Gender as Language

and the Pronominal Address War looks but to the frontage, the appearance. Billy Bud The individual identity of the human subject is, as Sigmund Freud said, not stable or rational, but an ever-conflicted tension between id and ego, conscious and subconscious mind.1 The detail of this constant battle, fluidly laying itself out in the individual!s linguistic choices as well as u on the surface of the subject!s body, is informed by the battlefield intelligences of the cultural a"es. These a"es both define the individual and are themselves simultaneously redefined at their oint of intersection within the individual. Freud!s named conscious and subconscious are not only at wor# against one another but also against one another u on a multitude of conte"tual a"es. $t any given oint in time, an individual is the summation of such a battle on any combination of the various fronts% race, ethnicity, nationalism &or lac# of', age, se", social class, and, among a myriad of others, gender. (oo#ing toward one!s origin, one!s authentic self, for guidance on solidifying a recise and accurate identity via linguistic re resentations is com licated, if not im ossible, when one considers re resentations as such meeting laces between the conscious and subconscious and, as such, without single origin. )an S erber defines re resentations as relationshi s between at least three terms% that which re resents, that which is re resented, and the user of the re resentation. $ fourth term may be added when there is a roducer of the re resentation distinct from its user.*
1 *

Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id S erber, )an. Explaining Culture, A Naturalistic Approach &+"ford 1,,-'

.*

* /e goes on to define the re resentation as a hybrid, co-owned yet never fully owned by all of those involved in the relationshi . 0nside its user the re resentation is a ental representation1a memory, a belief, or an intention1$ re resentation may also e"ist in the environment of its user12 it is then a public representation1communication between a user and a roducer distinct from one another.. The rivate, urely sychological re resentations are internal to the information- rocessing device while the ublic, such as te"ts or s eeches, are e"ternal to the device.3 This demonstrates the necessary hybridi4ation of a re resentation within the individual identified by it. The re resentation asses through two rocesses within the human mind relevant to what S erber calls the e idemiology of re resentations% intra-individual rocesses of thought and memory and inter-individual rocesses whereby the re resentations1affect those of other subjects through modifications of their common hysical environment. There is a natural fluidity to this model of thought, rocessed as it is at the interface between the brain and its environment2 they are artly sychological, artly ecological.5 The most obvious interface between brain and environment is the materiality of the human body. S erber diagrams the causal chain of culture creation, com osed of strings of inter laying mental and ublic re resentations that conglomerate to form cultural re resentations which are made u of many versions, mental and ublic ones. 6ach mental version results from the inter retation of a ublic re resentation which is itself an e" ression of a mental re resentation.- Furthermore, abiding by the cultural definitions shared by the natural sciences, S erber oints out that everything with such causal force, owes those owers e"clusively to its hysical ro erties. /owever, he
. 3

S erber, )an. 0bid -1 5 0bid -* 0bid *-

.*

. also says that these cultural facts are not biological facts2 1not sychological facts2 1 not a sum of individual facts,7 which, in combination with a su osed materiality,

suggests to the world of cognitive science that the ossibility of inter reting these material traces hints at an underlying system% for e"am le, a language, a code, or an ideology.8 S erber!s ro osed underlying system of modules, domain s ecific1too novel and too variable to be the s ecific domain of a genetically s ecified module, offer an interesting ers ective on the origin &or lac# of origin' of the human individual. +f course culture and individual identity are distinct entities2 this model wor#s, however, to demonstrate the otential hysical ower of their shared and e"changed re resentations. There is, by S erber!s account, the material e"istence of and hysical flow of information between the self-identified subject and his9her environment via the act of naming and characteri4ation. 0n essence and effect, this underlying sign system acts as a fluid modifier that #ee s meaning in a state of flu". $t the same time, as various a"es intersect and engage in sychological interlocution, the a"es themselves ta#e on new meanings in relation to one another. :ithin S erber!s model, juggling all of the a"es of sometimes contradictory self-identifications in relation to one another may be enacted conce tually at a sort of er endicular integration of conce ts within the mind. 0n various cultures, identity is filtered through natural dis ositions and their side-effects, susce tibilities. S erber writes, 6ach culture is characteri4ed by a different set of conce ts1+ne view of conce t formation1is that a new conce t is formed by combining several reviously available conce ts.1;

7 8

S erber, )an. 0bid *3 , 0bid 1.3 1; S erber, )an.

