Nicholas Meriwether, an evangelical Christian, had been approached by a transgender student after class, who demanded he call her by her preferred female pronouns, a request the professor said would not be possible.
The university gave the professor a written warning, who challenged this response in court.
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I think both parties have a case. It may well be that the student was in the process of undergoing surgery because of a genuine biological problem. Or maybe he had simply decided that he wanted to be a she.
In the first case I would have no problem in adjusting the way I used pronouns. In the second, I would do a mental eye-roll and still refer to the student as they (see what I did there) would prefer. I would take the position that it’s not a hill to die on.
I think the proff is entirely free to consider it nonsensical but he’s being as beligerant as the student in refusing to use female pronouns. If I were him I would let it be known that I had strong beliefs about what it means to be male or female but I would respect other people’s beliefs (sotto vocce: as nonsensical as I think they are) as long as they didn’t infringe on my beliefs.
Hand shake. Everyone happy. Move on.
I might note that I do tend to have a problem with some of the more esoteric types of identity. I did read an article recently about a woman who felt she was not just one person but a mixture of many. And wanted the pronouns to be plural when referring to her. Or rather when referring to…them.
It was a wierd read because you had to keep mentally adjusting for the pronouns to work out to whom the article was referring. Although her (their?) requirement for the use of plurals was somewhat undermined when she responded to a question: ‘It’s what I believe…’ I thought, shouldn’t that be ‘It’s what we believe…’?
