Girls can be robots too: Whither the fembots of yesteryear?My son has reached the dread age where the genders start to separate at school, and he’s not happy. While he likes nominally traditional boy things, such as baseball and basketball and watching cartoon explosions, he also enjoys the company of girls. But the girls at his school mostly play sugar-and-spicy games like princess or Holly Hobbie (which, amazingly, still exists), while the boys run around and pretend to be robots. Given a choice, my son, who’s repeatedly declared that princesses are for losers, would always rather be a robot. But given an additional choice, he’d want the girls to be robots and aliens too. Somewhere in the universe, and certainly in his mind, there are tough female robot and alien role models, but they never show up on the playground. Sadly, the era of pre-school egalitarianism seems to be ending fast.

In my vast experience as an alternative-themed parenting guru, I’ve heard from a lot of parents concerned that our culture is feeding gender stereotypes to their children, almost from birth. They worry about the Disney Princess marketing juggernaut and worry more seriously about Bratz culture, with its makeover parties for six-year-olds and dolls who live only to shop, gossip, and show off their flat bellies. They seem less bothered by the culture surrounding their boys, who, as usual, are playing with trucks and beating one another with sticks, but there’s still concern. An ad for Tonka trucks says “Boys: They’re just built different." This goes along beautifully with an ad for a hideous product called “Rose Petal Cottage,” which features a little girl doing the wash and making cookies accompanied by the lyrics "I love when my laundry gets so clean/ Taking care of my home is a dream, dream, dream!" It would be foolish to completely deny gender differences, but is it really smart to propagandize our children into Stanley and Stella Kowalski? Man as brute and woman as precious subservient flower is so last century.

We’ve all encountered the tomboy who can execute a perfect hook slide and the little guy who enjoys wearing mommy’s pantyhose. We also know the girl who wears princess dresses to school or the boy whose only mission in life appears to be pile-driving other children into the ground. But the rest of our kids, the ones whose tastes and behaviors don’t entirely seem bound by their chromosomal makeup, can occupy something I call the “nerd middle.” Therein lies the solution to gender stereotyping.

Spongebob's friend Sandy: One tough squirrel Beyond the Transformers and Hannah Montana is a rich menu of dorky gender-neutral characters that command fan fealty, like all corporate entertainment products must. But they also confound traditional notions of what boys and girls should be, and how they should behave. The major female character on Spongebob Squarepants is an ass-kicking karate squirrel from Texas, while the show’s titular hero breaks out into show tunes unbidden, can’t drive a lick, and cares for his pet snail like a little girl would her kitty.

The Star Wars movies have Princess Leia (if not much else) to balance out the portentous testosterone. The lead children in the Narnia saga and The Golden Compass are smart, capable, brave—and girls. Dora The Explorer doesn’t seem interested in makeup and boys, and her cousin Diego only has eyes for baby animals. The Backyardigans, a show that’s previously received a whuppin’ in this space, also passes the nerd middle test. Crappy music aside, The Backyardigans teaches girls that they can be pirates, spies, Vikings, or cowboys. Just as importantly, they teach boys that girls can be those things.

Even superheroes, the traditional rulers of the fortress of male dorkitude, can and should be presented to girls in the nerd middle. In the Justice League: Unlimited cartoon series, which many of my son’s friends watch, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Hawkgirl, Black Canary, The Huntress, and several other heroines are presented as the equals, and often the betters, of their male hero counterparts. Kim Possible vaults into action on the Disney Channel, and, while dropping this reference makes me feel old, let us never forget the lessons of The Powerpuff Girls, a show whose central joke revolved around the fact that little girls named Blossom and Buttercup kicked ass.

Golden Compass-Kicker: Lyra Belacqua makes a great role model So the right messages are out there. Why, then, in a world where there’s always a Pink Ranger, has the concept of girl power been so marginalized? Why does it seem radical to suggest that it could be otherwise? For every parent who grumbles about the evils of the Rose Petal Cottage on Feministing, there are a hundred who wouldn’t think twice before taking their girls to the mall to buy Barbie’s Dream Beach House. Even Lisa Simpson, a gender-neutral girl hero if ever one existed, worships her Malibu Stacy dolls. It’s as though we’re willfully ignoring the gender-mixing messages of the media our children consume. Either that, or we never really absorbed the messages in the first place.

