Given that nearly every university student seems to believe TWAW, will sanity ever prevail?

[Velella]

That's it really. They are tomorrow's politicians, teachers, lawyers. I am at a loss to see how we can turn this round.

My ex FIL is a senior university lecturer/professor (not sure of his current role title) who lectures on human rights, oppression and so on (trying not to out him here!). His university is frequently mentioned in articles about protests, no platforming and so on and he is the most woke, progressive, lefty liberal you're likely to encounter, to the point of Viz caricature. I recently asked him his thoughts on the subject and he was adamant that it is all a load of absolute crap, people should be able to live however they wish but the idea you can identify out of and therefore change your born sex is utter nonsense. He said it is an insult to science and to people who are actually oppressed! He also said he shouts about this long and loud at work as he is not far off retirement anyway. Pretty much all of his colleagues agree with him but don't want to lose their jobs because the uni cares more about a bunch of deluded students waving placards than it does about free speech and reality!

I was quite taken aback how forceful his opinions were expressed - I rather suspect he has been having this debate regularly with others! TBH I'd expected him to say that TWAW, we must respect pronouns, blah blah so I was very pleased I asked!

If I’m asked if my ‘gender’ is male female or other I tick ‘other’ so I can get to the comments box where I can type a mini lecture on sex v gender

Same. Apparently the senior management at my university were surprised when the last staff survey revealed a high number of employees declaring their gender to be “other”. I expect a lot of us are gender heretics.

Errol was the figure only new students or the entire student population?

New, last years was somewhere under 400 iirc. As PP have said some of these could be gc people - queering the stats. That's one of my reservations about choosing 'other' if I ever get a bloody 'gender' question - would people like us using it give the impression that more people believe gender matters?

I suspect that a LOT of people are going to tick the "other" box, rather in the way that a lot of people once declared their religion as "Jedi" on the census.

(Ahem. I may have done that.)

You can't draw any conclusions because on the one hand there could be gender critical feminists saying they are non binary and on the other, gender fluid males saying female and vice versa because that's how they woke up feeling that day.

Thanks for clarifying Errol

Yes to queering the stats. Saying ‘other’ with no qualification will give the impression of more non-binary people.

Roomba he should publish his opinion. Get it on the paper. He can help. If he hasn't already.

I’m sorry, I own a couple of students that think this. I came to this threat too late and didn’t realise my own children believed this nonsense. We’ve had many an argument since.
BUT
They are saying what they are saying to look woke and progressive. Kind and more Pomo than parents. When you actually talk, they say things like ‘well prison and sport should have different rules’ or ‘so and so changes their pronouns on a whim, it’s so attention seeking’.
So, I have hope that with a bit of reading, life experience and subliminal messages from me that they will see what we see.

You can't draw any conclusions because on the one hand there could be gender critical feminists saying they are non binary and on the other, gender fluid males saying female and vice versa because that's how they woke up feeling that day.

We may know that, but The Powers That Be seem quite capable of drawing all manner of unwarranted conclusions from goodness knows what.

Well clearly 99.9% of straight Male students don’t believe that TWAW, because they are not dating them.

I'm being a bit obtuse and un co operative these days about any personal information. I will nearly always tick prefer not to say about everything. Although I did fill in a consultation a few months ago (a rare paper one) which asked me to pick a gender, which I crossed out and wrote sex.