The University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion has put out a ridiculous, absurd new suggested (not required to be clear) list of “gender neutral” pronouns. It’s as silly as that sounds. [Here is the actual webpage. (until they take it down!)](http://diversity.utk.edu/2015/08/pronouns/)
They actually suggest people say ze, xem and xyr or zirs.
Or … how to appear absolutely ridiculous and to make your job a laughingstock!
The text below the chart contains excellent suggestions for faculty members in addressing new students. I wish more universities would post such suggestions.
Chinese language is gender neutral when it comes to pronouns, which makes this more of a non issue, something to be said for that.
We have some Dean candidates coming in next week, I’m gonna try this out.
I’m all for any attempt to transition English to a gender-neutral language. Ze, hir, and hirs are the most common gender neutral pronouns. I’ve never even heard of the xe ones.
What’s so ridiculous about making trans or other gender minority students feel less excluded? It’s not hurting anyone and 99% of students are going to give their traditional pronoun and go on their merry way.
Asking preferred pronouns is something that I’ve been doing for a while in HIV counseling and in other spaces. The first few times it’s weird, but after that it’s just like asking someone’s preferred name.
The thing is trying to remember and consistently use the preferred pronouns for each of the 100s/1000s of people. That can be a pretty tough challenge.
What are the chances that at this particular school there will be even one student who desires to be addressed by a “gender neutral” pronoun? Let me get this straight: some 18 year old arrives at college and decides that neither gender is quite right, so the entire college has to genuflect by using made-up pronouns? And dollars to donuts, that kid will change “zir” mind about the whole thing in a couple of months, as college freshman tend to do about so many things. If a student is transgendered, the appropriate pronoun is the one attached to his or her transgendered status. If a student wants to play silly games by denying any gender at all, no one has to comply. I can’t believe anyone is getting paid to spend time on this nonsense. This is the sort of baloney that helps convince state legislatures to cut college budgets
Actually, English does have a long history of using they, them, their for the third person singular in instances when the gender of the person has not been identified.
Having a language that is gender neutral would obviously make all of this easier… Does China identify a newborn as either male or female ( binary)? Or is it just identified as newborn? If and when this all becomes more prevelant, we will have to stop identifying a newborn as either male or female on their birth certificate.
But what happens when the child starts school? All bathrooms will have to be gender neutral. There can be no boy and girls gym. Locker rooms will have to be gender neutral because it is not feasible to have one for each gender identity.
Look at the bright side. If all bathrooms, in all places, ( airports, restaurants, stadiums) are gender neutral, there will probalbly be more of them. Those who identify as male will not want to wait on line!
It would take some practice for me to work those pronouns into comfortable, regular conversation (I can see myself having trouble coming up with them at first) but I have no problem with asking. It also gives kids named Reginald and Gertrude and Thackary and whatnot a chance to offer up their chosen nick names and all the Richards out there can say if they prefer that or like Ricky, Rich or Dick instead. You never know. I don’t see where it hurts or inconveniences anyone.
I don’t see how that’s any different from remembering names.
As for elementary schools, etc- look, we already have trans/etc kids in schools. We might as well start adapting to it now. If we did that, in a generation it won’t be a big deal really. (I can point to numerous examples of integration, word adaption, etc that took less a generation or less for us to “get right.”)
The elementary school I used to work in only had single bathrooms. I don’t think they had any all-male or all-female bathrooms. (It’s not because it’s a progressive school, it was an old building that had been transformed into an elementary school.) If they did have them, we never used them and it was fine. (And as someone who was bullied in my K-8 school when we had to do class bathroom trips, as that was where teachers couldn’t see, I’d totally be fine with the single bathroom model.)
Germany has a third sex option on their birth certificates. Not every child is born as “clearly” male or female (by whatever classification system one uses).
What is the third option in Germany? . And this is clearly the parents choice, not the newborns. So how is this an improvement?
“They can choose ’ intermediate’ if the child shows both male and female charactistics.” That is such a small percentage of births.
So therefore gender is still decided at birth as male or female in the vast majority of cases.
^Intermediate or indeterminate?
^ Indeterminate.
It’s not as small of a percent as one might think. About 1-2%. That number might actually increase now that parents and medical professionals aren’t forced to check one box or the other.
Anatomical sex is not as binary as people believe.
Oh, and to put that number in perspective, it is approximately the same number of births as Native American/Native Alaskans/Hawaiians that are born in the US each year (births of Native individuals makes up approximately 1.1% of all births in the US.)
I’ve gotta admit having a preference for being addressed by the gender-neutral honorific: “Your Highness…”
The need for this is described well in this video (the speaker is Dr. Jo Olson, who was also featured on the Caitlyn Jenner interviews). Look from 8:17 to 9:07 in the first video, LGBTQ: Understanding Sexual Orientation and Gender Identities - See more at: https://teenlineonline.org/videos/#sthash.HC4kluru.dpuf :
“Oh, nice to meet you, [insert name]. What pronouns should I use?”
My daughter was asked this exact question when she did a visit at Smith.