From age five on, boys play t-ball while girls take ballet. Coed sleepovers, which really should be acceptable up until age 10, rarely even get off the ground. My wife and I, like good self-righteous urban liberals, try to counteract this as much as possible. Our son plays flag football, but he also takes gymnastics. He likes to peg ants in the backyard with a squirt gun, but he goes to cooking class on Monday evenings. We wrestle in the backyard, and then sometimes on rainy days I take him to kiddie yoga. When he goes over to his girl cousin’s house, they have a gender-free good time: shooting hoops, playing “zoo,” watching Electric Company videos, and staging elaborate High School Musical dance parties. Well, the last activity is pretty girly, but it is her house. Sometimes you must make concessions.

American life, on the surface, has never been more gender-neutral than it is now. Women go to war, and men make dinner. Men win Dancing With The Stars, and there are female American Gladiators. Both genders, apparently, are capable of playing the role of Bob Dylan. The only real gender-exclusive things in the world are the siring of children and childbirth, though recent current events have even called that exclusivity into question. Yet the Bratz persist, and Joe Francis, the pig behind Girls Gone Wild, continues to make millions even as he stews in jail. It’s up to us parents to encourage the gender-neutral side of our culture, and to try and persuade our children that the battle of the sexes need not continue along the same path.

Elijah’s best friend (or second-best, depending on the week) is a cute, smart little girl named Ariel. They’re weird in the exact same way, and it’s obvious that they get each other. Friends like that are rare at any age. Their favorite activity is to play Star Wars, and Ariel always gets to be Luke Skywalker. The fact that a girl is playing a male lead barely even occurs to them.

Elizabeth Gilbert: Emotional-adventure pornographer?If Elizabeth Gilbert were a man, would the plot of Eat Pray Love seem quite as charming and relatable? Rolf Potts, writing on a travel site called World Hum, doesn’t think so. Here’s an excerpt from his pitch for the male equivalent:

I start by going to Italy, where I eat a lot of pasta, drive around and take some naps. I also study the language with a cute, younger Italian woman, and I frequently fantasize about having sex with her and her equally cute twin sister. I extol the virtues of these Italian women, who know how to treat their men—selflessly lavishing them with love and making them the center of attention. I pointedly ponder how nice it would be if the American women in my life had had the awareness to treat me that way.

Potts postulates that Eat Pray Love is a female version of 1950’s era adventure porn, which appealed to office-trapped men with its stories of danger in exotic lands. Women, he argues, are more interested in traveling inward:

The legacy of “adventure porn,” I think, is not the kind of adventure writing you see in Outside magazine, but books like “Eat, Pray, Love.” Instead of wrestling crocodiles in distant lands, our protagonist wrestles despair; instead of exploring rivers, she explores emotions; instead of surviving disease, she survives heartbreak. Men occasionally appear in this survivor’s tale, but they are as one-dimensional as adventure-porn wenches, and mainly serve as a sounding board for the protagonist’s feelings. When these men are giving our heroine love and help, she gushes with admiration; when they can’t intuit her emotional needs, she reacts with despair (and vague contempt). Rarely does she ponder what—besides emotional availability to her—might motivate these men in day-to-day life.

If he's right, Eat Pray Love certainly isn't alone. A lot of books/movies/TV shows aimed at women don't spent much time on the emotional lives of their male characters. (Can you imagine being friends—not sex-friends, but buddies—with any of the Sex in the City men, for example? I could maybe hang out with Steve for half an hour if drinking was involved, but that’s it.) Of course, the inverse is even more common. Plenty of movies and books for male audiences have one-dimensional female characters. But is that any excuse?

Previously: Eat Pray Backlash?

Quick! Pick one!: Obama and ClintonNo time to read The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Sunday New York Times, Harpers, The Nation, The New Republic, and New York Magazine during your morning commute? Don’t worry – "How To Sound Smart This Week" will provide the Cliff's Notes.

With Super Tuesday rapidly approaching, chances are good that you’ll have to talk politics this week. For the Democratically inclined, it used to be really easy to bluff your way into a political discussion: express warm feelings towards John Edwards, thereby throwing the Hilary vs. Obama binary into a tailspin. Unfortunately, Edwards dropped out of the campaign, so now you have to pick a side. Even if you don’t know your own mind, though, plenty of major news publications seem to know if for you, especially if you’re a lady.

