservatives organize to oppose it, the Left and their media allies allege some nefarious right-wing plot to take down public education.
I know it's a debate defense mechanism, but it's just weird considering the nature of the two movements squaring off in our culture war.
Progressives, by their very nature, are the ones storming the cultural bastille – pushing for change and the upending of social norms. Conservatives, by their nature, seek to preserve or conserve those norms at least until there is ample reason and evidence that indicate a change would actually be productive for society.
It's odd to see the offense complaining that the defense is being too aggressive.
To help revolutionaries like Elizabeth understand this issue a little better:
- When your side is adamantly demanding that all society accept the premise that men can be pregnant, that men should be welcomed into women's restrooms, that boys should be permitted to fill roster spots on girls' athletic teams, win trophies and set records in girls' sports, and that elementary aged children should be able to undergo chemical castration or irreversible surgeries to "reassign" their gender…
- And our side belittles your cause and questions your sanity because of all that…
…you cosplaying that we are somehow "unhinged" over the issue is intellectually and logically embarrassing.
Mollie Hemingway put it this way:
People are trying to destroy functioning society and the lives of people who don't accept radical redefinitions away from reality – then pretend to be surprised people oppose such destructive impulses.
Precisely. This isn't a debate over tax policy or even gun rights, it's a war to preserve reality. To be honest, that's important enough of a battle that maybe we all should be a little more obsessed over winning it.
