Sailing to Byzantium—No Country for Old Men
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You’ve probably read the story, or at least know about the guy who wakes up one morning as a giant, verminous insect, and his further adventures. I can’t say as it’s happened to me exactly but it was a similarly bewildering experience to read shortly before bedtime that I’ve been “cisgendered.” Of course I had to look it up and although it simply means that I am what I’ve always been and never had cause to question being – a dude, a guy, a male, a bloke if you will. The term is unsettling. I worry that people, particularly women (if I can use the antiquated term) will see me differently now that the mainstream has been marginalized.
I suppose I don’t have to change the “pronoun button” some college students have been asked to wear so as to be able to fit into that vast galaxy of gender ambiguity and fluidity. I don’t wear one of course, the beard being generally adequate even for those barbarians who remain unable to explain all 72 genders. Sufficient to those who need to be enlightened or initiated into the arcane intricacies of modern Feminist thought. It’s not limited to politics any more, you know and to be conversant with and initiated into all the necessary Liberal cults is a strain on my elderly memory. Sure, I can still recite Pi to 50 places, but I can’t remember more than a couple of genders or explain why such things are all that important to the great issues of national and even species survival. Hell I can’t even remember which people matter more and which less and which classes have which rights, obligations and inherited guilt.
Of course nothing has changed in my visible status, but my need to explain and apologize for accepting my Y chromosome as is remains intact as does the challenge to avoid the doubtless toxic manifestations thereof. I admit I feel somewhat marginalized for not being one of the more heroic and praiseworthy variations of personal gender identity. (whew, l almost said sexual – mea culpa) I have to try not to talk about cars and bikes and engines quite so much. Certainly I need not to ask any questions that challenge the dogma, no matter how ephemeral and contradictory ( and even risible) it seems. But you know it ain’t easy in an age when humor is heresy and only indicates the need for re-education. There is no more mercy for the cisgendered male then for the ordinary dude. This, as Mr. Yeats once wrote, is no country for old men.
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72 genders?? Good grief.
No world for old men more like!!
Everything is about political correctness these days, and I mean everything. I was eating lunch at a less than fine dining restaurant a couple of weeks ago, and the waiter was particularly efficient, so I thanked ‘him’ only to be told with a snarl that ‘he’ was in fact a ‘her’. Well you could have beaten me with a stick and I expect he/she would have liked to have done just that. Fact is Mr. Yeats was right: no country for old men…at least not anymore.