Mick Hartley

It's getting very silly. 

Staff and students at a UK university are being encouraged to call their peers “they” until they can confirm their preferred pronouns.

The University of Kent produced a pronoun guidance document to create an “authentic culture of inclusion” and help preserve “human dignity”.

The three-page guide, made as part of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity initiative, encourages the university’s estimated 20,000 staff and students to state their pronouns such as he/him or she/her when introducing themselves to help “normalise the practice”….

The guidance reads: “If an opportunity does not arise to find out what pronouns someone uses, you can use the non-gendered ‘they’ until you are sure.”

It refers people to a website detailing a list of possible gender-neutral pronouns that are in use, which include “ze”, “xe”, “ey”, “sie” and “thon”. All of these examples, the guidance says, are “linguistically valid”.

“Gender is assigned to a person at birth along with sex, according to certain anatomical attributes,” it says. “Sex does not predetermine a person’s gender, however, and this assignment may conflict with the person’s gender identity — their internal sense of their own gender and what feels right for them."

This is all very confusing. I thought the doctrine was that while sex is assigned at birth, gender is a special magical inner quality that we gradually become aware of later on. How then can gender be assigned at birth?

Well…if I understand this right, there's gender (assigned at birth, along with sex), and then there's gender identity. Two different things.

Of course. Now it's all clear…

“Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is respectful and preserves human dignity. When someone is referred to with a pronoun (e.g. he/she/they) that doesn’t align with their gender identity, they can be left feeling alienated.”…

If mistakes are made and someone is misgendered, the document advises staff and students to “quickly apologise, correct yourself and continue the conversation” while bystanders are encouraged to intervene if they hear use of the wrong pronoun.

“The societal habit of assuming people’s pronouns may be difficult to unlearn at first but, with practice, it will get easier,” the guidance reads.

Unlearning stuff: the great task of the modern inclusive university.