This isn’t a joke. I wish it was. If it was a joke, I wouldn’t need a rag on a long stick to wipe my brains off the ceiling.
The University of Tennessee told its staff and students to stop calling each other ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘him’ and ‘her’, in order to “alleviates a heavy burden for persons already marginalized by their gender expression or identity. Instead they are to start referring to one another with terms like ‘xe’, ‘zir’ and ‘xyr.’ Like this…
Yes, they are quite, quite mad. If any UT student is still sane enough to understand how batty this is, in the sage words of the Amityville House,
“GET OUT!!!”
The Knoxville branch of the public university, which has 27,400 students, sent a memo to its members introducing and explaining the approved pronouns. It really says this:
In the first weeks of classes, instead of calling roll, ask everyone to provide their name and pronouns. This ensures you are not singling out transgender or non-binary students. The name a student uses may not be the one on the official roster, and the roster name may not be the same gender as the one the student now uses.
This practice works outside of the classroom as well. You can start meetings with requesting introductions that include names and pronouns, introduce yourself with your name and chosen pronouns, or when providing nametags, ask attendees to write in their name and pronouns.
Gender-neutral pronounsWe are familiar with the singular pronouns she, her, hers and he, him, his, but those are not the only singular pronouns. In fact, there are dozens of gender-neutral pronouns.A few of the most common singular gender-neutral pronouns are they, them, their (used as singular), ze, hir, hirs, and xe, xem, xyr.
These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new. The she and he pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ze when growing up.
If we were taught to wear clams casino on our heads with rhubarb stuck in our ears growing up, that would seem normal too.
We don’t have to belabor this, do we? This is indoctrination. This is Maoist, Orwell-style linguistic totalitarianism, all in the service of a tiny minority that is taking the fair and compassionate consideration our society is belatedly bestowing on them, and using that respect as a platform to remake language and society by edict, so they can imagine their differences no longer exist. Well, society and culture doesn’t operate that way, that is, not unless arrogant and ideologically-obsessed individuals with power abuse that power to impose misguided and oppressive strictures on expression.
To call this irresponsible, oppressive and disrespectful edict an affront to personal autonomy is to be too kind. This is the outer limits of fanatic progressivism, and shows the excesses it can inflict on all of us. It is a warning.
The release of this idiocy, authored by Donna Braquet, who runs the university’s Pride Center and needs help fast, caused head explosions all across the state. The university then lied (Oh oh! We went too far!) and said that the announcement didn’t mean what it obviously was intended to mean. A statement from a university spokesman said in part:
We would like to offer clarification of the statements that have been made referring to gender-neutral language.There is no mandate or official policy to use the language. The information provided in our Office of Diversity and Inclusion newsletter was offered as a resource to our campus community on inclusive practices. We recognize that most people prefer to use the pronouns he and she; we do not dictate speech.We do strive to be a diverse and inclusive campus and to ensure that everyone feels welcome, accepted, and respected.
We don’t dictate speech, we just want to ensure that everyone feels welcome, accepted, and respected, and so we tell students and professors what words to use in order to achieve this.
The only way to stop this malady from spreading is to refuse to tolerate it and to rebel in the strongest possible ways.
Ethics Alarms 
What?
This didn’t come out of Berkeley?
Dear civilization (for the short time you have left to be with us):
We burden the 97% with prohibitions if the 3% will be harmed without the prohibitions…. we DO NOT burden the 97% with prohibitions if there is no harm coming to the 3% without those prohibitions….
I would say another solution would be to require students to call each other “comrade”. The professors could be addressed as “comrade commissar”.
It really does smack of the sort of inane doublespeak the Soviet elite loved so much.
I think it’s an excellent idea. Let’s make it universal and broaden the base. Can’t wait to see the new edition of Charlie Hebdo not only altering all French personal pronouns, but ALL their nouns, which as with most Indo-European languages would require constant gender reassignment. In ze pig’s eye aye-aye. non?
I’ll sign up for that unironically. Gendered nouns were the hardest part of studying French. Having everyone speak Radchaai instead would be a blessing.
I wonder what the wemyn on campus think of this?
Frankly, I think that these ivory-towered tinkerers should be grateful that we don’t speak some language like French, where everything gets a gendered pronoun. Seriously, France, why are “pen” and “telephone” masculine? Why are “dart” and “cross” feminine? What are you people implying?
On a slightly more serious note, I was of the impression that “they” was perfectly acceptable as a gender-neutral singular pronoun (if that feels strange to you, consider that “you” can be either singular or plural). “They” has an established history of being used as such, and it isn’t some invasive mutated monstrosity of a word like “xem” (why is the letter X being pronounced like the letter Z? I thought that was what the letter Z was for!). Why do colleges feel the need to burden us with these negative innovations?
To fool idiots with money into thinking that they’re clever and that they ought to send their children to the overpriced and underperforming college that these sophists hang around at.