In this week’s New York Times Magazine, Linda Hirshman looks at the conventional wisdom that women will vote for Hilary. There’s a lot to discuss here, like the frustrating fact that women are way less informed than men about politics. A recent poll suggests that this is because there are so many more male journalists and politicians. When women can’t find anyone to identify with, they lose interest -- whereas in elections with female candidates, they’re more likely to get involved. If you don’t mind heated debate, this is a pretty excellent topic of conversation. Is it reasonable to check out when you’re not included in the conversation? Or is that a cop-out?

According to Newsweek, it’s simply how the brain works. An article on the neuroscience behind voting points out that our gut instinct propel us to vote for people who are like us – e.g. women for Hilary – but adds that identification is highly fluid. It mentions an oft-cited study in which Asian girls who were reminded of their gender before a math test scored poorly, but those reminded of their ethnicity scored well. In other words, we tend to act according to the stereotypes the world has about us. Which suggests, in turn (as you might point out) that women are less enthusiastic about politics because they’re not expected to be – a vicious cycle, sure, but definitely a cycle that can be broken.

Meanwhile, over at The Nation, veteran feminist Katha Pollitt casts her support behind Obama. Pollitt is the definition of an informed voter, but the argument she makes is entirely emotional: “Let's go with the candidate voters feel some passion about."

Lastly, if the conversation turns into a swamp of pure political ambivalence, bring up today’s Salon essay by Rebecca Traister. No factoids or chewed-over science here – just pure commiseration with voters who still haven't managed to pick a side.

Last week: The sub-prime meltdown

Having your steak and eating it too: Would it taste as good if you know it was bought with--gasp--ladymoney?The most heartening part of this weekend’s New York Times Style section article on women who make more money than their boyfriends and the low-earners who love them:

Michael R. Cunningham, a psychologist who teaches in the communication department at the University of Louisville, conducted a survey of college women to see if, upon graduation, they would prefer to settle down with a high school teacher who has short workdays, summers off and spare energy to help raise children, or with a surgeon who earns eight times as much but works brutal hours. Three-quarters of the women said they would choose the teacher.

The point, Professor Cunningham said, was that young professionally oriented women have no problem dating down if the man is secure, motivated in his own field and emotionally supportive.

This is good news! This is the kind of thing that should get headlines! It looks like our nation’s female college students, the ones people like Laura Sessions Stepp are always fretting over, actually have pretty decent priorities when it comes to long-term mates. They’d rather shack up with someone who likes his job and contributes to the household than a frantic, tooth-grinding success-whore. It’s almost as if the same people who want to have drunken hook-ups at the age of 19 realize that in the long run Mr. Budweiser McSixpack will not make a suitable life-partner. Almost as if an entire generation is ultimately looking for a healthy, equitable relationship with someone who likes them more than he likes his bank account.

The Times, however, saw this differently:

At least, that’s what their responses are in surveys. Talk about the subject with women a bit older — those who have been out of college long enough to be more hardened — and what you hear is ambivalence, if not downright hostility, about the income disparity.

Jade Wannell, 25, a producer at a Chicago ad agency who lives in a high-rise apartment building, started dating a 29-year-old administrator at a trucking company last year. “He was really sweet,” she said. But “he didn’t work many hours and ended up hanging out at home a lot. I was bored and didn’t feel challenged. He would finish work at 3 and want to go to the bar. The college way of life is still in them at that age. All they want to do is drink with the boys on Saturday. I was like ‘Let’s go to an art gallery’ and all he wanted to do was go to the bars.”

Nothing about these complaints necessarily indicates the level of Wannell's ex’s income. “All they want to do is drink with the boys on Saturday” certainly describes half of Wall Street, Saturday being the brief sliver of time when bankers don’t have to be at the office. What she’s saying, instead, is that she didn’t like her ex’s lack of ambition and thought he was boring. In fact, based entirely on this quote, one might assume that Wannell would be better off dating a museum assistant who worked 14 hours a day and spent his free time at openings, or (heavens) a painter who spent 14 hours a day perfecting his craft—and you know that guy wouldn’t be able to match her ad agent earnings.

It's a little scary, from my lefty Quaker standpoint, that this article completely refuses to acknowledge that there's a difference between working hard and making money, as if any guy who's passionate about what he does will surely be healthily compensated for, you know, pursuing his dreams (and thereby that any guy who's unsuitably broke is clearly a slacker who just isn't trying hard enough.) It's especially disturbing when you realize that Wannell literally told the writer: “It wasn’t the job, it was the passion.” But ultimately the forced conclusions of this kind of trend piece don’t really matter. Women’s salaries are going to continue increasing relative to men’s, and everyone is going to have to deal with it. Better to accept the horrible misfortune of making a lot of money—or having to let your woman buy you dinner—and be an early adopter as well as a rich—or well-fed—bastard.

