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Gender-bending Mercurians

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Slezkine points out that every society since the beginnings of civilization had a group of migrant travelers who performed the functions that were necessary but considered inappropriate for the rest of the population. These were tradesmen and tricksters who cultivated their differences and were simultaneously needed and reviled for it. Gypsies and Jews are an example we know best but he gives a long list of examples from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Slezkine calls these outsider groups Mercurians and says that one of the characteristics they share is their interest in swapping gender roles within their groups. That’s why they are traditionally seen as not manly. They don’t fight in the armies of host populations. Their women are loud and pushy and their men don’t go to war to defend the homeland of the host society.

But what happens when the entire Europe becomes modern, that is, Mercurian? It starts loving gender-bending and gender-swapping for its own sake.

I haven’t seen such an explanation anywhere else, and it’s definitely original. This is a very interesting author, that’s for sure.

41 responses to “Gender-bending Mercurians”

  1. overgrownhobbit Avatar
    overgrownhobbit

    Of relevant interest: https://books.google.com/books/about/Middleman_Minorities.html?id=bC0PzgEACAAJ

    Your college library can get you a copy, and Mr. Sowell writes well enough that one reads his essays, like Chesterton’s, for pleasure.

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  2. overgrownhobbit Avatar
    overgrownhobbit

    Of relevant interest: https://books.google.com/books/about/Middleman_Minorities.html?id=bC0PzgEACAAJ

    One of your college librarians should be able to ILL it for you, and Mr. Sowell writes well enough that one can read his essays for pleasure ala Chesterton.

    Liked by 1 person

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I like his idea about migrant travellers, but to apply it to a continent as a whole is a far stretch. I did not see that kind or gender-bending, gender-swapping Europe in my recent trips to France and Italy, and trust me I was pretty much in places where I could have seen it. But yes, it’s cute. Mercurial could be another category to add to those elaborated by Oswald Spengler in the Decline of the West 100 years ago.

    Ol.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Did you see the European fertility rates?

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        I think that low fertility rates have little to do with gender bending, unless gender bending here means a reassessment of traditional roles in the family. I think that having a child in Europe means not being able to keep the same standards of life.

        Ol.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          A woman who chooses the lifestyle of a perennially youngish man, living alone or with roommates, going on endless Erasmus, going through a string of interchangeable sex partners and not giving birth is as clear an example of gender-bending as I can think of. So is a man who finds this masculinized form of womanhood attractive.

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            Granted, I should talk to more European women. I genuinely think that the lifestyle you mentioned above is less expansive and less demanding than having many children.

            The young mothers I know (and father), all educated, all with careers, they care so much about the education and behaviour of their usually only child, that it becomes unthinkable to have 2+ children. It is too demanding.

            Ol.

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            1. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              ” unthinkable to have 2+ children. It is too demanding”

              Skallas again (I’m not a fan boy but he has a talent for… articulating some things in an understandable way).

              “One of the reasons … prefer pets to children these days is because it resembles classical parenthood. More casual. More integrated with life. More relaxed….

              Modern parenting resembles endangered-species conservation”

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                The only form of subjectivity that has a chance of being happy and contented in the new reality cannot be mass produced.

                The problem is that many parents who have only one child don’t do anything like the endangered species conservation. They stick a screen into a toddler’s hands and are done with the whole thing. It’s a total excuse that they don’t procreate because postmodern child rearing is too onerous. It is, indeed, onerous but they aren’t doing it.

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “I did not see that kind or gender-bending, gender-swapping”

      It’s not so much visible behavior (only a tiny bit of it manifests itself that way) but in values.

      Paul Skallas has a whole list of behaviors/values that are about women manifesting traditional behaviors and values, from tattoos to women being less religious than men (major reversal) and men wanting children more than women….

      https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/women-are-becoming-more-like-men-cca9

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Exactly, the huge, whole body tattoos are one manifestation. Falling down drunkenness in public spaces is another. The belief that you can give birth on a male schedule that afflicts a scary number of women.

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      2. el Avatar
        el

        // and men wanting children more than women….

        I do not see this as gender-swapping, but rather as men still expecting their wives to do the lion’s share of childcaring.

        There was research on men in Scandinavian countries. The increasing male involvement in parenting didn’t lead to couples having more kids, as some researchers expected. Rather it led to the opposite, with men saying they would rather opt out of additional children.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          The two statements contradict themselves. If with men doing a lot more still doesn’t lead went to want more children, then it’s not about childcare.

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  4. el Avatar
    el

    \\ The problem is that many parents who have only one child don’t do anything like the endangered species conservation.

    People passionate about endangered species conservation want more of those species, not less, so the analogy fails here. If they wanted 10 children, on the other hand … 🙂

    \\ The only form of subjectivity that has a chance of being happy and contented in the new reality cannot be mass produced.

