UT Students Asked To Use Ze Gender Neutral Personal Pronouns

TIDE-HSV said:

Well, as I've mentioned before, I have a gay daughter, who's married. So, this is a situation I've had to get accustomed to. Her wife, Mandy, is rather masculine in appearance, although a very sweet person. I'm fairly confident she would laugh me out of the room if I referred to her as a "ze."

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Give it a try, and let us know how it works out for ya.

TIDE-HSV said:

Well, as I've mentioned before, I have a gay daughter, who's married. So, this is a situation I've had to get accustomed to. Her wife, Mandy, is rather masculine in appearance, although a very sweet person. I'm fairly confident she would laugh me out of the room if I referred to her as a "ze."

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BINGO!!! Thank you!!!

This is sort of what I'm getting at - we have self-appointed czars proceeding to inform us what the PC terms are we "should" or even "must" say. And the ASSUMPTION is that they speak for every single person just like them on the planet.

I've heard lesbian women who referred to themselves with the D word that rhymes with bike (trying to choose my words carefully here). I was never comfortable with the "second F word" or the Q word (in regards to orientation) and never really used them (the second one I did but that's because when I was a kid we used to play a tackle football game called "smear the -----.").

Otoh - I once saw a gay rights rally in 1992 featuring bikers chanting "Fs and Ds for civil rights." THEY were using that term themselves, which I suppose it tantamount to the whole N word speaking analogously.

I don't mind if a person says he/she/ze wants to be referred to with that particular term, but don't insist that the rest of us are bound by YOUR rules of decorum.

Btw - anybody else have this experience: have you ever noticed that the PC morons like this imbecile at UT......follow them around and watch them for a few minutes and it won't be long until they themselves are using an epithet to describe a group of people THEY find distasteful - rednecks, crackers, Holy Rollers, Bible bangers. While I'm not naive enough to suggest that say the latter 2 are as offensive as the F, D, and Q words, they're still nothing more than descriptive and somewhat hateful stereotypes.....the very type which the champions of tolerance profess to abhor.

To me, it's not much different than the self-appointed champions of "law and order" or "family values" never seem to live up to the standard they demand. Self-appointed champions of "tolerance" I've found are often the most intolerant of all.

selmaborntidefan said:

BINGO!!! Thank you!!!

This is sort of what I'm getting at - we have self-appointed czars proceeding to inform us what the PC terms are we "should" or even "must" say. And the ASSUMPTION is that they speak for every single person just like them on the planet...

...Btw - anybody else have this experience: have you ever noticed that the PC morons like this imbecile at UT......follow them around and watch them for a few minutes and it won't be long until they themselves are using an epithet to describe a group of people THEY find distasteful - rednecks, crackers, Holy Rollers, Bible bangers. While I'm not naive enough to suggest that say the latter 2 are as offensive as the F, D, and Q words, they're still nothing more than descriptive and somewhat hateful stereotypes.....the very type which the champions of tolerance profess to abhor.

To me, it's not much different than the self-appointed champions of "law and order" or "family values" never seem to live up to the standard they demand. Self-appointed champions of "tolerance" I've found are often the most intolerant of all.

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I understand that now the GLBT crowd seems to have reclaimed the "Q", as many now are using the title "GLBTQ"...

So much for even the PC crowd, much less the rest of us, knowing which words are OK to use, or not.

I have no problem with an individual requesting to be addressed a certain way. My problem is with a government entity mandating everyone as a prophylactic measure to avoid upsetting a small yet significant portion of the population to address everyone else a certain way or to even ask how they would like to be addressed as that itself can cause them to even inadvertently reveal information they may not have wanted to otherwise share. You can't ask someone where they go to church during a job interview for the same reason - it gives the person a choice to tell the truth and deal with the consequences, lie obscure, or refuse to answer. In any case, the answer reveals something about their religious nature in how they handle the question. IOW, it's not only unfair to the vast majority of people to burden them, but also to the small minority as now they have to finesse an answer. Hope that made sense.

ValuJet said:

We don't bring NS over to the football board. But this year's Bama-UT game could be quite entertaining.

