The old man was busy in the kitchen when I dropped by his house. It was already lunchtime and my stomach was growling. So, my face lit up when he said he was about to make himself a small bite to eat. But, like the grumpy host that he was, he did not offer me anything except tea or coffee.
“Coffee ,thanks,” I replied, but did not bother to tell him whether it was black or white, long or short. He ought to know, I informed myself.
It turned out he was preparing just a meagre bowl of rolled oats and Greek yoghurt laced with fruits, seeds and nuts. That was breakfast for him at lunchtime. People who practise intermittent fasting have a boring existence, I decided.
As he was waiting for his oats to cook in the milk, he showed me the Twitter message by Elon Musk that he was reading on his phone. He appeared dull and sleepy, as if he had another sleepless night. His bad breath was over-powering, forcing me to take two steps back. It was his Mrs who taught him brushing his teeth first thing in the morning was a waste of time and effort, since he hadn’t eaten anything since cleaning them the night before. He seemed foolish or maybe it was weakness to just do whatever she said. I remember thinking of him as uxorious in his younger years.
Leave him be, there’s no need to judge him, I reminded myself. Instead, I told him his late night discussions with his friends about the merits and properties of Bitcoin ought to stop. Anyone with a busy mind during bedtime only lend themselves a bad sleep.
“And we all know the lack of restorative sleep will only lead to memory loss and bad health,” I said, judging the old man poorly for his foolishness.
He ignored me and continued to look at the milk boil. He groaned at the tub of Farmers Union Greek yohurt as he took it out of the fridge. The lightness of the tub meant it was near empty, so he was soon scraping away at its sides and bottom for the last blobs of the white stuff. I did not dare tell him he had forgotten to make my coffee.
So, I returned to Elon Musk’s message.
“Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws. I should note that I do personally use someone’s preferred pronouns, just as I use someone’s preferred name, simply from the standpoint of good manners. However, for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used.”
“I feel like having a cup of coffee, so I’ll make myself one, ok?” I asked the old man as I watched him shovel a spoonful of oats into his mouth. His body was there in the room but his mind wasn’t, or maybe he didn’t hear me. His mouth reminded me of my old grandma’s. Seemingly edentulous, sunken and wrinkled and therefore deformed, his mouth moved slowly like a brown mollusc missing its shell as he laboured to chew and swallow the food.
When I returned to the table with my coffee, his bowl was still almost full. A slow eater like his hundred-year-old mother, he appeared wasteful of the morning that had just turned into an afternoon.
He looked up at me with a frown and said he had mulled over the issue of misgendering a person for quite a long while and when he was reading Elon Musk’s pronouncement about pronouns the day before, his attention had perked up enough to awaken him from the state of stupor the extreme summer heat had reduced him to. Adelaide’s notorious hot spell had lingered for too many days and the smaller than normal crowds at the WOMADelaide festival 2024 was probably the outcome of it. The old man bristled at the suggestion that final numbers would prove the festival to be another big success.
“Expecting hordes of people enjoying music, arts and dance outdoors would be expecting people to enjoy being roasted in a hot oven,” he said.
“The other reason for the smaller crowds was due to a boycott for cancelling the concert of a Palestinian dance group,” he told me. Event organisers had become too political, and much too often, sided with the woke narratives spun by the west. Anti-genocide or anti-zionist protests and anti-war movements were too conveniently labeled as antisemitism or Pro-Russian stooges. Traditional understanding of biology had been thrown out the window. A girl born with a uterus could become a man if she said so. “Sorry, I meant if he said so,” he continued, but his apology was not genuine. A boy born with a penis could demand that it be cut off, no, not just the foreskin, the whole long thing. A boy with balls in his scrotum could become a woman if he said so.
“Sorry, I meant in her scrotum and if she said so,” he said sarcastically, the venom in his voice deterred me from arguing.
WOMADelaide, wo, so mad.
“So, be careful and pronounce your pronouns carefully,” he said. I knew he was deeply serious about this issue and was disturbed by this new movement that had government support to carry it to all levels of education including primary schools.
“The world has gone topsy-turvy,” I surmised. “Why should we care what people say anyway, right?” I asked.
If the person has a womb but wants to call herself a man and demands that we use ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘himself’ when talking about her, then why argue with the woman? Just go with the flow. But, the old man would not have that. “It’s English and it’s biology!” he protested. Many are now so afraid of being accused of misgendering a person that they are using ‘them’, ‘they’ ‘it’ to address a single person.
“Being gender neutral isn’t being neutral,” he said.
I kept silent hoping the dark cloud above him would blow away. But, he kept ranting but I refused to become my truculent self that moment.
“You’ve already taken the side of the ridiculous when you use ‘he’ on a person born with a vagina and uterus.”
I fidgeted and switched my weight to my left bum instead. Sipping the last drop of coffee from my cup, I suggested it was all a waste of energy to discuss something of no importance.
“Who cares?” I asked. If they want to be called whatever, leave them to it.
“So, if the dickhead has a dick, why should we call him ‘she’ just because he says so?” the old man persisted, behaving like a mad dog biting on a bone and would not let go. His arms akimbo, he appeared ready for a long debate.
“And then, there are those who claim to be ‘non-binary’. What’s non-binary? I had to ask Google,” he raged.
I gnashed a reluctant smile but had to agree with him on this one. How can a person be neither male or female? So mixed-up that they feel they have mixed genders or no gender at all, and then there are those so obese that they lack a neck to speak of, yet if described as fat, they would be quick to be offended.
“Never mind, a rotting piece of wood cannot be carved,” I said, hoping he would be pacified.
“Would you like tea or coffee?” he absent-mindedly asked.
Nothing is more hostile to a firm grasp of knowledge than self-deception.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.23
Urghhlings 