You’re Not My Ventriloquist; I’m Not Your Dummy
“…schools must use the preferred name and pronouns of transgender students…” — ‘Anger at Media Report on Guide on Schools and Pronouns’ appearing in Gript, January 18, 2026
Okay, that doesn’t go down well with many people. Will compliant institutions attempt to put their institutional hand up the recalcitrant employee and manipulate his mandible to utter the chosen name? Will the non-compliant teacher have recourse to the government to protect his freedom of speech? In a representative democracy, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Let’s face it, representative democracy is a piano bar and the politician the pianist. A guy walks into the place, swaggers up to the piano, and drops a wad of cash on it. He chooses the song, which, no matter what the tune, the tempo, the lyrics, is always “My Way.”
The naïve voter usually does not see this for what it is, oblivious to the fraud being perpetrated. Voting under such a system has been likened to a placebo button. In some places and/or at certain times, close-door buttons in elevators and those “I-want-to-cross-the-street-immediately buttons” on traffic lights are intentionally designed not to work. Nevertheless, many people jab them repeatedly assuming that they are in control. Representative democracy is all about the illusion of control. The belief that the system will be responsive. That one can effect change if only the right button is pushed a sufficient number of times.
So, how can one thwart the plans of the ventriloquists? By playing their game of course, high-school-hijinks style. And what is that? Oh, come on, you remember, don’t you? Joy buzzers and itching powder, stink bombs and garlic gum, just some of the ways we had our fun. (Did Julie Andrews sing that?) In this context, it would work something like this. Student A objects to censorship and the exceedingly creepy concept of compelled speech. So, he adopts a name for himself that should frustrate his would-be puppet masters. How about Prodigious Masticator or Nugatory Niggard? These terms will immediately raise the hackles of those with circumscribed vocabularies, of course. But they are completely innocent. The former is devoid of any reference to race. No slur there. And the latter has nothing whatsoever to do with autoeroticism. Or perhaps one of those intrepid students might insist on having his birth name vocalized in Morse code, where “William” would be rendered as .-- .. .-.. .-.. .. .- -- and read, “dit dah dah dit dit dit dah dit dit dit dah dit dit dit dit dit dah dah dah.”
The appearance of so-named people will soon cause the ventriloquists to abrogate their nefarious plan. Exchanges like the following should solve the problem rather quickly, I think.
Teacher: Prodigious Masticator, will you stand up, take the gum out of your mouth, your hand out of your pocket, and tell the class what a representative democracy is.
Prodigious Masticator: I can chew on that a bit. Do you want any stuff about placebo buttons?
Teacher: No, just keep it official.
Teacher: dit dah dah dit dit dit dah dit dit dit dah dit dit dit dit dit dah dah dah, go to the board and translate the Latin term digitus impudicus into English.
Jack Napes is an Irish writer based in Tokyo. His creative output is nearly all political and social satire. Jack is featured in the picture to the right and is the diminutive one, of course. He is the author of “A Visit to the Parasitological Museum” (Number Eleven Magazine), “An Immodest Proposal” (Dodging the Rain), and the poem “The Fear-Itself Litany” (The Corbett Report Subscriber Newsletter), as well as the novella Travels with the Tribe: Killing Gravity in Woke Times, which is available from Kobo Writing Life, as a digital download for about the price of a can of beer in Tokyo. Help him buy a six pack.