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Yep. It will be hard to distinguish arnge Z from another..

Well, Zat could lead to Zis...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY

At least English has only gender neutral articles (a, an, & the). Some other languages are very confusing.

NationalTitles15 said:

I have no problem with an individual requesting to be addressed a certain way. My problem is with a government entity mandating everyone as a prophylactic measure to avoid upsetting a small yet significant portion of the population to address everyone else a certain way or to even ask how they would like to be addressed as that itself can cause them to even inadvertently reveal information they may not have wanted to otherwise share.

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That's not what is happening.

"University spokeswoman Karen Ann Simsen said there is no mandate or official policy to use the language."

I do think it is dumb to spend class time doing this, when it could easily be something that the student does online beforehand. Most schools (Alabama included) have a field for "preferred name."

stlimprov said:

That's not what is happening.

"University spokeswoman Karen Ann Simsen said there is no mandate or official policy to use the language."

I do think it is dumb to spend class time doing this, when it could easily be something that the student does online beforehand. Most schools (Alabama included) have a field for "preferred name."

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Read that earlier today (no mandate - for now). Hopefully no class time will be spent on this.

TIDE-HSV said:

Well, as I've mentioned before, I have a gay daughter, who's married. So, this is a situation I've had to get accustomed to. Her wife, Mandy, is rather masculine in appearance, although a very sweet person. I'm fairly confident she would laugh me out of the room if I referred to her as a "ze."

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And to insist on addressing her by a pronoun she didn't want would be completely against the spirit of the whole alternate pronoun thing.

I work in higher ed and have been through all this training. I'm probably never going to have these pronouns roll off my tongue smoothly. I've yet to have a student ask me to use these pronouns. But if it matters enough to them to go out of their way to ask, just as a human being I don't see why I wouldn't make an effort to honor that request.
I did, previously, have a student ask to be addressed by a name that wasn't his given name. Made no difference to me. I've always gone by my middle name, and it doesn't seem all that different to me.

NationalTitles15 said:

Read that earlier today (no mandate - for now). Hopefully no class time will be spent on this.

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Nevertheless, it's as if we are all being conscripted as lay psychologists for those who are psychologically broken.

My legal name is clearly a male one; however, my mother burdened me with a gender ambiguous nickname. I have had plenty of people refer to me in writing as Ms. or as being female, and I've had plenty exclaim, "Oh you're a guy," when they've met me. I have never been offended because I'm confident in who I am. If I feel anything about others' mistakes in referring to me, I would call that feeling amusement.

Two comments about this.
1. What popped into my mind when reading this nonsense was from The Life of Brian:

"It's symbolic of our struggle against reality."
2. This is an example of why the majority of college/university are no longer in teaching positions. Universities hire folks to hold silly positions like this. And every student's tuition goes to pay the salaries incurred by this silliness, which is why tuition keeps going up faster than inflation.

ValuJet said:

I never thought Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" would lead to this!!

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I have heard that the song was based on somebody Johnny Cash knew.

OMG! What will they come up with next?

TIDE-HSV said:

I swear I thought you were going to come out with "But I'm a Kike!"

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Not sure what to make of that.

To me, it just seems fairly straightforward: XX chromosomes="she"; XY chromosomes="he."
I've known some women who were fairly masculine (gay and straight) and some effeminate men (again gay and straight), but that does not, in my mind, change the pronoun.
Now for those who have had surgical alterations and can pass, I guess, well, they can pass. If Jenner had not been on the cover of magazines and made his life such a public circus, I might not have been able to pick him out of a police lineup as a surgically altered man.


As for colleges and universities, I heard a education guy on the radio say that there are now more non-teaching staff at American college and universities than teaching staff. It is because of stuff like this that that is so. I'm not opposed to inclusiveness and diversity, per se, but this ought to be an additional duty, not a stand-alone job. I'm just not sure UT students are getting the best return on investment when they pay for positions like this one.

DzynKingRTR said:

I have heard that the song was based on somebody Johnny Cash knew.

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I think Shel Silverstein wrote that song.