Pronoun mess in Ann Arbor

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/30/his-majesty-student-single-handedly-defeats-army-gender-neutral-activists.html

Lol…

His Magesty just put his finger in the eyes of those who are going along with this craziness of, “pick your pronoun, ANY pronoun”!

But, note that the supporters of these ideas don’t support his right to pick the one he chose.

Ahh…their goal is inclusiveness. BUT…Only liked when the ideas mesh with theirs.

It’s really not a problem as long as people aren’t jerks. His majesty isn’t a pronoun. It’s just not.

All of my fellow GSIs do this and did before the rule and it has never ever been a problem.

But of course, someone always needs to be immature to prove a point. 8-|

So His Magesty is the one being unreasonable?

Pronouns are being made up!

When immaturity proves a point, what does that say about the actual issue???

How is this different from listing a nickname you’d rather be called by?

From the article

He hits the nail on the head.

I live in Ann Arbor and let me just say that you should take anything that a Fox News op-ed piece says about UMich and Ann Arbor with a LARGE grain of salt.

Who said we have educated ourselves to imbecility?..I don’t really care what people choose to call themselves, but to leave any expectation that a prof who may have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students to keep it all straight (whoops wrong choice of word) is…imbecility.

For me it seems to boil down to wanting diversity for ideas that have a real basis in someone’s life vs wanting diversity for ideas of people just trying to prove a point. Should both be allowed? I’m not sure you can disallow the latter and still allow the former, so I think the answer has to be yes. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Just because I can ask to be referred to as Her Majesty doesn’t mean I should if it has no real basis in how I am trying to live my life.

But I don’t understand how a professor or anyone for that matter is supposed to keep track of individualized pronouns. It seems as though that only sets all of us up for failure when we allow someone to document their desired pronoun and then the rest of us fail to use it because we can’t keep track of it or remember it.

Perhaps this somewhat historically comparative to when people struggled to differentiate honorifics for a married vs. a single adult woman. I didn’t realize that Ms. only come into use in the 20th century until I did some reading related to this particular post. So if we can invent Ms. why can’t we invent something that can be used to address the population of individuals who don’t identify as he or she. But that would need to become a standard across the board so that we would have a shot at using it appropriately.

Outside of his imagination, has anyone actually objected to his silly stunt?

@poblob14, exactly. “Pronoun mess in Ann Arbor”? Pfft… no one in Ann Arbor cares.

“His Majesty” ostensibly said his stunt was to ensure UM instructors aren’t sanctioned for mistakenly using the wrong pronouns of students. On the surface he’s saying the U ought not legislate politeness. At worst, he’s pushing back against overreach political correctness.

It’s hard for me to imagine someone objecting to calling someone else by their self-preferred pronoun. “Excuse me professor, I’d prefer not to be called ‘Miss’ or ‘Ms’ but rather X” – and that being met with “Sorry, hon, I won’t comply”. Not in Ann Arbor.

A “pronoun committee”? Seriously!!! [-(

I would question the “his silly stunt”…seems like the entire exercise by the university is a waste of time and energy.

This from the campus paper;

Oh my gawd. Let’s give those kids an even “less realistic” view of the world…and THEN institutionalize it. Not discuss it. Not learn about it. Institutionalize it. Gotta love it and it took 11 faculty and staff members…I’m just thrilled in the real world not be called “heh you” but heck heh you is gender neutral and if I respond it shows I’m not stupid or phobic.

U of M could just start calling all students ‘it’. Takes care of pronoun problems.

How many professors are able to keep track of the names of all their students, let alone nicknames?

T26E4, in paragraph 1 of post #12, three times you offended His Magesty by writing “his,” “he’s” & “he’s” instead of “His Magesty’s,” “His Magesty is” & “His Magesty is.” If you can’t write a simple paragraph without THREE times offending His Magesty, imagine how hard it would be for a professor in a rapid- fire discussion in class with numerous idiosyncratic pronouns.

^^^Snap

This reminds me of one of the frequent flier programs I was (and probably still am) a member of. Either Lufthansa or British Air. When you signed up it gave you a choice of something like 15 honorifics/titles to be called, everything from Mr., Miss. to Your Honor, Honorable Reverend, Admiral etc. No lie. Of course there was no way I was going to settle for Ms. Myjanda, so I chose the most outlandish one I could find and for a while received newsletters addressed to Crown Princess Myjanda. I kid you not…

I haven’t been on that site in years, but now am tempted to check to see if they’ve added some gender neutral ones as well…