'Preferred' pronouns gain traction at US colleges

Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-11-30 19:24

Article here. Excerpt:

'OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way. Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else.

It's an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the "shes" and "hers" that dominate the introductions are keeping third-person company with "they," ''ze" and other neutral alternatives meant to convey a more generous notion of gender.

"Because I go to an all-women's college, a lot of people are like, 'If you don't identify as a woman, how did you get in?'" said sophomore Skylar Crownover, 19, who is president of Mouthing Off! and prefers to be mentioned as a singular they, but also answers to he. "I just tell them the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn't ask me for my gender."

On high school and college campuses and in certain political and social media circles, the growing visibility of a small, but semantically committed cadre of young people who, like Crownover, self-identify as "genderqueer" — neither male nor female but an androgynous hybrid or rejection of both — is challenging anew the limits of Western comprehension and the English language.'

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Comments

Why don't they just admit men? :)

Forming a political group or idelogical dogma based on "otherness" is ultimately self-destructive.

It goes like this: A group/ideology initially finds its strength in creating an exclusive membership. The "stars upon thars" crowd of Dr. Seuss fame. Once these "non-us" people are eliminated, the "us" ppl have nothing to unite them. So they further divide and create new groups, maybe excluding them immediately, maybe waiting some before doing so. But eventually, it happens. And this continues until there's no one left enthused abt the original goal since it's become obvious that the original goal was either met or discarded long ago in favor of maintaining "us-ness". The means have become the ends, replacing the original ends so that they're either forgotten or have become morphed into a mere legend that gets paid lip-service at best while the new, actual goal of maintaining both identity and exploiting it for personal gains become the dominant protocol.

This is why the lesbian separatist colonies of the 60s and 70s collapsed, with only a couple exceptions. The members naturally began to find reasons to subdivide further based in whatever criteria (age, class, public presentation of gender style, etc.). In addition, romantic conflicts inevitably arose and that drove wedges into morale; community mtgs. become all the more political when ppl of divergent positions also want to have the same person as their romantic partner.

This kind of thing isn't restricted to just feminists. You find it anywhere there's a group or ideology formed based on "identity". You can see it in religions (eg: after Xianity squashed the nature-based polytheistic religions of Europe, it took little time for Protestant sects to arise, likewise bringing great conflict and bloodshed. Then within sects, further divisions/splits arose. And on and on 'til this day.) As for political groups, look at the two biggies in the US: the GOP is further divided into the "Tea Party" and other sub-groups, while the Dems have internal groups seeking "social justice" as opposed to those seeking an agenda that calls for stricter "personal justice" standards. Also within the Dems there is of course the left-wing feminist faction vs. the centrist feminists, and to further make life more interesting, there's pro-life vs. pro-choice Dems-- both of either sex. Both parties however do have this in common: they're bought and paid for. Parties can win or lose, but those large moneyed interests that have played (paid) both sides of the fence always make out. Money talks, BS walks. And when you're financing both major parties, you always have a seat at the winners' table.

It's all enough to make your head spin. Until you blow chow. >)

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-11-30 19:45

Excellent points Matt!

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Submitted by recoveringfeminist on Sat, 2013-11-30 21:41

A few people are changing their gender identification, and so some other people are confused and resistant to adopting never-before-heard words. This is entirely predictable. Meanwhile, fully half of the population (men) are seriously discriminated against every day, in a myriad of ways, but does that get mention in the major media - of course not.

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Submitted by redwoodwriter on Sun, 2013-12-01 01:57