 

The Geico Cavemen as urbane sophisticate is the commercial hit of the year. Jewcy's Meryl Yourish blogged about their appeal in a post back in July of last year and I've been holding back the laughs for a while now, but more as a reaction to my sense of humor falling short with the cavemen's subtle laugh riot approach. Honestly, they aren't that funny to me. But it would seem I'm definitely in the minority here and since prime time TV favors majority, my two cents ain't worth a whole lot.

Ok, so the cavemen are preferable to the Geico Gecko of yesteryear, but do they outperform the "Celebrity as Translator" campaign with Little Richard? I think not. Then again, the end product being does anyone even know what Geico sells anyways?

I saw recently on an episode of "CBS Sunday Morning" that the two Geico campaigns that I mentioned above are running simultaenously. The reason being that each favors a gender with the translator clips appealing to women more and the cavemen commericials appealing to men. So this would also help explain why I'm not particularly fond of the cavemen.

But clips and gender aside, ABC has already leased the cavemen and produced a pilot with three cavemen living in modern day Atlanta. And as Slate's Seth Stevenson explains, it might just succeed:

First, let's remind ourselves that super-high-concept sitcoms are nothing new. Third Rock From the Sun = "We're aliens and we can't tell anyone." Small Wonder = "Our daughter is a robot." These shows achieved relative success, so who's to say "We're cultivated cavemen" can't do the same?

There's even precedent for advertising icons succeeding on other platforms. The news stories about the cavemen's pilot all mention Baby Bob—the one-time dot-com spokesbaby who later had his own sitcom (and later still got back into ads). A friend also reminded me that Ernest, Jim Varney's redneck caricature ("KnowhutImean, Vern?") began as a pitchman before landing a kids' TV show (and then a string of hallucinogenically plotted films—see e.g., 1997's Ernest Goes to Africa).

Rodin and his acquired aesthetic for the female torso.I have a confession. I've never wanted to be a dude. Ok, I retract. I have wanted to be a dude in that when I was a teenager and my body morphed into its present state, I fell into a deep, vegetative stupor over not being able to be as good an athlete as I once was. In short, curves of any kind (small as they may be) don't help with speed. And agility was never my strong suit. I got over this eventually. When you're a chubby 13-year-old, you spend your remaining adolescence making up for it. Your young adulthood is therefore spent enjoying the fruits of your increased metabolism and consuming as much junk food as possible, within the constraints of your previous 13-year-old mindset.

Universally, men and women spend so much time thinking about their bodies, but it's the latter of the sexes that usually gets screwed in the long run. After all, our bodies go through so many changes in a lifetime, how could this not be the case?

And yet I can't help but think the one major issue that preoccupies my mental analysis of my body is totally unrelated to all this separate but equal, burning bra jazz. In short, it's where my particular body falls short. Specifically, it's those inches between my chest and my hips (that seem infinitely smaller than the ratio from my hips to my knees) otherwise known as my non-existent torso.

Biologically, men have longer torsos than women. (For a visual comparison, click here.) I also know that it's more "feminine" to have a shorter waist. However, I've always emulated more adrongynous, "Bonnie & Clyde" fashion. Then there's the part of me that fancies Victorian corsets, but even those flatter longer torso gals like Kate Hudson more. HKate Hudson in all her long torso glory.istorically, Greeks and Romans were obsessed with the torso. Not to mention the French sculptors. So I know I am not alone in my aesthetic curiosity.

I suffer from short waist syndrome (SWS). SWS is further accentuated by a pronounced chest. People who suffer from this are constantly finding ways to elongate their mid-section and inevitably wondering why they will never be able to tuck in a shirt inside a pair of pants. Comparisons with actresses on TV and film are common and leave SWS sufferers with pangs of inadequecy since no one onscreen has a similar body, as the majority of actresses have longer torsos than legs, with the exception of Bette Midler. Midler, coincidentally also has no neck.

So mostly it sucks to be a member of the SWS club. As a Jewish female, I know I am not alone in my plight, yet still I am a tad resentful of my lot, even on a good day.

