Preferred Pronouns and Other Mysteries
The "preferred pronoun" thing has gotten out of hand. Some students take every opportunity to cry about being referred to by the "wrong" pronoun. How the hell do you know how anyone wants to be referred to? In my world, if the person has a beard or significant stubble, masculine features, a muscular or large frame, and a deep-ish voice, he’s a guy. Especially if his name on the roll is John, Michael, Andrew, Joshua, or any other male name that appear in the bible. Present me with a name like Lark, Katniss, Karter, Jax, or Zayden, and I’m lost, especially if the body type, clothes or voice doesn’t give me a clue.
That’s not to say that names typical of my generation and my father's generation aren’t problematic. Pat, Harper, and Avery come to mind, but if they wear a tweed jacket and smoke a pipe, there is no mistaking how they put their pope in Rome.
In class, the safest bet is to refer to a student as "that student over there". (Is "you" still acceptable?). It's particularly vexing when a student whose usual/most obvious/traditional pronoun isn't so obvious. You know, the androgynous kid whose name is Pat who wears clothes that give no clue to his/her/its gender, preferred or otherwise.
Last semester there was discussion whether to indicate the students' preferred pronoun and gender identity on the roll sheet, but that got stopped by folks who felt that doing so would constitute yet another microaggression. There were others who argued that doing so would just add to the confusion. It was decided that the professor and the student would have to hash it out in class somehow. It doesn't matter what the hell they do. It's a damned mess that should never have gotten started in the first place. That and "safe spaces".
Several years before Covid-19, the university made the university dormitories co-ed (as in boys and girls living on the same floor). A year or two years before Covid-19, there was a push to put binary and non-binary (whatever the hell that is) kids together in the same room, and then there was the demand to allow trans kids to live in rooms with kids who were non-trans. All that was for the sake of diversity. That furor raged for a only a semester, but it was long enough to have an effect upon the student body.
One big, burly guy named Jayden showed up in my class wearing a padded brassiere under a football jersey. His girlfriend was a former student of mine, and I had seen them together several times. I thought they were a pretty normal couple until the guy showed up in my class dressed for a Monty Python sketch. He had grown his hair long too.
I ran into his girlfriend in the hall and asked her if everything was okay in Love Land.
"How are you and Jayden doing? Still going?" (I didn’t finish the phrase in the usual way. Using the word out may be a microaggression punishable by death).
After dancing around the brassiere issue to avoid a lawsuit, the girl (named Ashlee, of course) confided that her boyfriend was wearing the brassiere to make the case that he was trans so that they could share a dorm room.
Wow. The odious subterfuge. The utter deceit. The damnable duplicity!
During my first college tour, I’d sneak a girl up the stairs of the dormitory (there were no elevators in my university’s dormitories back then) by putting a floppy hat and an overcoat on her. If it was raining, I had rubber boots at the ready. Up we’d go, hoping that we didn’t run into the Resident Advisor.
I gave Jayden’s plan a little thought later in the day and reconsidered my attitude. His plan wasn’t really devious. He was just gaming the system. His method wasn’t revolutionary, and he certainly wasn't trying to change the world. He had a truly fool-proof plan, and he was going along with a world that is going stark raving mad.
All I can say is, “Way to go, dude!”
Too bad the university doesn't see it that way.
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