The Welsh Not and the Pronoun Game – Pure Genius

We like to think that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs inform our actions. That we look at the world, weigh up the facts and decide where we stand. Our actions follow on from deciding what is right and wrong, what is in our, and others best interest.

Being intelligent, open minded people we listen to other people’s views and judge them against our standards of logic and kindness and modify our beliefs and attitudes if other people’s views impress us with insight, truth and humanity.

That’s a nice comfortable view of the world. It lets us feel we are good people, in charge of our decisions and actions. It’s an intuitive and almost universal view of how our minds work.


Psychologists call this concept “Folk Psychology” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_psychology .

When I read “Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior”  https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/changing-attitudes-by-changing-behavior/ I realised that unfortunately it turns out to be mostly a flattering illusion, a load of bollocks.

I read that we compose our attitudes to justify our actions. We do this to reduce the discomfort or even pain caused by cognitive dissonance. This sounds very cynical. All I can say is read the article.

The critique of folk psychology goes under the name “Eliminative Materialism”.  Stop sniggering at the back.

I am going to talk about a couple of examples that show that this is far from the truth and that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs can be manipulated by using authority or social pressure to oblige us to behave in carefully designed ways.

The Welsh Not

In 1847 the great and the good, leading experts in education published the results of an enquiry (the blue books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treachery_of_the_Blue_Books) into the State of Education in Wales and concluded that “the Welsh were ignorant, lazy and immoral, and that among the causes of this were the use of the Welsh language”

In order to remove the cause of their “stupidity, sexual promiscuity and unruly behaviour” they devised a scheme that became known as “The Welsh Not” http://www.Welshnot.com/about/

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not

“The ‘not’ was given to any child overheard speaking Welsh, who could pass it to a different child if they were overheard speaking Welsh. By the end of the day, the wearer of the 'not' would be beaten.”

The effectiveness of this was not because of the punishment of the poor kid at the end of the day. It was in the cognitive dissonance and subsequent attitude change that occurs when a kid passes the not onto one of his peers.

At this point he can see himself in two ways.

• A victim of, and collaborator with, an unjust authoritarian system that is prepared to betray his peers to get out of a punishment
• Someone unfairly accused of speaking Welsh, who justly found a real Welsh speaker who deserved to get punished.

The discomfort felt at this point is called Cognitive Dissonance,  “the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas or values.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance. It is resolved by adjusting beliefs and values to make actions already done seem justifiable.

Actions Precede The Formation Of Values And Beliefs.

The action is dobbing in his mate. The Values and beliefs are disdain for the Welsh language.

As well as destroying any sense of solidarity among Welsh speaking kids, there is a subtler effect. The kid has internalised a disdain for the Welsh language and Welsh speakers.

At that moment of betrayal, the kids feelings shift from anxiety that they will end the day with the ‘not’, to relief that they can join in the mocking audience of some other kid getting thrashed. They will not suffer the indignity and pain of a public beating. Some other child will be thrashed, some other kid will cry and be laughed at by their peers. That’s a powerful re-enforcement of operant conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning both against the behaviour of speaking Welsh and for seeing Welsh speaking as a fault in others.

By using authority to make a kid dob in his mate, the English instilled a hatred of the Welsh language in a generation. The kids would be receptive to the idea that Welsh was a primitive language only suitable for the lazy, ignorant and immoral.

None of these narratives play out in the kids conscious minds. Pop psychology likes to paint the subconscious as deep dark, a bit sexy, a bit mythological. Bollocks to that, our subconscious can be shallow as hell, our subconscious hides the shit we do, or think, from ourselves.  

The Pronoun Game

https://www.brynmawr.edu/sites/default/files/asking-for-name-and-pronouns.pdf

You may have done the pronoun game, you’ve almost certainly heard or read about it.

You’ve always supported Gay and Lesbian and Bisexual rights.

You’re in a meeting with a bunch of people you don’t know. The facilitator is a diversity expert or someone who has just been on a diversity training workshop, everyone really wants to show how nice and polite and tolerant they are. The facilitator explains how important it is that we all respect each other and that not everyone has the privilege of feeling comfortable with the gender that they were assigned at birth. So we will introduce ourselves and tell each other what gender we identify as and what our pronouns are.

The big bloke with a bit of lippy and enormous hands says “Hi I’m Sabrina, I’m a butch trans lesbian and my pronouns are she, her and hers”

You don’t want to be the awkward one, you don’t want to offend the trainer, so you find yourself saying:

“Hi, I’m called Bob, I identify as a man and my pronouns are he, him and his”

There, that wasn’t so hard. Everyone has been polite, everyone smiles, everyone is friends.

At this point you can see yourself in two ways.

• A. Someone who has been manipulated into a situation where you had to choose between social acceptance and being true to what you see and know. You bottled it and you feel like a hypocrite. 
• B. Someone who is tolerant, accepts diversity and fits in. You understand the somewhat complex ideas around gender diversity. You may have work to do to actually see Sabrina as a woman, but you’re a good person, you will work on it.

A is a horribly uncomfortable place to sit. To be honest I only felt it because Sabrina was an insufferably smug prick.

If you lack  a personal grudge and probably unrealistic self-belief, you might have found yourself happier to feel B.

So what has happened?  

You were manipulated into doing an action ( “…and my pronouns…") that only make sense if you believe that what someone tells you of their gender identity is more important than their sex. You act as if you really believe that and are part of a tolerant rainbow alliance.

Once you have done that, you will experience cognitive dissonance until you either kick off big time, understand how you were conned, or adjust your attitudes and beliefs to make actions seem more congruent with your values.

Actions Precede The Formations Of Values And Beliefs.

That’s how the pronoun game works. Its genius, a masterpiece of manipulation.

The action is doing the game. The values and beliefs are the elevation of gender identity as a reality more important than sex.

To break out of the manipulation we can either kick off, or we have to be honest with ourselves about why we are going along for the moment. If we are honest with ourselves we have to admit to ourselves that the people manipulating us cannot be trusted, they are either stupidly following maladaptive rituals or they have decided to coerce us. That is hard when the rest of the world is smiling.

Is there an Alternative?

How else could we share respect for each others feelings about gender.  I’m not a philosopher or psychologist, so this is just a jumped up mechanics idea of how I would like to discuss gender.

We could say:

• My name is Bob and I am a man.
• How am I not like other peoples expectations of my sex
• What am I not allowed to do or are afraid to do because of my sex
• How am I like other people’s expectations of my sex
• What am I allowed to do, or able to do without fear because of my sex that the opposite sex are not.

I think that would make for interesting conversations.