When I’m on a podcast or giving a talk, there always comes the awkward phase at the end when I’m asked about my upcoming projects or plans. Invariably, I mention something about my show Access Vegas or what I have going on with my partners, Michael Sartain and Miguel Muñoz. I wouldn’t say I like it, but I always jokingly note that they are my business partners, not my intimate partners. You have to specify this these days so people don’t get the wrong ideas about my sexual orientation (heterosexual, thank you very much).
It annoys me that I need to drop in these caveats, but such is the state of Wokezi sensibilities that we subconsciously self-regulate our language today. I’m reminded of the George Orwell quote:
“…but if thought corrupts language, then language can corrupt thought.”
Even homosexuals don’t like heterosexuals using the term partner to describe their husbands or wives. Doing a quick Google search for “use of the term partner” will give you links to numerous articles and forum threads by homosexuals irritated by cis couples using partner in place of husband or wife. Partner was their word, and now it’s been appropriated for general use. Ironic, I know.
But has referring to your husband, wife, lover, boyfriend, or girlfriend as a partner become so common?
Because, like our marriage ideals, it’s the most accurate term for homogeneity. As I write this essay, I have a word-governing application called Grammarly running in the background. While it does give me helpful suggestions for using active voice and corrects my misspellings, it also gives me annoying alternate terms and sentence structure suggestions – all of which are decidedly gender-neutral, Woke-approved words and phrases.
Some may find the word Mankind to be offensive; try Humanity instead.
Although the dictionary defines Mankind as a universal term, today, it is gender-specific (because any use of the letters M-A-N in a word is suspect of patriarchal divisiveness). Humanity, however, is gender-neutral, thus advancing the socially “correct” imperatives of androgyny, homogeneity, and egalitarianism. This correct imperative is so important that Grammarly built in the governor to remind you of your wrong-think with every sentence you type.
Hormonal Birth Control
Around the time of the Sexual Revolution, a cultural shift towards Egalitarianism started to get traction. The advent of hormonal birth control (HBC) in the mid-1960s was the catalyst for social conventions we take for granted today. Debating critics about the significance of HBC is a topic for another essay, but in brief, the origins of every social ill we debate today regarding sex, relationships, gender relations, masculinity, feminism, marriage, and divorce can be traced to one point in time – 1965, the time the Pill became popularized in Western societies.
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