Two of my brothers recently started attending Orthodox synagogues where mechitzas divide men from women, ostensibly to eliminate improper thoughts in shul. As a gay man, I never know where to sit. Seating me with a bunch of men is like locking Jackie Gleason in a delicatessen, as the old Jackie Mason joke goes. But if I were to sit with women, my own beauty might distract everyone around me. I could sit in a section composed solely of gay men, but then we’d all distract each other. To be safe, I’d have to sit in a room with only one other person, a lesbian. But first, we’d both have to undergo testing to make sure neither of us had any latent bisexual tendencies.

I spent the better part of my weekdays with a precocious 2.5-year-old who often comes up with profound existential insights that have me thinking, "Where the hell did that come from?"

To counter the last statement, we also engage in a bit of the scatalogical, body function humor from time to time. Nothing too scandalous I assure you. I'm a pretty damn good caregiver, if I do say so myself.

But this afternoon, I was pooped. As was she. And so when the point came in the CD we were listening to where she grabs her blanky and lies on the floor and sucks her thumb, I too lay on the floor. Her baby sister decided to crawl on top of me and while I was trying to meet both their needs I had the following exchange with P, the 2.5-year-old. (trying my best to be discrete here)

B: Um. Whatcha doing?

P: I'm rubbing your belly

P: But that's not my belly, P. It's my boobs.

P: Oh, I wanna rub your boobs. (she says as she pats them)

B: Well, we don't do that, P. (I'm saying as I get up and have visions of being interrogated under false pretenses on The View  like Sandra Bullock was tricked into being on a talk show in that really bad Harry Connick Jr. flic where she finds out her hubby was cheating on her in front of millions)

P: Why don't we do that?

B: We can touch our own bodies, but not other peoples.

P: Oh. Well daddy has boobs?

B No, daddy has a chest. Mommy has boobs.

P: Why?

B: Well, they helped feed you as a baby. Remember?

P: Yeah. So. Beth, why do you have boobs?

B: Um, for rubbing. K. 'Nuf of the anatomy lesson for today. Let's go play trucks.

P: Beth, what's anatomy?

When Can I Get My Charge Card?I work as a nanny during the day, taking care of two girls so I'm always curious as to how people raise their children and at what point in childhood development, gender distinctions start to set in. This would help to explain my preoccupation with a blog called DadTalk, in which a father talks about all the joys of parenting, or rather his observations, as non-illuminating as they are at times.

In today's post, a father talks about his younger daughter's insistence on playing with hairbrushes, make-up, and strollers over her older brother's Tonka trucks. He tries to convince everyone, himself included, that this transformation of his daughter discovering her JAPiness is simply cute. But read between the lines.

While I’m fine with Lael playing with dump trucks, cars and trains, it also is clear that Lael wants to play with hairbrushes, makeup and clothes.

How can we be sure? Oh, there are clues – such as my little girl raiding my wife’s purse for lip pencils and then smearing them all over her face. As we become more proficient hiding Anne’s purse, Lael resorts to using ink pens on her face, which ARE NOT EASY TO GET OFF.

Another clue that Lael wants girl toys? Well, she runs anything through her hair: A brush, comb, book, cheese and then poses with a smile that says, “Look at how beautiful I am.” That HAS to be a genetic trait because she certainly has not seen it on TV.

Yikes, dad. Sounds like mom is spending a bit too much time at Bergdorf's and the nanny might need a raise.

I've got a reasonable feminist pedigree for a boy. Swaggering, posturing masculinity makes me retch and sneer. I'm a devoted user of gender-neutral pronouns. My Jewcy profile lists my gender as "not applicable", because when I fill out forms I'm annoyed by gratuitous inquiries into my gender. Who gives a shit? What do you care? Nancy Hopkins during Summers's Speech

None of this means I admire the damsel-in-distress feminism that has replaced the more vigorous woman-power of my mother's day. Still, I don't wish these dainty ladies ill, and today I'm particularly concerned for their well-being. You see, in an article in the NY Times, Margaret Wertheim, an unapologetic feminist and a historian of women in the sciences, hits us with a shocking piece of verbotenspeech. Before diving into a discussion of the very real sexist prejudices that handicap female scientists, Ms. Wertheim says, "While there may indeed be subtle biological differences contributing to the scarcity of women in the top ranks of science..."

Has anyone in the blogosphere echo chambers yet commented on the fact that this little disclaimer of a dependent clause affirms the very point that got Larry Summers canned?

