Opinion Pieces

As transgenderism pushes its way into the mainstream, people are being forced to ask what pronouns to use. Should someone born male who now identifies as female be called she or he? This is a real question, one that teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd introduced to her communications class at a university in Ontario, Canada. Shepherd played a clip of a tv debate over gender pronouns. This ended up in an official inquiry where her superiors said merely playing the clip created a "hostile" environment. This is height of contradiction. The university claims to be a place of tolerance and diversity—a place where new ideas can be explored. The new sexual ethic has no ground for other viewpoints. Some have called it a fundamentalism of sorts—one that doesn't tolerate opposing viewpoints, and we can expect more of this in the future.