[lg policy] Pronoun challenge in Ann Arbor

Tue Oct 4 15:16:25 UTC 2016

 Pronoun Challenge in Ann Arbor

[image: pronouns8]
<http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2016/10/pronouns8.png>I’ve
learned to be suspicious whenever any change in language is described as
inconvenient. It’s inconvenient, when you think about it, to have so many
forms of the past tense in English. It’s inconvenient that we in America
spell a number of words differently from the British. When the honorific
*Ms*. was introduced in the 1960s, people complained that it was
inconvenient to have to insert a new option into the list of choices on
forms, or to wonder how a woman wanted to be addressed. So-called
inconvenient changes also become, rather quickly, the butt of jokes made
mostly at the expense of those who think that, after all, the change they
have in mind isn’t really all that inconvenient.

The latest surge of complaints about inconvenience coupled with jokes at
the expense of change-makers arises with the University of Michigan’s newly
designed forms for students choosing classes. As *The Detroit News*
<http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/09/28/um-gender-pronouns/91222056/>
reported:

UM students can select pronouns such as he, she, him, her, ze
<http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/05/16/change-mustnt-be-a-burden/>
— a gender neutral pronoun — or other pronouns they identify with starting
this week.

The change is so students can let others know which pronoun they identify
with and expect others to use when referencing them, Provost Martha Pollack
and Vice President for Student Life Royster Harper wrote to students on the
Ann Arbor campus.

“Faculty members play a vital role in ensuring all of our community feels
valued, respected, and included,” Pollack and Harper wrote.

“Asking about and correctly using someone’s designated pronoun is one of
the most basic ways to show respect for their identity and to cultivate an
environment that respects all gender identities.”

I don’t know the percentage of students who chose *he* or *she* as their
preferred pronoun, but I suspect it was well over 90 percent and included
transgender students, most of whom identify as male or female. If I’m
right, two truths emerge. First, any inconvenience is slight, perhaps at
the level of accommodation for visually impaired
<https://nfb.org/blindness-statistics>students. (I’m not naming alternate
gender identity as an impairment, just talking accommodation and
statistics.) Second, those who do list a pronoun other than *he* or *she*
are voicing a strong preference for how they wish others to address them —
a strong statement, that is, of their identity in the face of great odds.
So we have a deeply desirable accommodation at little cost.

But from the backlash and the jokes, you wouldn’t think so. The top-rated
comments on the* News* report about the pronoun option read,

When these folks get out of the U with whatever degree the U feels fit to
give them (after all, they will soon find something offensive about
sturctured (sic) departments, degrees, such as engineering, chemistry,
physics etc. etc) .. they will encounter the real world where no one
actually gives a tinkers damn about such idiocy.

. . .

Good luck, snowflakes. One day you’ll figure out that when reality becomes
optional, totalitarianism becomes inevitable.

Soon followed the jokes. The chairman of the board of governors of the
right-wing Young America Foundation
<http://www.yaf.org/news/yaf-chairman-hilariously-trolls-schools-pronoun-police/>,
Grant Strobl, a student at the University of Michigan, logged onto his
portal and chose the preferred pronoun *His Majesty*. In an interview with The
College Fix <http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29230/>, he quipped, “I
henceforth shall be referred to as: His Majesty, Grant Strobl. I encourage
all U-M students to go onto Wolverine Access, and insert the identity of
their dreams.”

Funny … right?

Apparently the denizens of the website Total Frat Move
<http://totalfratmove.com/personal-pronoun-his-majesty-michigans-campus/>
think so. They referred to Mr. Strobl’s having accomplished “a brilliant
troll job” and lambasted any who thought otherwise:

These gender pronoun snobs are the worst. He she ze xe vey ir hir het hesh
ne himer shkle enn heshe hann herm. …  Thanks to “gender fluidity,”
everyday is a fun game of “let’s solve the puzzle in my pants.”

The irony here is that the jokesters are the ones inserting inconvenience
into the process, urging anyone looking for a snigger to exploit the system
until the university gives up on it.

But maybe they won’t give up. It took 20 years, in the end, but even
conservative William Safire of *The New York Times*, confessing that it
“broke his heart” to do so, conceded
<http://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/05/magazine/on-language-goodbye-sex-hello-gender.html?pagewanted=1>
in 1984 that *Ms.* was the most reasonable honorific to use with women who
wished to be addressed as *Ms.*

Meanwhile, I hope that Mr. Strobl gets his wish and finds himself addressed
as His Majesty in every recommendation that his professors write for him to
potential employers. It will be a fine joke, or something.
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/10/03/preferable-pronouns/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=25602dfa364a4b3ea1b335b5e799cee5&elq=75afc5df4d104b94a20e2a262a87c132&elqaid=10969&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=4186

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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