    I fully believe some people (like you, for instance) would raise five children right, while others fail at raising one the same as they would at raising ten. It’s the combination of genetics and upbringing by setting an example by your own life, that’s all.

    In the past it was the same – intelligentsia raised children within their own class, others – also within their socioeconomic class.

    One of the most intelligent women I’ve ever met came from a Jewish Haredi family of university professors. Their numerous children didn’t prevent her from excelling in engineering.

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    \\ it becomes unthinkable to have 2+ children. It is too demanding.

    Imo, having more than one child has a potential to contribute to the existing child in numerous ways during this child’s entire life, after parents’ deaths too.

    In Israel, it’s unthinkable to have one child. The only examples I see are single mothers having this one child after age of 40. Even single mothers sometimes have two children.

    Btw, after I had my daughter, I heard various opinions on this issue. Two Israeli teachers, who work with me, mentioned several times how it’s bad for Maya to be an only child and supported the idea of having second child. This naturally w/o me asking for advice on this subject, yes? Probably I mentioned something about Maya, so they expressed their opinions.

    My aunt and our family doctor of 28 years, both Russian speakers, think a single mother should stop at one child because it’s too hard physically and financially. The doctor even told my mother about a 48-year-old single mother who cannot support her 5-year-old, so asks her brother for help. (If one thinks about it, it’s great for her that her parents had more than one child. 🙂 )

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      In some ways (and not in others) tne child is more demanding than several. Because there’s no siblings to play with, who has to be the sibling and provide the play? Mom and dad. Every day after work I have a second shift of playing, climbing, exploring, hide and seeking on the playground, the kids gym, etc. There’s no “go play with your brother.” It’s all on me and N. I crawl to work exhausted after the Christmas break. Spring break is even harder because it doesn’t coincide with mine. So I have to entertain while working. I love it, totally worth it, but I absolutely understand why people farm this out to gadgets. I think they are wrong but I get it.

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  6. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Very few of us “liberals” think very often about, let alone “love”, gender-bending or swapping. Certainly not a whole continent’s worth. It is the right that obsesses over this, not us. Actually, you obsess over “us” obsessing over something very few of us anctually obsess over.

    I do enjoy your posts though. They are quirky and sometimes I learn things. Other times I have no idea what you’re talking about 🙂

    My name is Scott Harvey. I’m not trying to hide behind “anonymous” but I can never get my name to show on here. I’m guessing I need an account with whatever blog platform this is.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Hi Scott, welcome to the blog and I’m sorry you can’t leave your name.

      The last couple of times I was in Spain, the streets of the cities looked like somebody had thrown up rainbows. There were miles and miles of rainbow flags. Please don’t tell me that I didn’t see what I very clearly saw. The two gay friends I have in Spain are now voting for Vox because even they can’t stand this crap any longer.

      Here in the US, we finally had a Supreme Court decision allowing therapists to treat children with “gender dysphoria”. We needed the Supreme Court to intervene to let children get treated instead of mutilated. Please don’t tell me that I’m inventing this and you guys never cared about this issue.

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      In the sense that the “right” devotes more thought and emotional energy to the issue than the left does, the right does indeed obsess over both the ideas about the nature of identity and what seems to be the preoccupation of progressives with rainbow/alphabet/custom-designed identities. However, there is a difference between abandoning something and being so immersed in it to the point that you don’t spend emotional energy on it, while at the same time, embracing the central tenets of the attendant philosophy.

      The real question is not be whether the right obsesses over something that is truly a non-issue but rather why it is that they do this. What are they seeing that concerns them? What experiences lead them to respond the way that they do? Those beliefs and experiences will vary, of course, but there may be enough common threads to form a working understanding of the motivations involved such that there can be sympathizing humanization of the right enough to potentially both expand your own understanding of the world and theirs, if the situation arises. I will say that my experience of swimming against this particular current has required more thought and research and effort than most of my contemporaries who avowedly just accepted the prevailing narrative of what it means to be a “good person.”

      It varies by state and situation but for those of us in proudly progressive places, there really are threats associated with even questioning progressive dogma publicly. People lose jobs, get banned from businesses, get reported to CPS for not being “fully affirming”, get their children disciplined at school, etc. for this. Not being violent or even necessarily rude, just not responding the way they are expected to. That doesn’t even get into what activists do to businesses locally that they think might be insufficiently supportive. The flags in business windows come across like a modern day lambs blood, looking to be passed over for that kind of attention. It hasn’t gotten much better here, although the tolerance for violent rioting has mercifully gone down.

      This is part of our, as they say, lived experience. People pay attention to what they see as extreme and what they perceive as risky to themselves and the people they care about.

