{"id":2305,"date":"2017-04-04T21:54:17","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T03:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markmeckler\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2017-04-04T21:54:17","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T03:54:17","slug":"professor-docking-points-students-dont-use-gender-neutral-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markmeckler\/2017\/04\/professor-docking-points-students-dont-use-gender-neutral-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor docking points when students don\u2019t use gender-neutral language"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/125675083\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 65.656566% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/125675083?et=kwi8Hcq4QVR7Tu9KH6P3dw&amp;tld=com&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=qTc3YWhZrBR5JMqBbfZu4BENLERACCuRGwHkUa0aKRs=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"390\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The new fascist have risen and are controlling America\u2019s college campuses, and now, it\u2019s affecting students\u2019 grades.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Cailin Jeffers is an English major at Northern Arizona University. She made the egregious error of writing the term \u201cmankind\u201d in a recent essay and was deducted a point because the professor preferred \u201chumanity\u201d over her gender-specific term.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Anne Scott sent an e-mail to Jeffers to explain why she penalized her for \u201cproblems with diction (word choice):\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I would be negligent, as a professor who is running a class about the human condition and the assumptions we make about being \u201chuman,\u201d if I did not also raise this issue of gendered language and ask my students to respect the need for gender-neutral language. The words we use matter very much, or else teachers would not be making an issue of this at all, and the MLA [Modern Language Association] would not be making recommendations for gender-neutral language at the national level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Scott offered Jeffers a redo if she wanted to correct her word choice, but made it clear that in the future, gender-neutral language is a must in the class:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I will respect your choice to leave your diction choices \u201cas is\u201d and to make whatever political and linguistic statement you want to make by doing so. By the same token, I will still need to subtract a point because your choice will not be made in the letter or spirit of this particular class, which is all about having you and other students looking beneath your assumptions and understanding that \u201cmankind\u201d does not mean \u201call people\u201d to all people. It positively does not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Jeffers told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.campusreform.org\/?ID=8986\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Campus Reform<\/a> that she was purposefully insubordinate; that this was a test to see if Dr. Scott was truly serious about her strict rules. Jeffers explained that after an initial round of essays, the professor urged gender-neutral language such as \u201chumanity\u201d in place of \u201cmankind.\u201d So, in the next assignment, Jeffers inserted the word and found out the professor wasn\u2019t fooling around.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI stated that I agree with everything she said about my paper except my use of \u2018mankind,\u2019\u201d Jeffers said. \u201cShe proceeded to tell me that the NAU English department, as well as the Modern Language Association, are pushing for gender-neutral language, and all students must abide by this. She told me that \u2018mankind\u2019 does not refer to all people, only males. I refuted, stating that it DOES refer to all people, [but] she proceeded to tell me that I was wrong, \u2018mankind\u2019 is sexist, and I should make an effort to look beyond my preset positions and ideologies, as is the focus of the class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott stressed that her decision \u201cgoes beyond \u2018political correctness,\u2019\u201d but insisted that the use of terms like \u201cmankind\u201d or referring to readers as \u201chim\/he\u201d will result in loss of points.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s hope Jeffers remains intent on resisting this fascism while still maintaining a passing grade, but here\u2019s a serious question. \u00a0Why is MANkind wrong and huMANity okay? \u00a0These poor fascists don\u2019t have logic as their strong point, do they?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, brother. Boy, that\u2019s stupid. What a crazy world, man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2673,"featured_media":2317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Professor docking points when students don\u2019t use gender-neutral language<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Oh, brother. Boy, that\u2019s stupid. 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