No, the point is that no one cares about “His Majesty”. Rewinding back to the original article, which is an OPINION piece on FOX News titled “‘His Majesty’: Student single-handedly defeats an army of gender neutral activitists”. UMich and Ann Arbor certainly care about social justice. No body cares about this “His Majesty”. Hard to say if Mr Todd Starnes (the author) has a clue about Ann Arbor or UMich.
@bodangles: One can empathize with another without agreeing to their every demand.
Social Justice has nothing to do with pronouns and everything to do with equal liberties, rights, opportunities and taking care of the disadvantaged in society. Whether someone presents as a guy or a gal and how that perception influences a pronoun has nothing to do with social justice. If there was prejudice with regard to academics, employment, housing, medical care, police targeting or such things…that is when the concept of social justice comes into play in my opinion. Some kid that is attending UofM, attending classes, living in dorms or local housing, etc. is not “disadvantaged” and would be better off putting that “great mind” to work on real issues of social injustice in the world and worry less about what pronoun a prof might use. His Majesty had a point, and it wasn’t that far off target.
I honestly don’t think today’s students have an issue w using preferred or gender neutral pronouns… seems to me its the adults around that do more-so…
I can remember being 12 when my mom cut my hair into that super short pixie cut that was in style. I was a late bloomer, a jock type; wherever I would go people would call me a boy. It drove me crazy. When people asked my name and I answered “Kris”. They still would call me a boy. It drove me crazy and really impacted my self perception in a negative way. (I vowed to never cut my hair short again - to this day I never have) I don’t think I should have to wear dresses or pink just so that people will “get it right” bc thats not me.
I can’t imagine being in the classroom and having teachers mis-gender me. It would effect my ability to thrive in that scholastic environment.
I think its great that a teacher wanted to be pro-active and ask for preferred pronouns so they didn’t somehow accidentally cause someone distress. Kudos to that teacher for having empathy.
I think it stinks that a student wanted to mock and throw shade on the whole gender identity issue (that is a real experience both psychologically and biologically) by making a mockery of pronoun use.
Stuff like this?
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2016/09/u-m_condemns_fliers_with_racis.html
The Empire has struck back:
http://www.yaf.org/news/prof-threatens-punish-michigan-students-follow-majestys-lead/
I hate it when people try to change grammar. I mean, it should never evolve. Next, you’re all going to say we shouldn’t say “he” when we don’t know the sex of the person being referred to. I mean, “he” has always stood for everyone, right? /sarcasm.
And by the way, in writing circles, “they” as an agender singular pronoun is pretty universally accepted now, which it might as well be as the entire population uses it that way in speech.
Language evolves. Sometimes, people do, too.
I’m a woman with a traditionally male name. Despite the fact that it is a simple, easy to pronounce name, people who recognize me as a woman pronounce it as the female version (which. Includes. Adding. Letters. X_X). I s’pose I should stop correcting people, because the proper pronunciation of my name doesn’t matter. People can just call me whatever.
Sounds like the bias police need to visit Ms. Fink.
On what basis is the U-M statistics professor going to punish students giving themselves titles she disagrees with? Courses like statistics have well defined grading rubrics.
The stats prof is the poster…ah… um…human for “we love diversity as long as you agree with me.”.
Those claiming its much ado about nothing…that horse left the stable when they convened an 11-person committee.
And yeah, whoever said something like " yeah, its all a big joke until some well-meaning instructor has its career ruined because it misread the pronoun list in the heat of a discussion ‘’ nailed it.
He will be docked a grade for misspelling 'His Majesty". The undergrads are having a great time inventing new pronouns. It will be gone next semester. I’ll note that Ms Fink is a lecturer, not a tenured or tenure track professor so there may be other issues involved.
Language generally evolves slowly. People have been trying to get new gender neutral personal pronouns added to our lexicon for years without much success. I think part of the reason is that we’ve been using “they,” “them,” and “theirs” for so long that they sound grammatically correct and the created pronouns don’t.
There are so many versions of created pronouns that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. Since nobody can seem to agree on just one the current solution is that everyone should be free to make up their own. I think the reason that’s not really working either is that once a word refers to a particular person, it’s no longer a pronoun – it’s a noun. I think it’s easier to add a word to a language than to alter its structure.
And how many people out of the 40000+ students do not identify as a he or a she? No one is asking for a birth certificate… if you don’t know if you identify as a he or a she then I think the uni could have picked something as the third choice and I don’t think the uni needed this pronoun picking process at all.
“And how many people out of the 40000+ students do not identify as a he or a she? No one is asking for a birth certificate… if you don’t know if you identify as a he or a she then I think the uni could have picked something …”
Come on now, Must one identify as either a “he” or a “she” to be a viable person? There are people who identify as gender non-binary, androgynous, transgender or gender fluid.
"I think the uni could have picked something as the third choice "
If the university is supposed to pick the third pronoun as you suggest, wouldn’t a committee be helpful to this process rather than leaving it to one person to choose? One person who might not fully understand all of the dynamics in play…
Viability has zip to do with identifying as a male or identifying as a female or choosing to be neither. You don’t need infinite choices of self identification. It’s not pseudo-science as much as some people want it to be. It’s not about personality as some want it to be. It’s really quite simple. Chose one of 3. Male/Female/Other. You can call yourself whatever you want that relates to whatever your emotional state happens to be or how you want to live but gender is just a simple sort…male/female/other…with a vast infinite spectrum of personality traits that have nothing to do with whether you identify as a male species or a female species or neither. If you don’t know if you are male or female or don’t want to be forced into male or female for political or personal reasons…I will give you a hint…choose other. It’s a simple sort and nothing more but 11 university professors and the IT group managed to make it complex and managed to make their entire academic corp scratch their heads and go OK now what the F do I do so I don’t get visited by the bias police. The students who have been taking multiple choice tests since they could hold a pencil are laughing their heads off I’m sure…I know I would be if I were on that campus.
Ice water-still water-carbonated water
tall-average-short
under weight - normal weight - over weight
male-female-other
The other way around. It’s the pronoun that influences the perception of the person.
I’m confused, what is the “bias police” and what do they do, exactly?
@warbrain - You can read the annual report of the Bias Response Team at the University of Oregon here.
http://dos.uoregon.edu/files/BRT-Annual%20Report%202014-2015.pdf
In the future, they hope to send transgressors to the Committee of Public Safety to have their heads examined.
@Zinhead that report is unintentionally hilarious…everyone’s pet peeve is turned into a case for the BRT!
A student reported a conflict with another student that did not include bias against
a protected category or group.
A student who identifies as an ally reported being excluded from a identity-based
student group.
A student reported that another resident purposefully avoided them in a biased
manner.
An international student reported that an instructor scrutinized them more than
other students when proctoring an exam.
An anonymous student reported feeling unsafe due to other students expressing
anger about oppression.
A student reported that a tutor consistently ignores him.
A student reported that a sign encouraging cleaning up after oneself was sexist.
…