      -K

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Exactly. It’s easy not to notice this when you are under no threat.

        Seriously, the cluelessness on some people is really out there. They created an environment of fear, bully everybody mercilessly, create pogroms in the streets and struggle sessions in workplaces and then act all surprised that we dwell too much on their cruelty towards us.

        I was forced against my will to write a 1,200-word statement on how I promote DEI. Obviously, I used AI but yes, I noticed. I wouldn’t say I’m the one obsessed with it because I didn’t force anybody to do anything. This was done to me against my will.

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        1. Avatar
          Anonymous

          “I never think about it for a moment: what’s your problem?”

          Same person:

          “OMG you used the wrong pronouns, you should lose your job and be publicly pilloried so that no similar institution will ever hire you!”

          but if you express concern about this:

          “OMG you must be some kind of sicko, obsessing over other people’s sexual preferences all the time! I’m just a normie, living and letting live: what’s your problem?”

          Motte, bailey.

          -ethyl

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            Yes, we were told to provide a written explanation for why we reach languages with gendered nouns which is transphobic, and we are the annoying pests who get into people’s business.

            All I want is to be left alone and not bothered with any of it. And I’m the obnoxious busybody? It’s extraordinary how that works.

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            1. Avatar
              Anonymous

              Wait’ll they discover tieng Viet, which has like 47 pronouns, and which one you use has *nothing whatsoever* to do with how you self-identify, and everything to do with your relationship to the person you are talking to/about…

              -ethyl

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Wow, I didn’t know but what an excellent testimony to cultural differences as they manifest through language.

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              2. Avatar
                Anonymous

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              3. Avatar
                Anonymous

                I think the pronoun police haven’t got to it yet because it’s too complicated 😉 There’s no sticking an X on something and calling it a day!

                -ethyl

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              4. Avatar
                Anonymous

                –and that’s before you get to the classifier words that you use for things that aren’t people 😀 Animals, round objects, machines, long objects, flat objects, trees, pairs of things, sets of things, ingots, books, rocklike objects, vehicles, houses, flowers, things rolled up, things wound up on a reel, things in a line, containers… in other languages these things might be divvied up into two or three genders.

                In tieng Viet, they have classifiers based on over 100 categories that are often delightfully idiosyncratic. So, like, forks (cái nĩa) and spoons (cái thìa) are “cai” sort of a generic “thing” category. But knives (con dao) are “con”… which is the classifier for animals and small children (and roads, and rivers), and you also use it as a first-person pronoun when talking to God.

                Fun times.

                There’s probably a way to screw with gender, but given that there are different and extremely specific pronouns for addressing your mother’s younger sister’s husband, and your father’s younger sister’s husband… good luck being intelligible.

                -ethyl

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              5. cliff arroyo Avatar
                cliff arroyo

                ” everything to do with your relationship to the person you are talking to/about”

                Yeah Viet “pronouns” are wild, the most complex system I’ve found and yes, absolutely often about the relationship between people rather than who is speaking/listening at any given moment. And they move around so a conversation might begin with one set or words and end up with another…

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              6. Avatar
                Anonymous

                Funny you should mention that– I ran across a cute video on the changing-pronouns phenomenon while looking for a basic intro. It does a fair job also of clarifying the way that personal pronouns basically come in I-you pairs, because they are so context-dependent. If there is any phrase that describes the entire language, it’s “context-dependent” 😉 If, over the course of the conversation, your relationship (or your perception of it) to the person you’re talking to changes, then the pronouns you use for yourself and the other person also may change.

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  7. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Scott

    I am a mid 70 year old Canuck, and can assure you that North America, actually all of the Western world, are enduring a multi-generational culture war that the right and center-right hope and pray does not go hot. Meanwhile, the ways of Word Press are indeed sometimes passing strange, some of the Anonymous append their name or initials to be identified ;-D

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Yup, Oldcowboy3 is correct on both counts.

      I spent 2024 actively considering that we would end up in a shooting war inside the country. Oh I still think we are close to a hot war, but tempers have cooled a bit so I’m less concerned at the moment. But yea oldcowboy3 is right about the West being in a multi-generation culture war.

      I don’t really blame you for not seeing it. Most people on the left generally don’t until something happens and they get hit with something that doesn’t conform to their view of the way the world works. There is a reason for the following joke. “A conservative is simply a liberal who got mugged.”

      As for WordPress and the annon comments, no need to worry, using annon is perfectly valid. Just consider using something to identify yourself with.

      There was a point where the annon comments were turned off by WordPress and I had to create a temp account. No idea what happened to it, so I just stick to using – W to identify myself.

      So again, don’t worry about the annon bit, just choose something that represents you. Like a Letter, a set of numbers, a random title. Just something that people can identify as being you and your good.

