{"id":5011,"date":"2019-10-15T06:28:34","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T13:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=5011"},"modified":"2019-10-15T06:32:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T13:32:52","slug":"why-say-no-to-transgender-pronouns-concerning-st-olaf-colleges-religion-professor-pj-johnston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=5011","title":{"rendered":"Why say \u201cno\u201d to transgender pronouns: Concerning St. Olaf College\u2019s religion professor, PJ Johnston"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. PJ Johnston, a religion professor at St. Olaf\nCollege, has written to request that we correct a March 2018 post<\/a> we\nwrote about her and what her hiring says about St. Olaf College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We apologize for getting her name wrong: She is PJ not\nPT, as was posted on the St. Olaf faculty webpage at the time. PJ, who\nidentifies as transgender, also asked us also to use male pronouns for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nrespectfully decline her request. While there may be personal situations in\nwhich such a request might be honored, there are good reasons not to comply. After\nall, she is asking us to deny science and interject lies into our language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biology\nmatters. Females are persons with XX chromosomes in every cell of their bodies.\nPJ Johnston is such a person. We are sorry for those who suffer from gender\ndysphoria. Such suffering is real. Yet compassion does not mean that the right\nresponse is to affirm their disconnection from their bodies. Having compassion\nfor those suffering from anorexia does not mean affirming their belief that they\nare obese. As Daniel Moody writes in \u201cWhy you shouldn\u2019t\nuse transgender pronouns\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cG.K. Chesterton wrote, \u2018The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.\u2019 This is surely the right perspective to have in the war between sex and gender. It is not about being abrasive or meddlesome, but we do need to get off the back foot so the ground is not constantly shifting beneath us. We need to put down some strong verbal roots in the fertile soil of reality, and that means sticking with real pronouns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We are not in control of\nwhether somebody will pour hatred in our direction, but we can tend to those\nthings that are within our control. We can look inside ourselves, examine our\nconscience, and know that our motivation is healthy. Check your heart, not your\n\u201cprivilege.\u201d Be confident, hold the line, and respect the pronouns. Respect\nlanguage. Respect sexual difference. After all, who would John be without the\ndifference between his father and his mother? He would be\u2026nobody.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it disrespectful to refuse\nto call John a she? Not at all. Are we doing something wrong when we gently\ninform him that regarding pronouns his body beat his mind to the punch? No. Also,\nis it hurtful or hateful to conserve the relationship between words and people?\nNope.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an anchor to communication,\nthe body works. Sex works. The mind does not. If we refer to people via their\nsex, as we should, there is no possibility of ever \u201cmis-gendering\u201d or\n\u201cmis-pronouning\u201d somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we are free to decline PJ Johnston\u2019s request, we\nrecognize the enormous pressure on St. Olaf students to conform to such\nrequests and to the progressive sensibilities of its largely left-wing faculty.\nAs a recent St. Olaf graduate, Kathryn\nHinderacker, has written<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs I reflect on my four years in college, I admit I am disappointed in many ways.\nThe lack of diversity of thought, the absence of respect for differing\nopinions, the threats, the bullying\u2013it was all so juvenile and the antithesis\nof everything higher education is supposed to be.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several professors stood apart from the madness and worked to provide an education, not\nindoctrination, but I will spare naming them here so as to protect their\non-campus reputations. Meanwhile, administrators who wanted to please everyone often lacked conviction in defending marginalized voices, like conservative ones, and often made college life difficult. I can\u2019t help but feel sad at the potential such a school would have, were it to focus on actual \u201cdiversity\u201d and \u201cinclusion\u201d of all kinds.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about it, St. Olaf? Why\nnot host forums which include critics of transgender ideology who can address the\nharmful consequences of conforming to demands for transgender pronouns? Perhaps\nthis is too scary a proposition for St. Olaf to consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. PJ Johnston, a religion professor at St. Olaf College, has written to request that we correct a March 2018 post we wrote about her and what her hiring says about St. Olaf College.<\/p>\n

We apologize for getting her name wrong: She is PJ not PT, as was posted on the St. Olaf faculty webpage at the time. PJ, who identifies as transgender, also asked us also to use male pronouns for her.<\/p>\n

We respectfully decline her request. While there may be personal situations in which such a request might be honored, there are good reasons not to comply. After all, she is asking us to deny science and interject lies into our language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5011"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5019,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5011\/revisions\/5019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}