of Genitalia, Gender, and Pronouns.
Towards the end of last month, I read Jeffrey Eugenides's novel Middlesex [in about 3 days, i procrastinate so much] and wrote a book review in context on it. First of all, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to any of you.
Second, and this is the reason I brought it up, it started this certain train of thought in me I haven't quite been able to articulate so far, but I'm going to try for you, friends.
So the novel is about an intersexed person raised as a girl who finds out much later that she indeed has both male and female genitalia. This was probablematic for me, being that I had to write a paper on the book and couldn't just use the birth name of the narrator several time in the same sentence. I had to use pronouns, which presented a new problem. Calliope is both a he and a she. Which would I use? I used the problem to my advantage and let it take up the first page of my paper, going on about how it would be rude to say "it" or "he/she" everytime i brought up the narrator.
For the intents of the paper, I used "she" when referring to the time when the narrator lived as a little girl and "he" when referring to the narrator as the man writing the story. This decision was made based on the fact that English singular third person pronouns are technically based on gender, or the social roles associated with being male or female, not necessarily concretely based on sexual organs.
Am I the only one sick of social roles associated with being male or female?
Having a vagina and breasts has distracted me from this problem for quite some time. Why are there no proper English gender nonspecific singular third person pronouns? Why must everyone be either a he or a she? And what defines what is a he or a she? One's gender identity? One's sexual organs? I've always felt that it is the gender identity that defines what pronouns you want to be referred to in. But why should we have to choose "boy" or "girl"? Where is the middle ground? And why is it so important what genitalia one has when we're talking about, for example, art? When someone says "Oh, I love the shading he did on the tree," are you immediately thinking about the artist's penis? So why was it relevant to bring up gender in the first place?
And don't give me that bullshit about "he" being a gender nonspecific term. "He" refers to penis-havers.
Solutions? Some claim that it's okay to use "they" in the singular form. While "they" is indeed gender nonspecific, it would be grammatically incorrect to say, for example, "Calliope went to their mother’s house," or, "I've been in a monogamous relationship with them for years."
Several unofficial sources claim that there are less mainstream gender-neutral pronouns, such as sie and hir, xe, ve, ze and mer, zie, e, and thon [wiki article]. However, these words have yet to be defined in any English dictionary as singular gender nonspecific pronouns.
So what do I choose? My loyalty to language [I've always thought if you were going to speak a language, why not try to speak it properly]? or my belief that in order to dismantle this patriarchal system piece by piece, we need to focus not on having the rights of a man, but on having the right to the full human experience, be we a "he", a "she", or anyone else?
I think you already know the answer to that my friends.
But, on the other hand, I could not advocate the immediate disappearance of gender-specificity. Identity, for me, is the sum of one's goals, one's struggles, and one's views. I am a queer black woman who loves travel and the small things in life, and believes that sometimes words are the best thing we can give another person. Of course, I could go one forever about what and who I am, what and who I love, what and who I've done, but that's the thing about identity. It's not one-dimensional, it's not something that can be described in a paragraph or less.
And being completely gender-neutral is the same thing as "being [racially] colorblind." It's a denial of one's struggles at the hands of the Western system we live in. I don't see the color of your skin and therefore your differences do not exist to me. Guess what? I've felt this difference my entire life. It doesn't just go away because you don't wish to acknowledge or address it.
What I am wondering then, is not why gender matters, but why we've allowed it to permeate every sense of our language? People are not that didactic. Why should our language be?
This is also my explanation for in future entries, when you will run into words like xyr and xe and xem. =)
Second, and this is the reason I brought it up, it started this certain train of thought in me I haven't quite been able to articulate so far, but I'm going to try for you, friends.
So the novel is about an intersexed person raised as a girl who finds out much later that she indeed has both male and female genitalia. This was probablematic for me, being that I had to write a paper on the book and couldn't just use the birth name of the narrator several time in the same sentence. I had to use pronouns, which presented a new problem. Calliope is both a he and a she. Which would I use? I used the problem to my advantage and let it take up the first page of my paper, going on about how it would be rude to say "it" or "he/she" everytime i brought up the narrator.
For the intents of the paper, I used "she" when referring to the time when the narrator lived as a little girl and "he" when referring to the narrator as the man writing the story. This decision was made based on the fact that English singular third person pronouns are technically based on gender, or the social roles associated with being male or female, not necessarily concretely based on sexual organs.
Am I the only one sick of social roles associated with being male or female?
Having a vagina and breasts has distracted me from this problem for quite some time. Why are there no proper English gender nonspecific singular third person pronouns? Why must everyone be either a he or a she? And what defines what is a he or a she? One's gender identity? One's sexual organs? I've always felt that it is the gender identity that defines what pronouns you want to be referred to in. But why should we have to choose "boy" or "girl"? Where is the middle ground? And why is it so important what genitalia one has when we're talking about, for example, art? When someone says "Oh, I love the shading he did on the tree," are you immediately thinking about the artist's penis? So why was it relevant to bring up gender in the first place?
And don't give me that bullshit about "he" being a gender nonspecific term. "He" refers to penis-havers.
Solutions? Some claim that it's okay to use "they" in the singular form. While "they" is indeed gender nonspecific, it would be grammatically incorrect to say, for example, "Calliope went to their mother’s house," or, "I've been in a monogamous relationship with them for years."
Several unofficial sources claim that there are less mainstream gender-neutral pronouns, such as sie and hir, xe, ve, ze and mer, zie, e, and thon [wiki article]. However, these words have yet to be defined in any English dictionary as singular gender nonspecific pronouns.
So what do I choose? My loyalty to language [I've always thought if you were going to speak a language, why not try to speak it properly]? or my belief that in order to dismantle this patriarchal system piece by piece, we need to focus not on having the rights of a man, but on having the right to the full human experience, be we a "he", a "she", or anyone else?
I think you already know the answer to that my friends.
But, on the other hand, I could not advocate the immediate disappearance of gender-specificity. Identity, for me, is the sum of one's goals, one's struggles, and one's views. I am a queer black woman who loves travel and the small things in life, and believes that sometimes words are the best thing we can give another person. Of course, I could go one forever about what and who I am, what and who I love, what and who I've done, but that's the thing about identity. It's not one-dimensional, it's not something that can be described in a paragraph or less.
And being completely gender-neutral is the same thing as "being [racially] colorblind." It's a denial of one's struggles at the hands of the Western system we live in. I don't see the color of your skin and therefore your differences do not exist to me. Guess what? I've felt this difference my entire life. It doesn't just go away because you don't wish to acknowledge or address it.
What I am wondering then, is not why gender matters, but why we've allowed it to permeate every sense of our language? People are not that didactic. Why should our language be?
This is also my explanation for in future entries, when you will run into words like xyr and xe and xem. =)