Queer Corner: Understanding Transgender
By Eugene Riordan
Published: Thursday, November 11, 2010
http://www.maroon-news.com/commentary/queer-corner-understanding-transgender-1.1771554Secret time: we live in a gendered world. Shocking, I know. I am sure it is something that has never struck you, going through your day-to-day life. Isn't everything equal, you ask? Don't we live in a gender-blind world?
Unfortunately, no. Our everyday speech is separated into genders, and it is separated into a binary. Using English, our nouns don't have gender, which makes learning romance languages somewhat obnoxious (what do you mean that the blackboard is male? Did it tell you that?). Objects are helpfully known as it (with the exception of ladybugs, which obviously are always she), but this puts increased pressure on the idea that people are required to have a gender. Isn't that what separates us from random objects?
