Students and teachers at the University of Tennessee are being encouraged to ditch the pronouns he and she in favour of the gender-neutral “ze”.
The school’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion has distributed a new lexicon that gives “non-binary” — neither exclusively male or female — students the opportunity to cast off the “heavy burden” of traditional labels.
“With the new semester beginning and an influx of new students, it is important to participate in making our campus welcoming and inclusive for all,” Donna Braquet, director of the university’s Pride Centre, said in advice posted online.
Instead of she, her, hers and he, him, his, people are asked to consider ze, hir, hirs or ze, zir, zirs. In the plural, the suggested pronouns are xe, xem and xir. “These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new,” Ms Braquet wrote.
Teachers are advised to abandon the traditional roll call in class for the first few weeks and focus on asking students their preferred name and pronouns.
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Bill Dunn, a state congressman, said: “We have paid people a lot of money to sit around and come up with this nonsense. It makes me kind of mad.”