American Psychological Association Officials Need Therapy

Dave Peterson, Ph.D. emails:

Dear Robert,

We’ve corresponded earlier this year on a statement I wrote for NAS [National Association of Scholars] that Jordon Peterson referred to. I thought I would forward this, in case you missed it.

 [The American Psychological Association is helping make grammar fluid to accommodate current gender fluidity trends, and a statement from a Modern Language Association of America spokesperson indicated the group may soon follow suit.
The APA recently announced scholars in some cases must use “they” as a singular pronoun to refer to individuals who identify as non-binary.
In a recent post, Chelsea Lee, content development manager for APA style, explained the change.

“When readers see a gendered pronoun, they make assumptions about the gender of the person being described,” Lee wrote. “APA advocates for the singular ‘they’ because it is inclusive of all people and helps writers avoid making assumptions about gender.”According to Lee, “Writers should use the singular ‘they’ in two main cases: (a) when referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context and (b) when referring to a specific, known person who uses ‘they’ as their pronoun.”

The first case is not required by the APA, according to Emily Ayubi, director of APA Style, “provided that writers are inclusive and respectful with their word choice.”] https://www.thecollegefix.com/apa-now-requires-authors-to-use-singular-they/

We’re going to have problems with the mental health establishment.  I left A.P.A. decades ago.  Psychology used to be for freedom.  Now, it’s increasingly for conformity and control.

Dave

RW note:

This is simply another attempt at the distortion of reality from the Postmodernist and Critical Theorist crowds. They really want to overthrow everything that has fundamental understanding to it and structure the world on anomalies and anti-reality.

If someone who is biologically a male wants to think that he is a female, well, he should just go for it. I am not going to stop him and he can refer to himself as "she" if he wants. It is up to us as individuals if we want to play this game of "non-biological she."

Perhaps we can call such a testicles-denier a shorter variation of "non-biological she," say, "nobishe" or "post-cast nobishe."

But, "they" also has a very specific meaning in the English language, it refers to groups of people. That is a reference to more than one person without reference to gender. To co-opt this word is just another kind of major distortion that the social justice warriors use to attack anything that is part of traditional society or civilization.

Those influenced by PMs and CTs are just adding layers of attack against normalcy in every way possible with these kinds of demands.

Here is another example, the UK's Daily Mail reports that The Universities and Colleges Union has set out a stance in a new report that anyone should be allowed to "identify" as black regardless of the color of their skin or background.

The UCU’s position statement says: "Our rules commit us to ending all forms of discrimination, bigotry and stereotyping. UCU has a long history of enabling members to self-identify whether that is being black, disabled, LGBT+ or women."

How is this not madness? It is promoting the idea that reality doesn't exist or at least it can be overruled by language directly in contradiction to reality or the traditional meaning of words.

Michael Rectenwald in Springtime For Snowflakes explained this bizarre distortion of language:

The contemporary social justice creed also draws on "social and linguistic constructivism," an epistemological premise derived from postmodern theory holding that language constitutes social (and often all) reality, rather than merely attempting to represent it. Under social and linguistic constructivism, language is considered a material agent...

Bottom line: American Psychological Association officials, and an awful lot of others, have gone mad. They need therapy.

They may identify arsenic as orange juice but if they drink it like orange juice they will die. Words should be used to explain reality not to overrule reality.

Indeed, reality can not be overruled.

At the length, the truth will out.

-William Shakespeare

-RW