Naming Gender

            I spent a lot of time on Sunday October 30^th, catching up on my journal entries. I also did some reading for Aesthetics class, but after searching around, I found for the first time that one of the required readings, in this case, Monday’s reading on “Style” is not available in either my PDF edition of the textbook or anywhere online.

            I noticed that my landlord has put up notices all over the building, saying that pets are not allowed. I wonder if he waited till he knew my cats were gone before he did that. He mentions in the text that some tenants have allergies to cat and dog hair. If that’s true, it must be the new tenant.

            I spent more than an hour watching the video of an interview of Jordan Peterson, the U of T professor that has gotten into hot water for refusing to use gender-neutral terms. His interviewer, Gad Saad, is also a professor who teaches at Concordia in Montreal. He has a very popular YouTube show called Saad Truths and he is also referred to as The Gadfather. He’s a Lebanese Jew who believes that no type of speech should be made illegal, including Holocaust denial. I agree with that. Peterson made an interesting statement, that to deny someone the right to express wrong opinions is to deny them the right to have their opinions criticized. That’s what I’ve always held to be right. Peterson’s main problem is that he doesn’t think that people should be legally forced to use gender neutral terms, and I agree with that as well, but I think that people also have the right to individually name their gender and to have their gender called by name, just as someone that wants to be called by a certain personal name should have that wish respected. It shouldn’t be the law to respect people in that way, but it should be a social faux pas to not do so.

            I watched a funny episode of “I Love Lucy” from season 6. In this period of their history, Lucy and Ricky have bought a house in Connecticut, though Ricky is still a famous nightclub performer and owner in New York. Living in a big house is expensive though, so they have decided to raise chickens and have gone into partnership with Fred and Ethel Mertz. The thing is though that the chickens are not laying and so Ricky says he will give them one more day and if he doesn’t get a return on his investment he will sell the chickens. Lucy gets the idea to buy some eggs and to sneak them into the chicken coop. She has three dozen in her shirt and is about to leave the house when Ricky shows up, asking her to rehearse the tango dance that they planned to do for an upcoming charity benefit. She dances with Ricky while trying not to break the eggs, and that’s funny enough. But the finale of the dance involves them forcefully coming together, front to front, and …