      • – W

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      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        Yeah, my concern is that self annointed elites are slow (deliberately?) to accept that much of the public do not agree with socially divisive proposals — i.e., mass immigration, particularly of groups unlikely to assimilate. Increasingly Americans and Canadians are concerned but Europe is more likely to have the situation become violent: https://www.google.com/search?q=gbn+civil+war+is+coming+to+britain&rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA991CA991&oq=gbn+civil+war+is+coming+to+britain&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRifBTIHCAMQIRifBdIBCjY0NDk1ajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBTqr6hYO1srJ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bbfe71ff,vid:FPlRtqnHbU0,st:0

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  8. Avatar
    Anonymous

    At the same time, congratulations on continuing to show up here. It shows more broadmindedness than many and I know how much guts it takes to feel like the odd one out in any situation.

    -K

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Yes, I also admire the people who manage to stick with me throughout my crazy ideological shifts and occasional bouts of grumpiness.

      I don’t know how you, people, put up with me. It’s truly commendable.

      ❤️ everybody on here.

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  9. el Avatar
    el

    \\ Yes, we were told to provide a written explanation for why we reach languages with gendered nouns which is transphobic

    All languages I’ve heard of, except English, have gendered nouns. English is the rare exception here. I suppose, do people who demand such explanations know only one language?

    Seems like forcing you to justify teaching foreign languages, period. 🙂

    Seriously, in FSU or today’s Russia I would see it as the first step in purging teaching any languages except English.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Yes, because English is the most virtuous language due to the absence of gendered nouns. This is the state of higher education.

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “All languages I’ve heard of, except English, have gendered nouns”

      Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish and many, many other languages don’t have gender. And some (me included) think English has partially recovered gender as a category in the division between count and non-count nouns. (Gender just refers to noun categories that have grammatical signficance and has no inherent connection to sex categories).

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        By that definition, Viet has 150 genders.

        -ethyl

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        1. cliff arroyo Avatar
          cliff arroyo

          ” Viet has 150 genders”

          Well classifier classes are a lot like gender. Noun classes are called gender in European languages because words for men and women belong to different classes and those were used as cover terms. And gender systems aren’t stable in Europe, they’ve largely collapsed in Scandinavian languages while the masculine gender in Polish is busy splitting into two separate genders.

          Arabic (and Maltese) divide letters of their alpahbets into ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ letters which have nothing to do with astronomy, but the word for sun belongs to one group and the word for moon belongs to another.

          Though from what I remember about Viet was that classifier classes are a bit loose (and weird in that sometimes there would be more than one word before the basic word which I don’t think happens in other Asian languages0. My teacher often complained that young people didn’t use all the classes they should (she had similar complaints about young people not knowing all the very exhaustive list of kinship terms).

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            I learned a new classifier today: Ngón

            It is the classifier for fingers and toes. Nothing else, I think. Phalanges have their own gender 😀

            It is true that there are maybe six or eight classifiers that cover 90% of all grammatical situations, so 150 makes it sound worse than it is. But there really are that many. At least.

            I understand there are situations where you can pile up more than one classifier, but I’ve never had occasion to do so. That right there is advanced grammar. Insofar as Viet even has grammar. It does, but it’s remarkably squishy. No conjugations or declensions or tenses: you just pile up words until you reach the desired level of specificity.

            Kinship terms… pretty much all personal pronouns are kinship terms though. Everything is a family relationship because why on earth would you talk to someone totally unrelated 😉 Some of them are used loosely, but figuring out what pronouns to use in any given situation mostly comes down to deciding what family relationship is most analogous to the I—you in the conversation. Relative age and level of intimacy must be taken into account. Depending on who I am talking to, I am bạn (friend/classmate/colleague), cô (miss, paternal aunt), Chị (older sister), tôi (I, servant), em (younger sibling), or con gái út (youngest daughter). That last one is the only one that applies to an actual kin relationship– it’s how Dad refers to me. The rest are metaphorical, and used by/with friends depending on our relative ages etc. It’s all… how are we going to relate to each other? Like an affectionate auntie and a niece? Like a big sister and a little sister? Like classmates? Respectful servant and kind master?

            It is gratifying to graduate from bạn to chị. Like yay! I communicated successfully! Now I am family!

            -ethyl

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          2. Avatar
            Anonymous

            Oh, but you do often have multiple words in front of the noun– so like where we’d say, “a” you need two words to do that: a numeric and a classifier. A plate is “một cái đĩa” = One inanimate-thing plate. A pair of chopsticks is “Một đôi đũa” = One (classifier for pairs of things) chopsticks. A twin has more than one classifier because a twin is both a person and part of a pair: Một người sinh đôi = One (person classifier) (born) (pair classifier)… and if you drop either of those classifiers you lose the meaning.

            -ethyl

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