Harvard University, American University, the University of Vermont and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are moving away from a binary gender system by allowing students to classify themselves as something other than male or female and encouraging the campus community to call such students by their gender-preferred pronouns.
The distinction of male and female, accompanied by the respective pronouns he and she, has been expanded on these campuses with a nebulous vocabulary of invented pronouns. As fluid as the “gender continuum” they represent, these pronouns represent those individuals who feel that they are “genderqueer,” or do not fall into the categories of male or female.
American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion offers a pronoun guide which states “the practice of asking individuals what pronouns they use for themselves should be done in an effort to respect the diversity of gender identities beyond man and woman.”
The university lists four pronouns often used by the transgender community: “ze,” “e,” “per” and “they,” clarifying that “ze” may take two different object forms – “hir” and “zir.” “Ze” may have different spellings, such as “zie,” “sie,” “xie,” and “xe.”
The guide includes the following mandate: “Never argue with or question a person’s gender identity or pronouns.”
The University of Vermont has also validated a third gender with its use of gender-neutral pronouns. The New York Times reports that this result follows nearly a decade of lobbying, a campus-wide campaign from the school’s transgender community, and $80,000 in staff time for the creation of new software.
Dot Brauer, director of UVM’s LGBTQA Center, helped shape the conversation surrounding the adoption of gender-neutral pronouns.
“All of higher ed really needs to be paying attention to this in the classroom and people in employment need to be dealing with this, because I think this conversation is getting louder, not quieter,” Brauer told The College Fix in a phone interview.
“It’s really about inclusion…there really are people in the world who don’t feel completely comfortable being boxed into femininity or masculinity exclusively,” they added. “What we are experiencing now is that there is a growing conversation about those experiences and people want the opportunity to been seen, addressed and recognized as who they are.”
Interestingly, Brauer noted the move toward gender-neutral pronouns actually began outside of universities.
“There’s diversity of opinion everywhere you go. There are more and more corporations out there that are deciding that they want to be on the progressive edge because they want to attract the most talented employees. Corporations have actually been ahead of universities on this front,” they said.
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/24165/
https://www.campuspride.org/tpc/gender- ... e-housing/
The rising generation will be a tide that sweeps organisations like the Church aside and into oblivion.
Society, in time, simply won't stand for homophobia in any form whatsoever. Gender neutrality will be the norm, not the exception. Organisations that maintain traditional gender labels and traditional gender roles will become more and more isolated, leads and less attractive to be part of. It's over, the Church has already lost. It's now just marking time.