Although that has a superficial plausibility, the parallel doesn’t apply. When a person hears or reads the word “you”, that person is part of the “you” and so has the context needed to tell whether that “you” is singular or plural. By and large, the same does not hold for “they” or “them”.
The English dropped the singular “thou” and transitioned the plural “you” into a singular and plural role.
Texans, the superior people they are, recognized the value of a second person plural and introduced the new term “yall” to fill the need.
It’s not just Texas.. Y’all is one of the two things that I can say we southerners have positively contributed to the world. The other being food.
#3. Music
#4. Beautiful women
#5. Godliness
#6. Car racing
#7. Whiskey and beer
#8. Football
#9. More beautiful women!
I’m not so sure Godliness, Auto Racing, or Football are good things. I will give you music (All of the great American music, I’d say, has come from the deep south – Ragtime, Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll, Bluegrass.)
I realize I’m replying on a rather ancient thread, but being Canadian, I feel I should outright scratch your #7. However, if you’ll agree to substitute it for #7.Gatorade (which often tastes like it has more alcohol in it than American beer), or #7. Boiled Peanuts, then I think we can go on being the amazing allies that we have always been.
I LOVE green boiled peanuts! Which begs the question; why don’t we have them here in CT?
An interesting argument, one that I hadn’t considered. However, in spite of that, “they” has a long history of use as a singular pronoun, and there’s some evidence that grammarians pushed people to use “he” instead of “they” for sexist reasons:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Sometimes, there is the context for “they” or “them” to convey whether it is singular or plural. Nevertheless, it is a bad habit to get into, as that will eventually lead it to be used when it is ambiguous (that’s “bad” in the engineering rather than the ethical sense).
It’s also worth considering that the “royal ‘we'” has the context to clear up that ambiguity, and that both French and German usage have found it practical to use the second person plural as a singular despite having second person singulars (it’s often impolite not to), whereas they don’t do that with the third person plural.
“Good old Rocky Top, Rocky Top Tennessee.”
And who says the South ain’t enlightened. Amazin. Whoo doggie!
As a UT alum (’77), I am too busy cleaning my own ceiling to comment coherently on this nonsense. At first reading yesterday, I thought it had to be a (deliberate) joke but, alas, no. The pushback from alumni donors has already begun; once it reaches a crest we will witness backpedaling that could be harnessed to meet our energy needs for the foreseeable future. Outrageous and ridiculous!
Quite stupid.
Not supercallafragelisticexpialafuckinglievablidocious stupid????
You and your fancy vocabulary.
Thank God. I’m always relieved to hear a liberal denounce this sort of..thing. Words evade me with this.
I try to be understanding about gender issues. I am totally OK with calling someone ‘they’ if that’s their preferred pronoun.
I am not yet convinced on the necessity to use made-up pronouns for anyone. Maybe I could be convinced, but I would more likely avoid using pronouns for someone like that. I might sound like Elmo, but whatever.
This isn’t just pandering to three percent of the population; it’s the result of a generation of “studies” elite progressives who now have to manufacture and sustain employment for themselves. If you are a hammer etc.
It strikes me as odd because any move to modify gender based pronouns would make more sense *minimizing* pronouns not expanding. That is to say, one single word for everyone when not using their name.
Instead of he, she, and it, we would reduce to a “he/she” term and “it”. Of course our whacko hyper-animal rights types might demand more respect for animals and elevate “it” into combination with the “he/she” term, though we’d still need a term for non-living objects.
Why would you think anyone who seriously suggests widespread use of a word spelled “xyr” is capable of rational thought?
Deep down they were just trying to make scrabble easier.
I would have endorsed those words in many a Scrabble game.
Is it just me, or does anyone else actually value the gendered pronoun? After all, based on the simple use of one pronoun or the other, you provide context which may actually help decipher the person’s meaning, or at least give a minimal amount of information about the person to whom you are referring.
Well, the ideal behind all pronouns is that the subject of the pronoun has been identified already with its proper name or term. It gets confusing when one pronoun could apply to one or more previous subjects. So minimizing pronouns would lead to tons of confusion.
Increasing pronouns would alleviate those concerns (even though such conflicts rarely occur that an author or speaker can’t mitigate). Then again, why would pronouns have to be based on gender or self-identified gender to begin with?
And to add on, pronouns CANNOT be based on what the subject of the pronoun wants to be called, because very many times, the speakers would never know what that person wants to be referred to as. Pronouns, by their nature, need to be someone EVERYONE can attach to another person, ON SIGHT. Which is why appearance based pronouns are so convenient.
Thanking you from the future for the link to this past article. If I hadn’t read it for myself, I might not have believed it. And they dare to call themselves an institute of higher learning? Well, someone might have been “higher” when those “guidelines” were conceived, but I don’t think they were doing much learning.