After all, in Summers's now infamous (and relentlessly mischaracterized) speech, he suggested that--though the male and female populations almost certainly share the same mean scientific ability--men might have a slightly larger average deviation from the mean, helping to produce a disproprotionate number of male scientific dolts and male scientific geniuses. Notoriously, MIT professor Nancy Hopkins claimed that upon hearing Summers's horrifying words, she felt that she was either going to "black out" or vomit.

Shouldn't Nancy Hopkins and company now be vomiting at the thought that a prominent feminist would publish Summers-esque hate speech in the paper of record? Should we picket the Times and Ms. Wertheim's offices? Or is the truth that what Summers said was within the bounds of reasonable scientific inquiry? So much so, even, that a real feminist like Wertheim can acknowledge that it's a possibility, and do so without vomiting or fainting?

 

 

 

So we’re 72 hours into the Jewcy beta test. Here are the highlights thus far:

Anna Kournikova was the tawdry starlet of Jewcy's first weekend in beta. On Saturday we posted a triptych of Ms. Kournikova taking an inquisitive look inside her bikini bottom, where—to her surprise and delight—she encountered a big spanking Jewcy shin. The image had hardly gone up before it incited a seat-ripping riot of negative feedback. Most of the frothiest criticism was delivered via e-mail and telephoneEstrogen: Not enough of it at Jewcy? (put it on the site, people! We can deal!). But on the Jewcy Feedback Wiki, Laurel Snyder diplomatically observed that the site was suffering from a “serious lack of estrogen.” An anonymous commenter followed up by stating that both she and “a bunch of female friends” agreed that the image was “gross” and that “no women will find that funny.”

Beta tester JJtown took off the gloves: 

I'm exhausted of hip Jewish content excluding women. Not only do you employ almost no female authors, you blazon your homepage with a blatantly sexist image of a major athlete in the hopes of looking ‘edgy.’ Tell me, Jewcy, what's interesting or edgy about Jewish creatives once again fashioning a literary boys club? Haven't we had enough of these over the centuries? I, for one, am sick of it. Take Anna's pudenda off your site and hire some female writers who are allowed to talk about more than their love lives. You're too smart for this shit.

Yikes!

Now Jewcy is quite willing to offend, when necessary, and we’ll have more to say about our alleged estrogen deficiency. But some of the Jewcy staff agree that the Kournikova image reflects something Jewcy is trying to get away from: empty provocation. If we’re going to offend, there should be substance to our offensiveness. Anna and her pudenda didn’t offer the substance. On SundThe art of Dave Choe: Beta testers say it rocks!ay, they came down.

Beyond Ms. Kournikova, your feedback has been largely positive. People think the site is aesthetically smashing. And SimpleLiquid expressed the consensus when he said “Dave Choe is a stud!” Dave, who is Jewcy’s founding art director, has made a legion of new fans among the Jewcy beta testers.

You’ve been similarly positive about Jewcy’s articles, though most of your comments have been of the "love the articles!" variety. A little too general. We suspect that people haven’t yet had the chance to really dig into the marrow of Jewcy's content.

Thanks for all your comments, and keep them coming! The more we hear from you, the better the site will be when we leave beta. The Jewcy Feedback Wiki is a fine place for comments, and if you find the wiki format a little confusing, you can create posts at the Jewcy Central Forum. And as always, you can leave comments to any piece of Jewcy content, including this one.

Hear ye, Jewcy people!

According to the Columbia Guide to Standard American English, the word "themself" is a "substandHarold Bloom: Careful never to use word "themself"ard pronoun," is "limited to limited to Vulgar English speech or imitations of it," is an "unfortunate result of trying to avoid [sexist speech]." As if that doesn't make their position clear enough, they also say that it is a shibboleth...in other words, if we use the word "themself," this will out us as irredeemably trashy in the eyes of people who know how to speak properly.

Jewcy needs to take a stand on this. We need to embrace themself as the only possible third person singular reflexive pronoun for the 21 century. The stakes are much higher than they appear at first glance: there are all sorts of big issues coming to a head in the battle over this word. Should we force English into service as a therapeutic tool to address our upper middle-class anxieties about being indistinguishable from the riff-raff? No. Should we have an apopleptic fit when people use gender-indeterminate terms to describe people who are, well, of undetermined gender? No.

Enough of this nonsense. My name is Joey, and I'm reporting for duty! Let's get it on, you detestable language and gender reactionaries. Themself themself themself!