Friday, February 21, 2020

Gender Pronouns Can Be Tricky on Campus. Harvard Is Making Them Stick. [NYTimes]

The flava:
For generations of future diplomats and cabinet officials educated at Harvard’s renowned John F. Kennedy School of Government, orientation day has come with a name placard that the students carry from class to class, so their professors can easily call on them.

When Diego Garcia Blum, 30, got his placard last fall, the first-year graduate student immediately took a Sharpie to it, writing “He/Him” next to the big block letters of his name. Other students did the same thing, writing “She/Her” and “They/Them.”

The article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/gender-pronouns-college.html

1 comment:

  1. I'll be a lot happier about gender-neutral pronouns when we come up with specific third-person-singular ones and don't have to confusingly rely on they/them. Similar things have happened before—I'm old enough to remember when "Ms." didn't exist—and I have every faith that the marvelously adaptable English language has the capacity to generate something ideally suited for this purpose.

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