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Hate-Crimers and Their Pronouns
Ignore the Club Q shooter’s statement of gender identity
As a kid, I was confounded by actors who performed wedding scenes on stage or screen. Marriage is a speech act, right? You say “I do” — or some equivalent — and that’s all it takes to create a marriage in the eyes of God or the law. So, when the actors pretended to marry, they actually married, right? After all, they spoke the magic words!
Admittedly, the actors didn’t sign a document to be registered with a court or a church, which institutions often require before they’ll recognize a marriage. Nor did any functionary fill out that paperwork for them, with or without their knowledge. The actors wouldn’t go on to live as a married couple in their real lives, nor was the public fooled into believing they’re married. Yet still…weren’t the actors really married, in the sense of performative magic? If words have power, then words you speak within a deliberately fictional scene are still real, right?
There’s no escape clause for “unless you didn’t mean it.”
Right?
Grownups, of course, know that there is. We’ve heard of situations in which marriages are ended, not by divorce but by annulment, because an outside authority declares that at least one of the spouses wasn’t serious to begin with. This can…
