Comments on: University of Minnesota’s pronoun prescription

By: David C

David C — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 15:18:23 +0000

In reply to Robert.

Are you saying the correctness of the grammar changes based on whether I personally know Pat’s gender? Is that really how grammar works?

In any case, I’ll agree that different people have different opinions on this, and nobody should be forced to say something that the believe is either grammatically or factually incorrect.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 17:21:28 +0000

In reply to Steve.

It was *never* used when referring to a specific, known person. Never. While an exchange like

” When is the repair person arriving?”
“They’ll be here at 9:00 AM”

is used commonly today and in the past, you’d never say:

“Ask Pat. They know the combination to the safe”

which is what a “they-pronounced” person wants. A person who speaks Standard English has to do a lot of discomforting mental juggling to parse and form sentences like this.

By: Rliyen

Rliyen — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 14:47:16 +0000

“Qwigybo” would be mine.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 12:09:58 +0000

As long as we’re making them up, can mine be Xjqhz?
I play Scrabble a lot and this would be very helpful.

By: Michael S Goodman

Michael S Goodman — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 10:21:04 +0000

My preferred pronouns are “Your Eminence” and “His Eminence”. Use them or else…

By: Michael S Goodman

Michael S Goodman — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 10:19:08 +0000

How are people who grew up in the Fifties, Sixties, or even Seventies supposed to remember, much less understand, or be able to comply with, all this “pronoun” lunacy?

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 01:04:06 +0000

In reply to Robert. Robert, the singular they has a pedigree centuries old. It is and effectively always has been perfectly grammatical.

By: James

James — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 23:18:09 +0000

There a story about a University of Michigan student who, when asked by the university for his preferred pronoun, replied “His Majesty.”

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 15:48:44 +0000

Especially when it comes to the ungrammatical “singular they” (in modern usage) and made-up words like “ze”, this is a nightmare. The solution is never to talk to or about “transgendered” individuals.

I used to think people were crazy when they talked about a “slippery slope” in granting more rights to transgendered people.

The real victims here are people with actual, physical, gender problems. People who are XXY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome) or have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome). It is important when pushing back on self-proclaimed “non-binary” folk who want to police our Language not to treat people with actual, physical, gender identity problems badly.

By: cc

cc — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 15:25:27 +0000

What they are asking is essentially impossible. There are 40,000 students and staff at a single university. Of the people you encounter you will rarely know their names or even their marital status never mind if they are gay or trans or “queer” of “gender fluid” whatever those are. Plus, the proposed gender pronouns are nonstandard, are made up, and are allowed to be specific to a particular person and even change over time. Many people are completely unaware of the whole “pronoun” controversy. Thus even if you were inclined to bow to the PC gods, complying correctly in the face of tradition and lack of information is not possible.
Pronouns are used to refer to someone in the third person, usually when they are absent: “he will be back soon”. What about titles (Mr etc)? How do these people propose to be addressed? The list of “pronouns” does not ever include forms of address: “This is Mr. Smith” so one doesn’t even have an option to use.
Finally, for many trans people in college, their gender appearance will be ambiguous. This is ripe for misunderstanding. Again, it assumes knowledge you do not have. Are we to go around asking people their gender? I’m sure that can’t be problematic. Do funny gender people wear special pins or hats?
The whole thing is insane, unworkable, and forced political compliance in the worst Orwellian sense.