In the olden days, students would learn that avoiding shifts in person is critical in producing clear and cogent writing.

Not anymore.

Instead, October 16, 2019 marked International Pronouns Day, because "asking someone their [sic] lived pronouns and using them affirms that person's gender identity and is a major way of respect. Being referred to by the wrong pronouns especially affects transgender and gender nonconformng individuals."

O Brave New World.

In order to promote the cause of pronoun use, one needs to accept the premise that it is patently incorrect to think of biological sexual identity as comprising a boy or a girl.

Rid yourself of this view, because according to the purveyors of pronoun plurality, "we also live in a culture that uses 'gender' and 'sex' interchangeably. However, these two aspects that contribute [to] one's sexuality and identity are actually two separate entities. As we come to understand how different people understand the various facets that make up how we think about gender, we come to realize that there are many ways to look at these aspects of identity. One way to simplify the many components of gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, and biological sex is by using the Genderbread Person model, created and illustrated [b]y Sam Killerman, author of itspronouncedmetrosexual.com and LGBT advocate."

Well, we can now discard the children's book The Gingerbread Man, as this is discriminatory.

The pronoun police further explain:

[I]t is important to understand that the graphic representation is limited, and the implicit implication of the existence of gender identity as binary states and/or expression for each of these domains on any single line is not necessarily accurate and/or illustrative of a real person. ... [T]hese definitions continue to grow and change as we learn more about the interplay of gender expression and gender identity with further research. Some may even argue that the widely accepted definition of gender identity does not align with their own definition and way in which they view themselves and navigate the world. ... Those who choose not to use a person's identified pronouns and instead use other pronouns are both invalidating another's identity and also potentially implying invalidation which may not have been intended.

In case more clarity is required, it is important to understand that even when dealing with the issue of relieving bodily functions, it is vital to use the term "all-gender" bathrooms rather than "gender-neutral" because the former indicates "that the ... community recognizes that genders exist outside of the binary model, i.e. the idea that humans are only 'male' or 'female.' In fact, this may include people of various (or no) genders[.]"

Daniel Moody writes that "[y]ou don't need to be a psychology professor to realize that an attempt to transplant pronouns from the body to the mind is an attempt to destroy our ability to communicate. Consider: John can choose from infinite gender identities, with no fixed link between any one gender identity and any one set of pronouns.

For example, John and Joan might each identify as 'female,' with John using she/her/hers and Joan using, say, red/white/blue. What does all this mean? It means gender pronouns are hyper-volatile. John might change his pronouns (without changing his gender identity), or he might change his gender identity (without changing his pronouns), or he might change both. Furthermore, he might do any of these things at any time and for any and no reason. That's a lot of badges. Not content with collapsing the sexes into each other, the ideology also wants to collapse the difference between the singular and the plural. At root, the notion of gender pronouns is a category error, a misunderstanding of the nature of language. Gender identities don't have pronouns, for the same reason ages and skin colors don't — namely that sexes do have pronouns. There can be no such thing as a non-binary pronoun because there are no non-binary sexes, and there can be no such thing as a neutral pronoun because there are no non-sexed bodies.

But in this arena of alleged inclusivity, may the heavens help you if you do not use transgender pronouns. High school teacher Peter Vlaming lost his job because, although he agreed to use the trans gender student's opposite-sex name, he refused to use transgender pronouns.

Like the actual Gingerbread Man, which was a lesson to young children to be suspicious of the dangerous fox, we need to be wary of this latest assault on young people. After all, "starting July 1, 2020, all Illinois public schools are legally required to teach children LGBT history and only buy textbooks that include the topic."

In fact, "[t]he explicit goal of such laws, which are also in place in California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Oregon, is to make children agree with the left's views of sexuality, which contradict the historic views of all major world religions. This is not only the open, stated goal of those pushing such laws but also explicit in the curriculum."

Transgender politics has even infected women's sports as a transgender wrestler has won the Texas girls' Class 6A 110-pound division for the second year in a row.

More recently, a seven-year old boy may end up receiving transgender treatments if his mother eventually gets her way. Injecting hormones into and performing surgery on a perfectly healthy individual would be tantamount to child abuse, but not when it comes to leftist ideology.

It is highly doubtful that young people will ever learn that hundreds of transgender people want to re-assume their sex, but the mutilation cannot be undone.

Will they ever be informed that "[a] U.S. researcher recently did a study that confirmed at least two 13-year-old girls and five 14-year-old girls have been given double mastectomies as a result of identifying as transgender"?

Moreover, a review of the research available on this topic found that "[o]nly a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.'" Will young people ever learn that "long term studies of people who underwent sex reassignment [sic] surgery had death rates three times higher from all causes?"

Will they ever, in the halls of now increasingly illiberal schools, ever find out about the landmark case of James Shupe? In 2016, "an Oregon circuit court ruled Shupe could change his gender to nonbinary, the first legal ruling of his kind. Shupe recounts his experience living as the opposite sex, regretting it, returning to live as his birth sex, and becoming a vocal opponent of transgender medicine altogether."

Transgender policies and pronouns are another tool in the leftist nightmare arsenal intended to confuse biology, harm and maim children, devalue women in sports, diminish parental concerns for their offspring, and distort scientific fact.

Distortion of language is the first sign of tyranny. As one young woman learned the hard way, the tragic transgender contagion is cruel and irreversible.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.