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Monday, August 31, 2015

Call me 'ze,' not 'he': University wants everyone to use 'gender inclusive' pronouns

UPDATE: Rickey Hall, the vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, said their quest for gender neutral pronouns is not an official university policy.

“It’s not policy,” he said. “It’s about inclusive practice.”

Hall told me the gender neutral pronouns were a way of “exposing our students (to an) increasingly diverse and global world.”

He said gender neutral pronoun usage is not new – and that as things change – people always have questions. Nevertheless, he stressed this is not a mandated university policy.

For all you folks who went to school back when there were only him and her – here’s a primer: some of the new gender neutral pronouns are ze, hir, zir, xe, xem and xyr.

“I reiterate, it’s not a mandate, it’s not an official policy, it’s not a policy from the board,” he told me. “It’s about education. We are (a) higher education institution and exposing our students to a lot of different things.”

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, in other words, lies and imagination,

Okay, right.

Anonymous said...

What's the next step, purge the Romance languages of feminine and masculine nouns and pronouns? Those who speak Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish might have something to say about that.

Anonymous said...

IDIOTS!
(with nothing better to do).

Anonymous said...

This is just over the top, STUPID!!! Just because some people want to be a she because he is a he, and some people want to be a he because she is a she, we can't refer to people as Mr./Miss/he/she/alien/etc. PC gone awry.

Anonymous said...

Fortunately, 'morons' is a gender-neutral term. It certainly does apply to this article.

Anonymous said...

IDIOTS, one and all!!

Anonymous said...

Why aren't these individuals named and targeted.

Anonymous said...

I have no problem calling Obama 'ze".

Anonymous said...

Here we are, moving ever closer to calling everyone "comrade".