Region Southern Denmark is working on a little book.
An A6-format one, so it can sit in the pocket of the lab coat and in the staff rooms, somewhere between the pen and the stethoscope. It's meant to teach healthcare staff to... speak correctly... and in the section on gender-neutral pronouns, an example is given of how one might refer to a person going forward -
"Alex needs to be seen, as it has been having problems with some redness and itching on its elbows for some time. Will you look at it when it comes?"
Try reading that sentence again.
Slowly.
In Danish, "den" is the word we use for things. For the chair, for the car, for the dog at best. And even there it barely holds, because as any dog owner knows, the first thing you ask when you meet a strange dog on your way is - "Is it a he or a she?" Because even with an animal, the sex tells us something about what we can expect. Our language has distinguished between "den" and "ham" and "hende" for a thousand years, because our forefathers knew something we apparently are forgetting - that a Human Being is not an object. That there runs a line through language which corresponds to a line in Reality.
And now some confused committee or other sits in a region drafting material meant to teach doctors and nurses to cross that line. They're not doing it because anyone voted for it. Not because the population asked for it. Not because the staff wants it. But because it has become the sort of thing administrations do when no one is watching them.
Some might object that it's voluntary. That it merely states that staff "can with advantage" ask about the patient's pronoun. And that's correct. There are - for now - no sanctions listed in the document. No threats. Only friendly instructions in pocket format, laid out in the staff room where everyone can see them, and where everyone by now knows what is expected.
Because that's how it works.
And they know that perfectly well.
No one forces anyone. You just issue a norm, and then you let social pressure handle the rest. The nurse who in two years says "he" about a patient who wanted "it" hasn't broken any rule. She's just shown that she's "not on board". And everyone knows what that means in a workplace.
We have freedom of thought, freedom of religion and freedom of speech in Denmark. On paper. But freedom to speak is not tested in the ceremonial speeches, it's tested in the staff room when the little book lies on the table and colleagues are watching. It's tested in the doctor who knows that a person's sex is not an object in neuter gender, and who must now choose between his language and his career without anyone ever having formulated the choice aloud.
And meanwhile those questions remain, which no one in the region has answered.
What happens to the employee who kindly but firmly declines? Where does the Medical Association stand, the Danish Nurses' Organization, FOA, when their members one day are squeezed between their conscience and a little book? The silence from there is so far total.
The healthcare system exists to care for people. For bodies that are ailing, and for the Human Being behind the body, who is afraid and needs to be seen. NO patient gets better because the language around them becomes more confused.
But. An institution can certainly get sicker from it.
Read that sentence again.
Institutions, companies and entire societies become sick when they lie. The lie makes us sick. Because when a society begins to call its people "it", it's not the people who have changed.
It's the society that has forgotten, or simply lies about, what a Human Being is.
Good luck moving deeper into unreality from here to the staff in Region Southern Denmark.
❤️🔥🪽
...
Try to imagine it. You've spent 12-14 years becoming a specialist doctor. Six years of study, clinical foundation training, introductory position, main training.
You've learned the Human Being's biological platform from innermost to outermost, from the cell membrane to the circulatory system, and you now stand in a position where life and death lie between your hands every single day. Some of the heaviest responsibility we can possibly give each other.
And then a little book lands in your coat pocket, drafted by a committee of 24-year-old ideologically possessed ringers who have never held a human heart in their hands, and it's meant to teach you "to speak correctly" about the being you've devoted your life to understanding.
I don't know about you. But if it were me, I'd consider which of us actually needed the instruction.
Personally, I'll convert to Islam before I take their New Forced Language into my mouth. So. Yes. I have a certain amount of resistance to these fools' fabricated reality. 🤷😅
