[Dhaka Tribune] Students at Oxford University have been urged to use gender neutral pronouns like "ze" instead of "he" or "she" when referring to each other, in an attempt not to offend transgender students.Youse have to be kidding mi!
The move, outlined in a student union leaflet, is intended to reduce discrimination and the use of incorrect pronouns, reports the Independent.
Howzit discrimination to call somebody "he" or "she?" Doesn't it discriminate against heterosexuals to refer to them as "xe" or "shplx" or "snunt" or whatever some amateur philologist from the wimmin's studies department decides is correct?
Deliberately using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person is an offence under the university’s behaviour code.
If you got testicles you're an obvious "he" or "him," and if you don't you're either a "she" or guarding them in a harem.
Students said they hoped the gender neutral pronouns would be used in lectures and seminars, as well as socially.
Yes. Use them in the linguistics department. Use them in the Spanish, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Russian and German courses. What's the German word for "xe?" (I'm sure somebody's trying to think one up in the Gender Studies department at Heidelberg.
LGBT activist Peter Tatchell welcomed the move. "This issue isn’t about being PC.
Um... It's the epitome of PC.
It’s about respecting people’s right to define themselves as neither male nor female," he told The Times.
If they're neither male nor female then they're properly "it" in English.
Gender neutral pronouns such as "xe" and "ze" have already been brought into common use at the University of Tennessee, US.
Haven't they been laughed out of Memphis already?
This summer the Boarding Schools’ Association issued guidance for teachers to address transgender pupils as "zie" to avoid offence, the Independent adds.
I guess "it" isn't appropriate if you're masquerading as another gender. And if you're addressing them "you" should do nicely, since you can use it with your dog.
Cambridge is moving in the same direction, according to The Times report.
Sucking just as deeply, are they?
Sophie Buck, the student’s union welfare officer, said it would help people who do not identify as male or female.
Offend ye not the "its."
"Events start with a speaker introducing themselves using a gender neutral pronoun. It’s part of a drive to make the union intersectional," she said.
I know the meaning of the word "intersection." I had to look up the meaning of "intersectional" in Wikipedia:
a term first coined in 1989 by American civil rights advocate and leading scholar of critical race theory, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. It is the study of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. The theory suggests that—and seeks to examine how—various biological, social and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, disability, sexual orientation, religion, caste, age, nationality and other sectarian axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels.Based on that definition, I'd say its antonym has for the past 27 years been "sensible." It didn't have one before that.