Class promotes gender identity awareness

The class, Gender Identity 101, is the second of three in a series of workshops called SafeZONE 101, which identifies problems those who don't fit the mold of male or female may encounter. The first class was an introduction to the series.

David Coffman, assistant professor of stage management and production manager, said there's no such thing as a homogeneous way to classify transgender. He said the very nature of being a transgender person creates problems, such as whether to use the women or men's restroom.

At the gender identity class, ASU staff members were informed about which pronouns to use when addressing transgender students. Coffman said the transgender community uses new pronouns, such as "ze."

The problem with the ungendered pronoun is that it's not yet universally accepted in the English language community. There's ze, zi, te [I heard about this one from my English 101 teacher YEARS ago], singular they, and so on. I'm not downing the use of ze, but it should be noted that no university has adopted it as part of English language program, and most low level courses would definitely frown on its use unless you got a cool teacher. :3

-- Bridget

I've tried to use these in a conversation once, but it just sounded too funny, like I was trying (and failing) to have a European accent.  I ended up saying "they" and "them" only because it was the least strange sounding (if grammatically incorrect). No offense, but there's got to be a better way to do this...

I sometimes use they and them, apparently it is grammatically correct to use they singularly in old English. I've also tried ze, and prefer it, especially since it happens to be my initial, but it isn't widely accepted yet.

zythyra

I don't like this idea. I LOVE being called miss, she, her and the like. In fact, it's been almost a year since I've heard anything but the right pronouns. They still make me smile.

Bri

My personal experience with this has been in dealing with some of the gender queers who purposely mix everything up to confuse people.  LOL, not saying that all do but some have that mentality.  One in particular asked to go by hir.  Hey, no problem as it is still just three letters in an email and sounds pretty much like her so it did not take much to adapt to it.

Honestly Ive never met anyone that wanted to be refered to in alternate terms, IE I like to be called she, her, miss, and so on and if your going to use explicitives yes I am a B- ... You sure thats a TG thing and not an IS or androgony<sp?> thing?