Gender Neutral students in The Times

[Cooroo]

This woman student identifies as gender neutral and explains her reasons in attached shot. How many of us feel we 'belong' in a 'group of women'? Or men for that matter.
Because she can't be defined by her 'gender' she feels it necessary to deny biology, rather than question the whole concept of gender. Poor bloody kids.

*now living, not no...

I've just read the article. I'm going to interpret it as 829 gender critical students and Mx Non-binary. If they only ticked the "other" box, how's anyone to know different?

Oh, AC Grayling appears to be a huge disappointment, from that article. I thought he’d be a more critical thinker. Shame.
Indeed. Sure, sure, it should be easy to change 'gender' - and, as he says, change back. So long as it's clear that humans can't change sex and that changing 'gender' does not give rights to access single sex services (or awards, Bunce), that sex is what matters for medical records and formal identification purposes. There's no need to legally 'change gender'. Just allow people to put on whatever clothes they want, and use any (unearned) title Mr/Mx/Ms etc - might be a nuisance if software which currently checks the title field has to all be made to ignore it but surely an easier option overall than people having to legally change 'gender'?

looking back at the Vogue cover shoot of Caitlyn Jenner

Back then I still thought that transgender meant transsexual and was very sympathetic.

I didn't read the article but saw the photos and surrounding publicity.

To me even then, it highlighted the sheer sexism of our society. I knew damn well that a 50 something woman posing in underwear wouldn't be praised as brave and stunning it would be mutton dressed as lamb.

I was also struck by men posting how hot Caitlyn was because y'know "fuckability" is very important criteria to defining who is a woman.

Actually I think the most important thing about the story is the numbers.
830 out of half a million.

99.8% of students don't buy into this stuff. Generation Sensible in practice outweighs Generation Snowflake ?

Treat gender like an adjective - biological sex as a noun. The vast majority of services should have no relevance either way, marriage is no longer the preserve of heterosexual couples, pension ages have been equalised, discrimination is illegal. There might some inconvenience over pronouns.
But there are some areas of life where biology is extremely relevant - sport, medicine, crime, some religious cultures, etc etc. - and where your gender is irrelevant.

Two parts stand out to me;

“I was having a conversation with someone the other day who said outright, ‘If you have a vagina you are a woman.’ And you do get responses like, ‘Why can’t you just pick one side or the other?’ which is something bisexuals have been told for many years.”

Yet again conflating identity with sexual orientation.

The student said the response had been mostly “very positive” and “very freeing”, adding: “It’s really important to someone of my generation, being able to be yourself without being teased.

Find me a teenager throughout time or anybody for that matter who doesn't want to be themselves without being teased.

On a positive note there clearly are students who have been affected by this self absorbed nonsense!

who have not been affected grrr

Well put Stark
It could work so much better if everyone accepted the many possible variations of gender but also accepted the underlying unchangeable fact of biological sex.

It has occurred to me recently that "I'm non-binary because I'm more special than you Stepfird wives" is the 2018 version of "the cool girl."

conflating identity with sexual orientation.

It's also conflating biology with sexual orientation.

Being special is the new fitting in

Treat gender like an adjective - biological sex as a noun.

I like that.

Woman, man, girl, boy - all nouns

To paraphrase Magdalen Berns, loads of us know we are women because of biology, and that's as far as it goes.
Poor kids having to worry about whether they are feminine enough to be a woman, masculine enough to be a man, or in-between enough to be non-binary.