I sat down on my futon the other night to enjoy a nourishing but humble bowl of organic vegan noodles with wakame seaweed and steamed honey-gilded pak choi. As I sat cross-legged at my chabudai and browsed the Wot’s Woke blogosphere on my iPad, the enjoyment of my simple peasant’s dish was severely marred as I came across a story about Louis C.K.
The article contained the link to a clip of a ‘so-called’ ‘stand up’ ‘comedy’ ‘routine’ in which ‘Louis’ ‘C.K.’ stood in front of his ‘audience’ and ‘delivered’ what can only be described as a torrent of hatred, the like of which I have not experienced since Ricky Gervais refused to call Caitlyn Jenner stunning and brave. He was accusing my generation of being weak and overemotional. Disrespecting the genuine need for nonbinary pronouns. My shoulders began to shake. Blind rage took over as I hurled my bowl of artisan noodles across the room, where they rained down like the tentacles of a tiny sea monster onto my priceless collection of Thelonius Monk original vinyl recordings.
As I sat there on my zabuton cushion, watching pieces of pak choi slide nonchalantly down the face of the greatest improvisational jazz pianist who ever lived, I felt hot angry tears drip down onto my cheeks. I rolled onto my back and wailed like a newborn babe. I let the sound of my screams cleanse and renew me. I did not hold back. After a while, maybe an hour or so, I curled my body into the fetal position where I slowly drifted off into an exhausted sleep.
I awoke around 4 a.m., the spiteful words of that vile white cisgender ogre still ringing in my ears. I had no more tears to give, I was spent. Instead, I felt resolved to write this article in order to defend my generation. To combat the hatred of old white cisgender men who accuse nonbinary people of being ‘attention seekers’ who only obsess over their fashionably made-up pronouns because they have a need to constantly feed their victimhood fetish… I mean, as if that could even be true! I felt resolved to confront this detestable bigotry head on. To fight the oppression with my fists a-flailing (metaphorically). To resist the prejudice (literally). To rise up to the challenge of our rival. To fight for the will to survive.
Louis C.K. and others like him (white cisgender men over 40), are dinosaurs. Relics of a time-gone-by. They steadfastly refuse to acknowledge there are 689 genders now (up 24 since this time last week). Would it even be that difficult for them to keep up with current gender trends? How hard is it to ask everyone you meet which pronouns they prefer before embarking on a conversation with them and to then remember those specific pronouns the next time you meet them? It’s not rocket surgery!!!
You’d be wrong to think that what prevents these antiquated brutes from consulting the pronoun chart every morning before they leave the house in order to make a note of the latest nonbinary pronouns added since the previous day is arrogance and laziness, because it’s not arrogance and laziness – it’s fear. They fear change. They fear the balance of their patriarchal influence shifting in another direction. They fear the future and the increasingly widened LGBTTTQQIAA+ rainbow it promises. They fear the fact that their eight-year-old grandchildren might one day soon feel empowered enough to dance for money in a gay bar just like their nonbinary hero Desmond is Amazing. What obsolete old fools they are.
