Facebook and OkCupid have embraced a spectrum of gender options, and now, the University of Vermont has recognized a third gender option, "neutral."
The New York Times reports that the University of Vermont has agreed to allow students to "select their own identity" in a number of ways. Students can choose a new first name, even if they haven't legally changed it, and they can choose a pronoun with which to refer to themselves in the campus information system. If students don't want to choose a pronoun for themselves, they can also use the system to request that they be referred to by name only.
Vermont's system allows professors to refer to students by their chosen pronouns and names, to avoid confusion and embarrassment for gender-neutral students. The Times notes that adding gender-neutral options into the university's information system took $80,000 in staff time to change the university's software system. It also took "nearly a decade of lobbying" and "the creation of a task force of students, faculty members, and administrators."
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"Some people try to reduce this whole topic to kids trying to be cool, or they're just acting out, or whatever, just trying to be different or new," Robyn Ochs, who founded an LGBT faculty and staff group at Harvard, told the Times. "But there have always been people who have felt profoundly uncomfortable in their assigned gender roles. Anything we can do to make them safer, or make them feel recognized, heard, seen, understood, we should do. To validate their identity and experience could, in fact, save their life."
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