Universities marking down students for using banned gender terms By Thomas Lifson
Gender madness is being enforced with the iron fist of bad grades at some of Australia’s leading universities. Natasha Bita of the Courier-Mail of Brisbane reports:
Queensland’s top universities all demand that “inclusive language’’ be used in essays, assignments, lectures and conversation, in “nanny state’’ policies rubbished yesterday by an angry federal Education Minister.
Other words – including “she”, “man”, “wife” and “mother’’ – are also off limits at some universities.
University of Queensland students have complained about academics docking marks for using the word “mankind’’ in essays.
A politics student was penalised for using the grammatically correct pronoun of “she’’ to describe a car.
“People are losing marks for using everyday speech because it’s not gender-neutral,’’ the student, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Courier Mail yesterday.
“I lost marks because I used ‘mankind’’ in my assignment, and I referred to a car I owned as ‘she is my pride and joy’.’’
A science student also lost marks for using “mankind’’ in an essay about the philosophy of scientific method.
“I lost 10 marks — it’s such a stupid thing to be marked down for,’’ the student said.
“I heard of a girl in a different course who was marked down for using the words ‘man-made’ and ‘sportsmanship’.
The censorship extends beyond Queensland to other states in Australia. The UK Daily Mail reports:
The University of Sydney prefers students to create sentences that are grammatically incorrect but politically correct, rather than use the words ‘he’ or ‘she’.
The example their style guide provides to exemplify this is: ‘If a student wants their results early, they should go to the student centre.’
There is some backlash:
Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said it was “beyond the pale’’ that universities were dictating “nanny state stuff’’ to students.
“This just reinforces the stereotype of academic elites in ivory towers judging everyday Australians,’’ he said.
“Our universities should be better than this rubbish.’’
Bad as this is, at least the insanity of personally selecting one’s own pronouns for thirty-some “gender identities” is not yet being enforced there with grading power.
Graphic via Wikimedia Commons
Hat tip: John McMahon
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