I ended last week with a rant against political correctness run amok, in a story about idiots offended by a restaurant named Moby Dick’s Fish and Chips. They thought the word “Dick” was offensive. While I don’t often follow one anti-PC rant directly with another, it appears this week that is what I am about to do.
Sometimes I just cannot help myself.
Last fall the University of Michigan tried to soften the harsh and unforgiving use of gender specific pronouns thoughtlessly applied to members of its student body.
Actually, “student body” is probably an offensive term in its own right, in that “student” implies a person of lesser education than, say, instructors, and “body” implies a living, collective entity that some may choose not to identify with. Instead of student body, we shall use the phrase “collection of individuals whose parents are investing a fortune to have their minds indoctrinated with useless crap”.
There. Much better. But I digress….
Anywho, The University of Michigan established an online system for their students to register the pronoun they prefer be used when professors and others are referring to them. This was driven by the apparently growing confusion over gender identity, and the increasing number of people who now feel they are not properly represented by their bodies or the societal mores originally assigned them. Using this system, people who did not want to be referred to as he or she or him or her could select a different pronoun for themselves. Professors and other personnel were required by school policy to use the pronouns that were self-selected by these self-identifying students.
The good news is less than 5% of the school’s students bothered to register in the system. Around 50 students listed “they” as their preferred pronoun. The vast majority of students who responded listed “he” or “she”. A spokesperson for the University of Michigan said, “Most of the 2,000 students who designated pronouns took it seriously. Fewer than 200 did not take it seriously… out of more than 45,000 students on the Ann Arbor campus.”
Thank God for those who did not take it seriously, for there is a glimmer of hope in these numbers telling us our society may indeed survive. First, less than 5% of the students were concerned enough over a stupid and mindless policy to actually respond to it. Even more encouraging, of those who did respond, 10% openly mocked the entire idea.
And those that chose to mock are likely the leaders of tomorrow. They have clearly not yet succumbed to the group think that “free thinking” universities now mandate.
Some of those students have directed that school personnel refer to them as “Your Majesty”, “The Exalted King,” “Milord,” “Princess,” “Maharaja,” “Mr. President,” and “Supreme Leader”. Others took a more practical approach, using appliance designations such as “Fridge” and “LG LCRT2010ST Microwave Oven”
One of my personal favorites was “Your Dudeness”. Another was “I Love Rigatoni”. “Harambe” was a popular selection, as were several names from Game of Thrones. Personally, I would have chosen “Magna Cum Laude recipient”. Frankly, that would be the closest I would ever get to that designation.
You can see the entire entertaining list here.
The school has indicated that the use of many of the “non-serious’ responses is not being required of their professors. The reason is that many of these entries were “technically not pronouns”. We can assume from that that perhaps the school is still teaching English; it is just the students aren’t paying attention to those particular lessons.
Of course, pronoun insensitivity is potentially offensive, and now the school may have to designate safe spaces for the pronoun sensitive from hateful pronoun obsessed Nazi’s. I mean, who are they to strictly limit the definition of a pronoun, when we can freely rewrite our gender identification at will?
I realize that by addressing this that I am flirting with the highly volatile transgender debate that seems to have gripped this nation of late. My basic understanding of biology and the existence of X and Y chromosomes notwithstanding, that is not genuinely my intent. My point is that we are now establishing complex systems intended to alter the actions and behavior of everyone, all in the name of avoiding potential offenses that may or may not exist for a select few.
It is just more Orwellian group think, being led by the former bastions of free thought, the modern American University. At least we know that a glimmer of hope exists, and that free thinkers are surviving the onslaught of propaganda. There is a small flame simmering at UM, and all may not be lost within the collection of individuals whose parents are investing a fortune to have their minds indoctrinated with useless crap.