Oxford University’s student union has issued a leaflet telling students that they should use gender neutral pronouns such as “ze” rather than “he” or “she.”
Britain’s Sunday Times reported on December 11 that though the SU leaflet was aimed just at students, its authors expressed hoped that the use of gender-neutral pronouns will also be extended to university lectures and seminars.
The U.K. Daily Mail quoted Peter Tatchell, described as “an LGBT rights campaigner,” who said:
It is a positive thing to not always emphasize gender divisions and barriers.
It is good to have gender-neutral pronouns for those who want them but it shouldn’t be compulsory.
This issue isn’t about being politically correct or censoring anyone. It’s about acknowledging the fact of changing gender identities and respecting people’s right to not define themselves as male or female.
Giving people the “ze” option is a thoughtful, considerate move.
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Cambridge University — which has rivaled Oxford for the honor of being Great Britain’s more prestigious university for more than 800 years — is also moving in the direction of using gender-neutral pronouns, the Times and other U.K. newspapers reported.
Sophie Buck, welfare officer at Cambridge’s students’ union, said: “Events start with a speaker introducing themselves using a gender neutral pronoun. It’s part of a drive to make the union intersectional.”
Franky Sissons, identified as a “transgender” student at King’s College, Cambridge, was quoted by the British press: “Gender neutral pronouns are good.… It should happen in lectures, too.”
A report posted by the Inquisitr website stated that Oxford also implemented gender-neutral bathrooms on campus last month.
Breitbart reported on December 12 that University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, who has taken a stand against gender politics on his campus, commented on the situation at Oxford: “UK universities should resist this. Whole disciplines have become irretrievable from these doctrines.”
Peterson became controversial on his campus when he posted a presentation on YouTube (entitled: “Professor against political correctness: Part I”) that was critical of the Canadian government’s plans to implement legislation amending the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to prohibit harassment and discrimination based on “gender identity and gender expression.”
At a free speech rally in October, Peterson said: “The changes of the law scare me because they put into the legal substructure of the culture certain assumptions about basic human nature that, not only I believe to be untrue, but they’re also dangerous and ideologically motivated.”
Breitbart reported that the rally was targeted by transgender activists who tried to drown out the speeches with horns and other noise. Peterson has been harassed while on campus, having been repeatedly heckled, and had his office door glued shut.
In an opinion piece for the Times of India on December 13, Dr. Swagato Ganguly expressed amazement over the neutral pronoun campaign waged by the student union at Oxford. “I thought India was the country where it’s become very fashionable to have one’s sentiments ‘offended’ by what somebody else said, as a way of curbing free speech,” wrote Ganguly. “It’s shocking to see, however, that the madness has now extended to the august portals of Oxford University.”
After summarizing the student union’s revolutionary guidelines for the use of gender-defining pronouns, Ganguly anticipated that his readers might find the sheer absurdity of these happenings at the once-venerable university too outlandish to believe. He found it necessary to provide documentation by linking to an article reporting on the event, writing: “If you think I’m pulling your leg, see this report in The Independent.”
Ganguly continued:
The basic fallacy here is that equality ought to mean sameness and a flattening of all differences. Moreover free thought relies on free speech, and a university is a place for liberating one’s thinking. How can a university proscribe free speech?
Recalling having seen a young man and a young woman kissing while sitting under a tree on the Oxford campus during a visit there in the early 1990s, Ganguly said he assumed that the couple “were intensely aware of the difference in gender between them.”
He continued:
In any case one is a college student at a time when one’s hormones are raging and one is typically hyperconscious of gender; it is unclear to me what sense it makes to ask them to drop gender altogether. [Emphasis added.]
