I’m not a student at Georgia State University, but I’m offended anyway.
I identify as a 23-year-old apache helicopter, but out of respect for my indigenous neighbors who lived on the land I stole 150 years ago, I merely call myself a helicopter. My pronouns are wop, whoop, whip, whoosh, whoopwhoop.
Georgia State University however, has violently invalidated my gender choices by excluding them from the list of 10 gender categories with a collection of 50 pronouns to choose from, once again perpetuating an oppressive 21st-century pan-gender supremacy of those who identify as “Co, En, Ey, He, She, They, Xie, Yo, Ze, and Ve,” while dismissing one who might be different.
Pronoun choices at Georgia State University https://t.co/edID5hVnFL pic.twitter.com/czG4XvsucX
— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) December 6, 2020
Even though the school offered a space for “other,” the fact that they didn’t even bother to list my own is an inherently violent erasure of my existence and forces me to take the traumatic steps to actually write in my pronouns.
To make matters worse, students are asked to choose their pronouns before signing up for a “WomenLead” class on entrepreneurship. But if they were really being inclusive, wouldn’t they be holding classes for “PeopleLead?” We’re well beyond shattering the glass ceiling of the patriarchy by now, which in and of itself was a culture war built on the violent binary premise that there are two genders.
I have no solutions to rectify the problem other than demanding them to offer some form of reparation for my emotional distress.
