hedwards: Also, I've been in classes dominated by women and quite frankly, this is completely inappropriate behavior on the part of the professor. I remember sitting through an incredibly tense discussion on gender free language as the only man in class. The last thing that a prof should do when a class is that lopsided is chew somebody out for sticking up for themselves against perceived bias.
rampancy: The problem is that the abuse of "PC-ness" actually ruins legitimate discussions about gender inclusivity and gender equity. I had a similar situation break out in one of my classes where several people (all male) – through no fault of their own – simply didn't fully understand the true importance of understanding gender in the classroom, and as a result felt attacked by others in the class.
I think such discussions are valuable, and there are some cases where being PC is actually very important...but people need to be reasonable about when and where to emphasize the importance of language. Kind of like our discussions about gamer "entitlement".
This is just a complete load of shit. Now, maybe if the ratio was a bit more even, you'd have a point. But when only 3% of a class that large is in that group, I do think that a significant amount of understanding is in order.
Chewing out a student for that is completely unprofessional and the instructor should have been censured over it. An explanation that he wasn't going to use a different term would have been more than sufficient, without demeaning the poor student who is already probably feeling quite alone in class.
Belgand: Standard Temperature and Pressure?
I never could deal with that acronym for Stone Temple Pilots. It sounded like everyone was suddenly a lot more interested in chemistry than I'd been led to believe.
IIRC, it's also a fuel additive.
