Male or Female? Uh uh. Bellevue College Now Gives You Seven Gender Choices

Recently, Ron's wife was filling out an application for Bellevue College when she noticed something interesting. Instead of the standard "Male" and "Female" boxes that one checks on applications, there was the question: What is your 'gender identity'? And seven different options: Feminine, Masculine, Androgynous, Gender Neutral, Transgender, Other and Prefer Not To Answer.

Under that is the question: "What is your sexual orientation?" Where you can then check Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Queer Straight/Heterosexual, Other or Prefer not to answer.

After Ron showed us the application, we wondered why they were collecting this data. So I went down to Bellevue College and got some answers from the LGBTQ Center adviser, Colin Donovan.

"We started collecting the data this fall quarter. It's about being able to track how well GLBTQ, and gender variant students, are doing in school and how we can design better services, better classes, better programs to make sure these students succeed. Up until this point there has been no way to track how that's done."

The data is 100 percent private and not shared with anyone, and for now will only be used internally. This new data collecting system was accepted by all community and technical colleges in Washington state.

Petri Muhlhauser is involved in the school's LGBTQ Center leadership program. She says sometimes LGBTQ students have different needs.

Via: MyNorthwest

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Students at All-Girl College Promote Gender-Neutral Pronouns: 'Ze,' 'Sie,' 'E,' ''Ou' and 'Ve'

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way. Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else.

It's an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the "shes" and "hers" that dominate the introductions are keeping third-person company with "they," ''ze" and other neutral alternatives meant to convey a more generous notion of gender.

"Because I go to an all-women's college, a lot of people are like, 'If you don't identify as a woman, how did you get in?'" said sophomore Skylar Crownover, 19, who is president of Mouthing Off! and prefers to be mentioned as a singular they, but also answers to he. "I just tell them the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn't ask me for my gender."

Via: CNS News

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