OUT TO LUNCH

I’ve been following the bizarre goings on at some our most expensive and elite private schools for some time now, largely thanks to a few online social media accounts devoted to the topic. 

The bizarre behaviour I am referring to relates to the sudden need on the part of certain educational establishments to bring in very expensive outside consultants to lecture them on things like diversity, inclusivity and equality (DIE). Who could possibly object to that? The more diverse the better and one of the joys of living in a country like South Africa is that we have so many different cultures to learn from…admittedly not all of them exemplary.

Imagine the sheer tedium of being an Inuit and living in the remote sub-Arctic parts of the globe. Apart from the utterly crap weather and the harsh living conditions you would have nobody to hate or look down on because of the lack of diversity within your community. Deprived of convenient scapegoats you would have no-one to blame for your own shortcomings but yourself. What sort of a life is that?

Then there’s inclusivity and here Steven Spielberg’s 1982 creation ET springs to mind. Back then there would have been no chance of getting ET into a school like St Stithian’s or Herschel despite the fact that ET was clearly non-binary.

ET is left behind on Earth by careless botanist parents who obviously didn’t check that he was safely strapped in before heading off back home from a plant collecting trip. ET is discovered in a tool shed by a ten year old lad called Elliott who lures the alien into his house with a trail of sweeties.

In those pre-Fauci days there was no mandatory requirement to wear a face mask or observe social distancing when dealing with small, strange looking beings from another planet. The possibility of transmissible disease was huge. But what would a ten year old know about such things?

In an eerie tip of the hat to the future, men in HazMat suits turn up and government agencies take over with Elliott screaming at the doctors that they are killing ET; a clear case of early onset of conspiracy theory. However it all ends well and ET eventually gets picked up much to the relief of the US border control people. Imagine Kamala Harris having to explain that one.

In our newly enlightened times though ET would be a welcome addition at any elite school and any jibes about the large gap between his/her/their eyes and the very long glowing index finger would rightly be condemned as a micro-aggression and an example of alienism (a distant relative of racism). DIE consultants would make clear (at a price) that differently abled beings like ET should be welcomed in our schools and be allowed to use whichever changing rooms they felt most comfortable in.

Finally, there’s equality. Isn’t it wonderful that schools which charge upwards of R200 000 a year can, with a straight face, hold workshops on equality? It gives me confidence that irony isn’t completely dead.

Here I must admit that I have no skin in this game thank heavens. I don’t have children or grandchildren at school, so I am just a very bemused observer.

However, the many horror stories of excellent teachers being bullied and driven out of their jobs, subjected to all sorts of false accusations, experiencing dreadful bouts of depression and being unjustly saddled with all sorts of derogatory labels suggests that diversity, inclusivity and equality have little to do with good manners and everything to do with what is clearly a communist agenda to undermine parent’s control over their children. Full Marx to all concerned.

This is by no means a local sickness. It’s already widespread in the US and the UK and now catching on in a big way in South Africa, apparently with the full consent and enthusiastic support of the heads of some of our more exclusive schools. One of the core tenets of the DIE message is that children are far too young to determine what gender they are. Bearing in mind that there are now between 50 and 100 to choose from it’s not surprising that consultants have to be brought in at vast cost to help with this task; particularly as parents are either too busy or ill equipped for the job.

So for example Desmond and Molly Jones, apart from having a barrow in the market place, may think they have a daughter but the truth is that this is ‘wrong-think’ and with a bit of gentle persuasion the daughter soon realises that ‘she’ has been assigned the wrong body and is actually a son. None of this would have been possible without the help of DIE consultants.

Even if you haven’t been following every minute tedious detail of the gender wars you must be aware that a record number of young people now believe that they have been shoved into the wrong body presumably due to the storks being understaffed and many of them working from home.

This leads to all sorts of pitfalls for the really boring, heterosexual members of society; the sort of people who believe all that rot about there only being two sexes. For example if Jim changes to Jane and you call him Jim then you are ‘dead-naming’ him and that now qualifies as deeply hurtful and almost certainly a hate crime.

Similarly, not respecting someone’s choice of preferred pronoun simply on the basis that it is insane and ungrammatical is also a hate crime. Be warned. This is why some companies are now sticking preferred pronouns on worker’s name badges just in case they forget which gender they are in all the confusion.

Ever one to be ahead of the curve I have decided to introduce the concept of ‘advisable adjectives’ to this minefield of gender confusion. So, for example, Donald may identify as non-binary (which is actually not identifying as anything but let that pass) and prefer the pronouns them/they but his advisable adjective by which he would like to be addressed is ‘Dodgy’ and anything else won’t do. This could be the next big thing.

The by now epidemic proportion of young people assigned the wrong body is fascinating because the phenomena is only observable amongst rich, spoilt communities with nothing better to occupy their time. It’s also almost exclusive to societies which are not totalitarian. So, even with a population of over a billion one never hears about Chinese children being born in the wrong body although it’s just possible that the news has been censored by the government.

Similarly, when North Korea stages those magnificent spectacles with nuclear warheads rumbling along the streets of Pyongjang and all those thousands of perfectly in-sync military personnel goose-stepping happily away you never get the impression that gender fluidity is a big issue for the Kims.

The Arab countries, with their huge tax effective ex-pat populations, also seem to have been spared the current outbreak of gender confusion. Maybe it’s the heat and all that sand.

The inescapable conclusion is that this is a condition which almost certainly applies to a relatively small and privileged section of the human race. It’s now become a major brag factor among the progressive lefty Wokists to admit that you are the parents of a non-binary, gender fluid child (whatever the child may think) and have assigned the pronouns them/they at the age of five.

By doing so you will be hailed as ‘brave’ and ‘open minded’ by people who are either too frightened or too polite to say you are a nutter. And for the majority of cynical unbelievers there are always the DIE consultants to help us understand it all.

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As the Vlad and Volod show drags on I have been forced to make difficult decisions about my support for all things Russian. Spurred on by Wimbledon’s brave move to ban all Russian and Belarussian players from this year’s tournament, presumably on the premise that they could be smuggling in nuclear warheads among their tennis racquets I have finally decided to take decisive action.

First and foremost no more Beluga caviar from the Black Sea. It’s going to be a wrench I know but we all have to make sacrifices and I managed to find a large jar of the almost as elusive Marmite to spread on my toast at the Golden Lion Spar last week.

Secondly, no more Russian music which rules out all the usual suspects such as Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky. I am allowing the all girl singing ensemble known as ‘Pussy Riot’ to be played though. Or will be if I can find anything they have recorded which doesn’t have rude words in it which might upset the neighbours

I feel these voluntary deprivations on my part will send a strong message to Putin that his behaviour is simply not on. Just as two months of economic sanctions and the Wimbledon ban have done.