Pronoun mess in Ann Arbor

The school should use this as part of their advertisement. “At Michigan, you can be the Crown Princess you always dreamed about”

At least @T26E4 spelled “His Majesty” correctly.

@mom2collegekids I take a little bit of issue with your pejorative use of the word “craziness” to label students preferred pronouns.

Lets show some empathy for a second here, this is an issue that pertains to real people. Some people are born male, some female, some intersex, and some transgender and gender fluid. There is real biology and psychology behind gender identities.

This is not s student made-up ideology. “His Majesty” as a pronoun, is a student made-up ideology.

Gender identity is real and not a “crazy” notion.

Um, I believe his pronoun would be “We.”

I don’t understand why it is any skin off anyone else’s back to attempt to call a person by the pronoun that reflects their gender identity.

I also don’t think that anyone should be raked over the coals if they screw it up occasionally.

Just common civility.

it’s only skin if some student reports a prof to the bias police. Perhaps the students can use a Sharpie and write their preferred pronoun on their foreheads the first day of classes so there is no “misunderstanding.” The whole thing is over the top and I can’t help wonder how much $$ have been spent on diversity & inclusion efforts compared to funding real education. There have already been unis that are or are attempting to add “fees” to fund all the extra Title IX administration. Madness.

Its only over the top bc it doesn’t apply to you. Imagine if say, you were Caitlyn Jenner today in college and people required you to write the word SHE /HER on your forehead. Should you really have to have a scarlet-esq letter on your body to get people to call you female?

She identifies as female, has had surgeries, looks dresses, and acts female… so should a professor have to call her male bc that is what was on her original birth certificate and therefore on his class rooster list.

lets have empathy here people. Gender identity is a real.

The real issue that everyone is missing. Why would Professor even try to engage in conversation or wanting to make eye contact with students for the fear of repercussions. 99% of the students will feel the impact of 1% of students trying to get attention

@runswimyoga: Even if you agree that gender identity is real and distinct from biology, you could still disagree that we need whole new sets of ever-expanding pronouns to account for it.

No.

This whole thing is utterly ridiculous. (IMHO)

Oh yes and I’ll echo someone up thread. No one in Ann Arbor gives two craps about this. It’s a bigger deal in the right wing media than it’ll ever be here.

If no one gives a crap then why did they spend the dollars? Why did they have to form a committee? Why did they have to create a webpage and database and integrate it with other systems? It’s a big deal because it is a silly waste of money. Runswimyoga…my guess is at one point in Jenner’s life he looked like a guy and dressed like a guy and got called a he. Now Jenner looks like a woman and dresses like a woman and problem gets called she. It’s really that simple…unless you are PAT on SNL and you are so neutral people can’t figure it out…in which case the average person is going to avoid a pronoun label altogether. Is no one on college universities rational anymore? Did they cease teaching logic?

I don’t remember a ton from my college years but I do remember that the dissection of the English language and the use of gender pronouns was starting to be discussed in academic writing over 100 years ago. Now that I’ve been out of college 40 years we’re approaching 150 years. “We” assimilated groovy and other pop culture words much, much quicker than anyone has been able to figure out a gender neutral pronoun…people just need to stop being so silly about it. For heavens sake if you look like a guy and dress like a guy but want to be called she…just tell the person that uses “he” with you. It doesn’t take scientific study. It doesn’t take $$ allocation. It doesn’t take a committee recommendation. It doesn’t take a database and interface and a bunch of JQuery and another committee to pass judgement on anyone deemed an offender. We are talking about a tiny, tiny fraction of the entire US community of peoples that are impacted on any level.

If anyone cares what Ann Arbor is really worried about right now, it’s the rush of neo-nazi, racist fliers that have gone up all over campus. This morning, it escalated to threats of violence towards faculty who are speaking out against the racism… my advisor being the direct target of those threats.

But yeah, pronouns are the “mess” around here. 8-|

@romanigypsyeyes: It is possible for more than one issue to exist at the same time.

@demosthenes49

Yup. But in this case, there is only one issue.
The pronouns are not it.

@romanigypsyeyes: Judging by the news article in the OP and other comments in this thread, I’m afraid many people do not agree with your characterization of whether pronouns are an issue. If your argument is that they shouldn’t care, that’s an altogether different position.

We need a gender-neutral pronoun (and possessive pronoun) for grammatical reasons too… so people stop linking the plural they/their/them to one person of unknown sex.

How about…

Subject: heir (pronounced “air”)
Object: heirm
Possessive: heirs

There already are a number of these gender neutral pronouns proposed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#Summary

@prezbucky oh they’re already trying to do that. I’m guessing you haven’t seen the list of 72 genders that someone created. I have no problem with calling someone who was biologically born male “she” if that’s how they want me to refer to them. It’s when you start trying to make up pronouns like “xem” and “kit”, and expect me to learn all of them or I’m a bigot, that you’ve gone way over the line - I’m not gonna do that.

As Romanig points out there are so many bigger and more important issues that impact far more people to spend money, time and effort on…

If your answer to “Let’s have some empathy” is a flat “No,” then we have bigger problems than whether you have to tax your brain remembering “they” instead of “him” or “her.”