“My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away –“
—My Life had Stood a Loaded Gun—Emily Dickinson[1]
Two seats ahead of mine and one row to the left, Kelly, who with their bright complexion (probably) smells like daisies and sunshine even on a shitty day, says aloud, “I think what SHE is trying to say that SHE just really loves HER master, the MAN.” And I put my head down. It is one of the odd, sporadically placed cold days of September, too early for me to be awake and interacting with other people. (It’s approximately 10:45 am, on a Tuesday.) The cold air from the morning walk, still penetrating every centimeter of my lungs chilling from within, and dampening my already low mood further. So much lower in fact that I had definitely come down with a cold case of Grumpy Cat Syndrome. You know, where your face looks like there are twenty pound weights attached to the pointed corners of your mouth; your eyelids kept in perfect equilibrium over your eyes, half open half closed; your mood kept in such a way that your gut reaction to anything is, “leave me alone.”
* * *
Unnecessarily gendered language is something that plagues the English language in the United States and easily is the next topic to take down on the Gay Agenda’s to do list. This kind of language includes “nonparallel structures (e.g., man and wife), lexical asymmetries (e.g., governor and governess), and generic use of masculine form (e.g., he or man).” [2] Further, uses of masculine forms as generic identifiers for all people tend to lead readers to associate them predominantly with men. This erasure of non-men is not only a driving cause of rampant sexism in our society but also is what is leading feminist linguists to claim that language is fundamental to gender inequality.
“She's a man now
And there's nothing we can do to make her change her mind
She's a man now”
—iT—Christine and The Queens[3]
I was well into my first year of college before I ever thought that I could actually “come out” as anything other than gay. See I was a loud-mouthed, mass-media consuming twelve-year-old that was always looking inside myself. I was sharing anything and everything I could on Facebook, or Twitter, or even Tumblr if I thought what I wanted to share was especially counter-culture. So when I came to understand my sexuality through an episode of good ‘ole Degrassi[4],I told everyone, and fast. And I told everyone that they were the first person I told (straight people need to feel special too). Seven months later, I was out of the closet as gay.
Luckily, my second coming out as Non-Binary was a lot easier and even quicker than my twelve-year-old self could’ve fathomed. The process became more about finding the words and language that I could utilize to best describe myself, and less about helping other people find the language to define me. And the difficulties I faced the second time around were not similar to those I faced so many years ago. This time, these things were being coded into language, I wasn’t being told by my classmate Blake that I, “should just drop out of [my private Catholic school] because homos are going to hell anyways,” instead I was being told that every single character whose gender is ambiguous was actually a woman because SHE expressed HER emotions on page 45. My classmates, arguably more intellectually capable now, were no longer being aggressive towards me but to the theory of me, as if I don’t actually exist in this conversation. Reading and analyzing gender ambiguous literature as if everything in the universe fits a simple two gender/one sexuality mold. Eliminating variance.
In the front row, Shannon, who with their bulging biceps and defined abs (probably) eats bowls of nails for breakfast, chimes in, “I can see how someone would think the narrator is a male, because like this could easily be a love story between two men.” As they finished their thought and the discussion based class fell to silence, my queer mind was racing. Could this not just be about a gun? I raised my hand.
Class had a very peculiar rhythm to it at four weeks into the semester. We’d show up, the professor would take attendance, a few more people would show up late, she’d retake attendance, and then she would lecture for 10-15 minutes on whatever reading we had for homework which led us into a class discussion where we dissected what she had lectured on. So for the most part, a lot of class time was spent just airing opinions and coming to a greater consensus.
Steph, who with their freckled nose and cheek bones (probably) tastes like hot cocoa, squealed, “But there is just no indication that the narrator could be a guy! I mean, she would have to be masculine right? And she’s barely even recognizable as a woman as it is.” Could the gun seriously just have no gender? I strained my arm a little bit to raise my hand higher, as if the height of the hand determines speaking order. This class, which was supposed to be dedicated to a literary analysis of My Life Had Stood - a Loaded Gun, had turned into pin the genitalia on the gun. Nobody was concerned with what was happening anymore, the gender conversation had consumed all thought like a black hole consumes life. A complete disrespect to Dickinson, the class had embodied what is wrong with gendered language the most.
“When discussion goes so far to deny the existence of variance in gender, they deny the ability to freely interact with the world around them. Existing entirely in assumed thoughts and stereotyped behavior. Inherently plagiaristic, completely unoriginal, nothing new at all.” Is what I wish I had been able to say. But the class ended shortly after everyone’s mind had been blown by the, “the gun could be a guy!” comment. And I was left, frustratedly shoving my laptop and textbook into my canvas book bag. We all walked out of the two doors to the room and went on with our lives until the next class period. Where we were all shoved back into the stuffy classroom too early in the morning, on an even colder day in October.
[1] My life had stood a loaded gun is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. The central plot of the work is told as a love story between a gun and its “master” narrated by the gun. There is no clear depiction of gender in relation to the gun, and any assertion about the object’s feeling towards gender would be based on loose and unfounded assumptions of Emily Dickinson’s thought processes.
[2] “nonparallel structures. . . (e.g., he or man).” – comes from Contemporary Arguments Against Non-Sexist Language by Parks, J. B., & Roberton, M. A. in 1998.
[3] iT by Christine and The Queens is a song about the internal discovery that the singer is going through in relationship with her gender identity. While the song is not autobiographical, it tells the story of a transman that goes through the process of telling people in her life and their reactions to the transition. The “T” in “iT” is purposefully capitalized to allude to testosterone.
[4] Degrassi: The Next Generation Season 10 Episode 20
