【Dan哥快评】留学申请填网申，性别除了男和女，剩下的选项都啥啊？
“Preferred Pronoun” Hysteria in the West
If you recently applied to American, Canadian, or some European universities, you may have noticed a surprising number of options listed under “Gender” when filling out your application. The University of California application system provides the following options for applicants to choose from:
Male
Female
Trans Male/Trans Man
Trans Female/Trans Woman
Genderqueer/Gender Non-Conforming
Different Identity
If you grew up in almost any country outside of America, Canada, or the UK, the sheer number of options for “gender” is probably very confusing. But even if the number of options for gender isn’t confusing or bizarre to you personally, the level of importance given to announcing your gender probably is.
Right up until just several years ago, your SAT/ACT scores, GPA, TOEFL/IELTS scores, your AP exams, extracurricular activities, and other accomplishments were the only details about you that universities really cared about. Your gender is not an “accomplishment”, and hopefully a superficial feature such as your gender doesn’t define who you are as a student.
And if you’re currently studying at an American, Canadian, or British university, you may have noticed a growing trend where people are adding their “preferred pronouns” to their email signature, their Zoom username, and their social media profiles. Ostensibly they do this so that no one ever mistakenly refers to someone using a “pronoun” they don’t like or don’t identify with.
Of course, using an incorrect pronoun for someone happens occasionally, even for English names, which tend to be exclusively for either male or female genders. Alex, Casey, Jordan, Kelly, Sam, Kerry, and Jessie are all English names that have been used by men and women for a long time. When emailing someone for the first time without ever having met them in person, it’s not uncommon to incorrectly refer to them as “Mr.” or “he”, even though the person you’re emailing is a woman. This is not a big problem, and it was never considered offensive until very recently. If someone incorrectly refers to you as a “he” or “she” when you’re the opposite, you can just politely correct them or even ignore it if it’s not important to you.
Chinese names are trickier because many more Chinese names are “gender neutral” (used by men and women), so guessing someone’s gender is trickier. But most of the time, seeing someone’s profile picture or seeing someone in person is enough to clarify their gender. If someone has a more androgynous appearance or style, that make things trickier, but again, that would be a rare occasion.
However, in order to avoid those rare occasions when someone’s gender might be unclear to someone else, some Western elites have decided that we all should make an effort to announce our own gender and preferred pronouns ahead of time, every single time. This is solely to avoid offending the rare person who takes their gender very seriously and makes it a prominent component of their personality.
At this point, you might be wondering why it would be necessary to announce both your gender and your “preferred pronouns”. Doesn’t your choice of gender automatically determine your pronoun? Not according to the societal elites who are making these new rules. Believe it or not, and depending on which source you use, there are officially six or seven different pronouns people can choose and force other people to refer to themselves as. As for how to pronounce these “pronouns”, I really have no idea.
Let’s try this in a sentence and see how sane we look. “My friend Sally bought terself some new sunglasses because she busted ters last week while hiking by terself.” Got that? Me neither.
You might also be wondering, “How do people choose which pronoun to use? Are there rules like a transgender person uses one set of pronouns and a bisexual person uses another set?” After doing some research, the answer is: apparently not. Each gender pronoun just sounds and looks different and people get to choose one that has a sound and look that they like. And apparently they can change that anytime they want to and make you memorize new pronouns.
But it gets worse. With this new authority to choose your own pronouns and force others to use them, some people have attempted to push the envelope even further, requesting that people refer to them as queen, king, prince, princess, and other flattering pronouns with no basis in fact or reality.
Does this affect your personal statement?
Some of you are probably wondering, “Should I try to use this to my advantage and make admissions officers think I’m very open-minded and progressive in my views?” You might be thinking that using one of these unusual pronouns in your essays could increase your chances of getting accepted. My recommendation is to not attempt to use any special pronouns for yourself unless you truly believe you should be called a different pronoun than the one you were born with. It’s easy to spot a faker (sometimes what we refer to as a “poser” in American slang) and if it seems too hard to believe that you actually use those special pronouns as a Chinese student, you could harm your application for being inauthentic. Also, the vast majority of Americans don’t even know any of these alternate gender pronouns, so if you try using any of them in public, people are going to think you’re crazy or don’t speak English very well.
However, there is one place where it’s normal and appropriate to use a “gender neutral” pronoun and Westerners have been doing it for a long time. When you are referring to someone you haven’t met and whose gender you don’t know, you can replace he/her with “them”. For example: you’re at work and your boss asks “Who’s in charge of IT for the event tomorrow? Let’s email them and make sure they’re prepared.” In English we have to rely on the plural version of him/her, “they” and “them” to express that we really aren’t sure what the gender of the person we’re talking about is. This is normal, polite, and accurate.
Hopefully this helps you understand “the pronoun situation” in the West. The good news is that this might be a temporary phase as more Americans and Europeans voice their disagreements with this trivial obsession of our academic elites. Let’s hope it is.
Dan Jones
CourseWest 外教留学创始人、高级文书教练。2012年曾被美国政府遴选为富布莱特学者，赴马来西亚从事民间交流与微外交活动。热爱写作与思辨，深谙文理教育，常为多家美国媒体撰写时事政论。酷爱中国历史与饮食文化，常年往返于中美两国间，最善于从文化视角，挖掘出常被学生忽略的文书故事和角度。辅导出的文书总是华丽而不做作，风趣而不失稳重，文笔精湛却又能留住中国学生自己的味道。Dan指导的多名学生都曾获得美国、欧洲、加拿大等国家和地区的全奖或高额奖学金资助。
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