This made my head explode too, and IMO reeks of the grievance police rather than the parties that should be aggrieved. Some people just seem to have made careers out of being offended on behalf of people who don’t give two shits and have many bigger problems than so-called “microaggressions”. Those students have way too much homework and partying to be worried about pronouns.
Right on! An interesting article about liberals making hay about “being offended”: http://www.dennisprager.com/blue-america-the-land-of-the-easily-offended/
Just two months ago, Anthony Kennedy and four others on the Supreme Court went Caligula and passed a law that we have to recognize gay marriage. That’s a benchmark for all the insanity that comes after it.
Things are getting stupid fast, aren’t they? You haven’t seen nothing yet. Even more radical things than that are coming, very crazy, coercive things.
The genie is out of the bottle.
These people are destroying my country!
There’s a reason why most people of my generation look at these people like they’re from outer space, because as much as we butcher the English language with SMS and IMS messages, we at least understand that words have meaning. Most of the people I know were using “they” (singular), “y’all”, and other gender neutral pronouns simply out of convenience before we even stepped foot in a college.
I just don’t understand it, and I think the reason the activists on the Left and Right call us apathetic is that we don’t ascribe to their ideologies, don’t want to perpetually refight the battles of the 60’s and 70’s, and live in the real world rather than ideology-driven Bizarro worlds. I’m in debt up to my ears so I can get a decent job, several of the people I knew in high school ROTC probably died or were injured in the ‘Stan, China’s pissing in the proverbial pool of the world economy, Russia is going batshit and Daesh is beheading everyone they can get their hands on… and you people are fighting over gay marriage and gendered pronouns? Sweet Buddha, get your heads out of your asses and get over yourselves, adults!
And “bizarre” was meant to be “Bizarro”.
“And “bizarre” was meant to be “Bizarro”.”
Yes, we’re living in a comic-book world.
Why would employers value the degree from the University of Tennessee?
Or from just about anyplace else, these days.
Mark Twain recommended that all servants be called “Thomas” (for female servants, Thomas would be the surname). Henceforth, tom shall call tom Thomas (with tom the only permitted pronoun).
Why do universities have diversity offices?
There is no rational reason whatsoever.
Is it just to give cushy, well-paying jobs to friends who do not have any marketable skills?
Brainwashing.
Yes there is. You have a diversity office to placate the whiners. “You are offended because the football team is all male? Good point, go talk to the Diversity Office about it!” It also comes in handy as the scapegoat when you overreact to some frat boys singing racist songs and violate a lot of people’s rights. “We consulted closely with our Diversity Office about this incident and they insisted this was the proper response.”
Someone complaining about the football team being all male??
Have some players change their pronoun to xyr and some change to xym and some can stay he.
Problem solved. No longer all male.
I wish my school would pull this. I would have such fun tormenting people over it. Hmm, what sort of shirts would fit this occasion? I’m already having a blast with my “Hillary for prison”, “Give war a chance”, and my “Jojo’s Gun Works; It’s On The Table” T-shirt, which shows a very well-endowed, very scantily-clad woman lying submissively on her back on a picnic table, blowing smoke from the muzzle of a revolver.
The illness has spread to Connecticut. You’re all stunned, I know. Today was my first day back to school. Walking through the LGBT center (it’s the biggest part of the student center, in the hub of the whole building), they had a table and display set up, where they were distributing buttons that say “XE,XEM,XYR”, with “PRONOUNS MATTER” on the top and bottom. I took a button, because I think it will be worth a fortune one day when people come to their senses, and I said “You realize you’re insane, right?”. I explained the concept of empathy fatigue, and why the whole notion of “hate speech” is a Trojan horse towards the end of the first amendment. I wish you could upload pictures to this site. God, this is getting to be too much! I really want to leave the planet.
Huh. Here I thought Universities were to prepare people to work and interact in the world, not set them up to be the only ones that know the secret words of the minority.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
Vladimir Lenin
There is a new one from Washington State University. Fox had a story about three of their classes with similar indoctrination. In two of them, the term “illegal alien” is banned as hate speech (one notes that the AP style guide no longer sanctions the term and ‘undocumented immigrant’ should be used instead), one bans gendered pronouns (he/she and him/her, etc).
The one that takes the cake is Intro to Multicultural Literature, whose syllabus states “Reflect your grasp of history and social relations by respecting shy and quiet classmates,
and by deferring to the experiences of people of color.” The syllabus also states “Insensitive whites such as Glenn Beck complain that, for example, they are not allowed to say the “n” word without being labeled racist but that black men use it among themselves all the time. To “earn” the right to that word, Beck must first endure 500 years of racism.”
I personally have more of a problem with the grading system on the syllabus because the professor obviously does not understand numbers.
“Grades (on a 400-point system)
Attendance and Participation 10 percent 40 points
Presentations 10 percent (5 percent each) 20 points
Journals 40 percent 160 points
Paper 40 percent 180 points”
How can 20 points be 10% of 400?
Common core math.