Roy Exum
With due apology to Smokey, the University of Tennessee’s famed blue-tick hound, the tail is wagging the dog at UT-Knoxville. Donna Braquet, the director of the university’s Pride Center, wants to suck 99.9 percent of the 28,000 students into a ridiculous scheme that will make the campus “welcoming and inclusive for all” … .01 percent.
Her idea is to do away with binary gender terms, such as “he,” “she,” “him” and “hers” and instead use gender-neutral words like “ze,” “zir”, “xyr” and “xe” in the hope it will make transgender students more comfortable.
By using a “chosen name” with its correct pronouns, it is her belief that instead of calling roll in class, professors should ask each student to provide the name they feel is the most comfortable.
But what Donna – if that is the name she feels best suits her – has really done is make the University of Tennessee the laughing-stock of the nation. A headline in the New York Daily News cried, “Say what? University of Tennessee invents pronouns ‘ze, hir, hirs’” while pundits as far away as England were having a field day.
Bill Dunn, a member of the state legislature that appropriates funding to Tennessee’s flagship university, thought the whole thing was a joke when he first heard it. “And then I found out it was true, at which point I thought, ‘Are we really paying somebody to come up with this stuff.’”
UT’s Pride Center, which caters to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, is not to be confused with the University of Alabama’s Pride Foundation that oversees the Crimson Tide athletic programs. No, at the UT Pride Center you can read up on the university’s “Queer History” – their words, not mine – and take workshops and stuff. Donna suggests we should learn to politely ask, “Oh, nice to meet you, (insert name). What pronouns should I use?”
Such an idea leaves State Rep. Dunn, a UT graduate, fuming. “I think when people pay their taxes, they would rather have it go to a university so that people can learn something – not be brainwashed into some gobbledygook.” Dunn also told WATE-TV, "If you say I'm going to meet 'ze,' someone's going to think you're going to meet someone from another planet.”
State Senator Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, quickly posted on his Facebook page, “It seems to be the biggest lack of diversity we have at the University of Tennessee is people of common sense. Apparently this is what happens when the decision is made that no one from Tennessee is smart enough to run our university.”
Rep. Niceley later told a News-Sentinel reporter, “Maybe we ought to go back to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ for everybody and that will take care of it.”
For the record, no one is quite sure how many trans-sexual people live in the United States but one estimate, based on the assumption 2.3 percent of the LGBTQ crowd is transsexual, is .01 percent of the U.S. population. If that is the case, .01 percent of 28,000 (students) works out to the number 2.8., which is mathematically less than three of 28,000 the students enrolled at UT. Please! That hardly seems like ‘enough tail to wag the dog’ unless there is a greater propensity of transgender students in Knoxville than the most available statistics might suggest.
Allen West, a national columnist who attended Tennessee as an undergrad, wrote a sizzling opinion over the weekend. “What has happened to my university? This creeping (politically correct) nonsense of dropping personal pronouns is insane. Could you imagine the venerable Tennessee football announcer John Ward referring to “ze breaks into the open, ze is at the 30, the 20, the 10, the 5, ze goes into the end zone, give ze six! Touchdown Tennessee!”
“Or what would have been said that third Saturday in October 1982, my senior year,” West adds, “when the Volunteers beat Alabama with a last second interception in the end zone “Tennessee wins, xyr win, xyr win!”
“We should not change the English language because someone decides to change their sex — that is a personal decision. We certainly do not need collective readjustment. If Bruce wants to be Caitlyn that’s his choice, his pursuit of happiness. But why does it mean my verbiage needs changing?” West challenged. “And I actually have an interesting question: Bruce is being charged with vehicular manslaughter — but does Bruce Jenner still exist?
West was just getting started. “Herein lies the danger in all this (politically correct) restructuring gender speech in America. Because of individual behavior sexuality choices we have some places where forms no longer say “husband” and “wife” — just spouse 1 and spouse 2 like some sort of Dr. Seuss characters.
“Of course the liberal progressive left will say I’m an outdated Neanderthal,” the columnist penned. “They would propose we’ve developed beyond any sense of ‘traditional’ roles as men and women and that family has been redefined — hence the sitcom ‘Modern Family.’
West caps his argument with what he believes is a fact. “A little while ago I wrote about who is it that redefines language in America, who are these people that come up with the inane ze, xe, xyr crap? They walk amongst us and slowly they are indeed redefining societal norms under the guise of advanced intellectualism. But let me be clear, they are plum stupid.”
Such comments are springing up all across the nation. Todd Starnes, writing for Fox News, explains it. “For example, the birth certificate might say that Big Earl is a male. But what if Big Earl identifies as a lady who wants to be called Lawanda? According to the procedures outlined by the folks at the (UT) Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the professor is obligated to call Big Earl – Lawanda – or whatever name makes Big Earl feel more included.”
Todd quotes Tennessee State Senator Mae Beavers. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she told me. “If you must interview a student before you greet the student, that’s not acceptance – that’s just absurd.”
“Beavers (R-Mount Juliet) represents a ‘very conservative’ district,” Starnes wrote, “and she said her constituents are enraged over how their tax money is being spent by the university. ‘The idea a child would want to be called by a gender neutral term is absolutely ridiculous,’ she said. ‘It’s getting so crazy in this country.’
The Fox commentator wrote, “I reached out to the vice chancellor for tolerance and diversity (yes they really do have such a thing) – but I’m still waiting for him or her or ze or xyr to call me back. There you have it, folks. His and Hers is no longer good enough at the University of Tennessee – where they are willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of gender inclusivity – including common sense.”
Starnes closed with this jab: “I wonder if they’ve got a gender neutral word for idiot?” but West had the better parting comment: “How does one say y’all in the new lingo?”
royexum@aol.com