Miseducation

The University of Minnesota is going to be starting mandatory pronoun training:

Faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota are gearing up to undergo pronoun training in order to make the campus a more welcoming environment for “transgender” and “non-binary” community members.
A university policy first floated in the summer of 2018 and recently finalized dictates that university employees “are expected to use the names, gender identities and pronouns specified to them by university members.” Failing to abide by this policy “could result in discipline,” according to the policy’s FAQ page.
Training for the new policy has begun, The Minnesota Daily reports. The training program involves instructing staff and faculty in the new gender pronoun rules; those staff will then be “tasked with working to educate their colleagues, helping them work through questions and mistakes.”

There are really two responses to this. Technically three, but “unquestioning acquiescence” is off the table. .

I can either:

  • Point out that this sort of thing is at best an unproductive and ultimately damaging diversion to someone’s mental illness, and at worst catering to someone’s attention-seeking
  • Tell U of M staff that my preferred pronouns are “His Highness / The Grand Admiral “

I’m leaning toward “B”. Satire seems to be more useful these days.

14 thoughts on “Miseducation

  1. tell U of M Staff that they are to refer to you only as “Your Sublime Majesty” and that accordingly, you will henceforth, in an egalitarian spirit, be referring to all your subjects (everybody else) as Товарищ

  2. One of my favorite television programs is “Time Team.” It’s a documentary series about archaeologists in Britain. Every week they race against the clock to excavate a site of interest before it is covered by a road bed or a shopping mall.
    There they are on TV, these highly educated scientists, identifying the mute, long-dead skeletal remains of human beings and animals as “male” or “female.”
    This is no joke. Today’s elites have gone so far down the road of madness that they believe that biological sex — not gender — is “assigned” at birth. This is no joke. You will be made to say that you believe this is true.

  3. /University of Minnesota student imprisoned in China apparently released/

    “Members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation and free-speech advocates voiced support Thursday for a University of Minnesota student sentenced to prison in China for tweets he made while studying in the United States.”
    http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-members-of-congress-voice-support-for-university-of-minnesota-student-sent-to-chinese-prison/567247422/

    The U of M is the same school mandating speech codes for Faculty to recognize students by pronouns under penalty of termination. These are just different shades of authoritarian behavior.

  4. I cant wait to see how this will blow up in their faces, because surely no college kids will abuse this or try to break it.

  5. This problem was solved years ago, on a British television program.

    “You are Number 6.”

  6. Come now, better to server them thus:

    “My preferred pronoun is reginae Elizabeth II, Dei Gratia Britanniarum Regnorumque Suorum Ceterorum Regina, Consortionis Populorum Princeps, Fidei Defensor frater procul.”

    And I will insist on them getting it correct each time, lest it be an insult to my chosen gender orientation. By the time your average professor manages to say it correctly at least one or two classes would be over.

  7. One nice thing about this flap, social scientists can finally update the base level of the Hierarchy of Need. Turns out, Maslow was so fixated on things like food and shelter that he completely overlooked the critical importance of pronouns.

    Anthropologists might benefit, too. You’ve wondered why Nordic runes and Egyptian hieroglyphics are so hard to understand? That’s because you insist on straitjacketing them under patriarchal notions of social order. Stop trying to find the symbol for “he,” there isn’t one. And those cave paintings – they’re not about successful animal hunts, they’re celebrations of personal liberation from the tyranny of binary gender. Don’t just hunt the bison, be the bison.

    If only we could see the connection between pronouns and electro-magnetic energy, we might finally be able to complete the Unified Field Theory. What an exciting time to be a student at the University.

  8. Along with Walter Williams, I identify as a springbok, because nobody’s ever tried to tax them here in the U.S. Unless, of course, there becomes a springbok season here….

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.