Given the injustice we are witnessing at the Olympics in women’s boxing, I wanted to reiterate something on the subject of the pronouns. I know I sound like a broken record. But once I saw this light on this subject, it became important to me to show it to everybody else.
Here is what the news media and anyone who decides to go with fake pronouns is doing: You are not being kind. You are not being supportive. You are being harmful to women. You are making things like that boxing match possible. In a way, you participate in getting Angela Carini hurt and ruining her Olympic dream.
If you haven’t already, please read the essay “Pronouns Are Rohypnol” by Barra Kerr. Rohypnol is like the date rape drug that dulls your senses in a way that you don’t realize what is happening to you.
Kerr writes, in part, that if you force yourself to use the wrong pronouns for a person, you have to “consciously fight the conflict of input to your brain each and every time.” That leaves you “confused, distracted, slower, frustrated, and fatigued” because “forcing our brains to ignore the evidence of our eyes, to ignore a conflict between what we see and know to be true, and what we are expected to say, affects us.”
“Using preferred pronouns does the same,” it continues. “It alters your attention, your speed of processing, your automaticity. You may find it makes you anxious. You pay less heed to what you want to say and more to what is expected of you.”
That is true. You are thinking, What is it? She/her, but it’s a man. I’m not supposed to say he/him. I could get a strike on YouTube. I could get fired from a job. That is crazy.
“It slows you down, confuses you, makes you less reactive,” Kerr writes. “This is not a good thing.” And the piece goes on to talk about how even hearing somebody read or use preferred pronouns is damaging to you. It gives you various experiments to bring the confusion of it home. It is meant to confuse you and dull your senses to where you have lost the argument before it has even begun.
I beg you to stop doing it. Don’t do it in your private life. Don’t do it in your professional life. Lean on your news media. Write letters. Go in the comments section and say – respectfully, but forcefully – that this is extremely damaging to women and young girls. We cannot win the argument if we cede control of the language around it. It is a teaspoon in the ocean, but it is an important one.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 854 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.