1; ----7

3 0n The !istory of "exuality, Foucault ac#nowledges one such shared re resentation is that of the homose"ual identity and mar#s its origin very s ecifically at 187; by a assing of the ublic medicali4ation of the term into the mental re resentations of the multitudinous minds of its homose"ual actors. +bviously, this date does not accurately mar# the origin of the act of homose"uality. 0t is an accurate mar#er, however, for the birth of the representation of ho osexuality as conce t formed via communication between a"es of identity and the closing of causal circuitry between ublic and rivate re resentations% 1the sychological, sychiatric, medical category of homose"uality was constituted from the moment it was characteri4ed 1less by a ty e of se"ual relations than by a certain <uality of se"ual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and the feminine in oneself. /omose"uality a eared as one of the forms of se"uality when it was trans osed from the ractice of sodomy onto a #ind of interior androgyny, a herma hrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a tem orary aberration2 the homose"ual was now a s ecies.11 The te"t may also be a mar#er of a sort of mitotic division of the individual!s gender a"is of identity from that of the se"uality a"is. These two threads, li#e the twins with identical )=$, who otentially and often inevitably become contradictions of one another due to the nurture half of their nature9nurture e" erience, have reached human conce tuali4ation as two meta horical sides of the same genetic identity. The gender and homose"ual a"es of identity are, thus, offs ring of the same human conce t, that articulated by Foucault!s definition of modern homose"uality. That her aphrodis which Foucault ositions as soul-embedded is conte"tuali4ed within the homose"ual e" erience, a lace where variant gender identity may be the most easily recogni4able. >ender variances are, however, not e"clusively characteristic to the named homose"ual
11

Foucault, ?ichel. The !istory of "exuality#$, The Will to %no&ledge &(ondon 1,7-'

3.

5 subject. The articular identity a"is of gender has, as will be demonstrated, fully gained inde endence as a conce t of e"ternal recognition and self-identity within certain o ulations. :hen one considers shared cultural re resentations for this a"is of otential variation, however, at the brain9environment interfaces of the linguistic and the bodily, a great unintelligibility remains ervasive. /istorically, some cultural grou s have demonstrated an e" anded ca ability for the e" ression of gender variance, while others remain largely illiterate. )oes this suggest a artial or mid-modular develo mental stage in the rocessing intelligibility and conce tuali4ation of gender variance amongst the human o ulation@ +r has the e"isting olarity of the male9female binary in conjunction with institutional ower structures revented the com lete continuum from incarnating the s aces between the oles@ 0n Episte ology of the Closet, 6ve Aosofs#y Sedgwic# addresses the a"is of se"uality in its modern incarnation, s ecifically the defining conceit of Foucault!s modern homose"uality. She allows for the conce tuali4ation as, in S erber!s model, a sort of modular enhancement% 1modern Bse"uality! 1entangled with the historically distinctive conte"ts of and structures that now count as kno&ledge that such B#nowledge! can scarcely be a trans arent window onto a se arate realm of se"uality but, rather, itself constitutes that se"uality.1* /owever, she is careful to recogni4e the emergence of the gendered identity, mar#ing its discursive migration toward re-marginali4ation, this time at the s#irts of a divided homose"ual identity. She critici4es fellow scholars for failing to address modern homose"uality as a s ace of overla ing, contradictory, and conflictual

1*

Aosofs#y Sedgwic#, 6ve. The Episte ology of the Closet &/ertfordshire 1,,;'

33

definitional forces1 and 1reinforcing a dangerous consensus of #nowingness1more than vestigially contradictory structurings of contem orary e" erience.1. She details a modern homose"uality u until the early 1,7;s as one mar#ed &and divided' by gender olarity, a binary construction of heterose"uality2 1women loving women were seen ore female, men who loved men as <uite ossibly more male. The a"is of se"uality1not only e"actly coe"tensive with the a"is of gender but e" ressive of its most heightened essence.13 Sedgwic# calls this a gender-se aratist framewor# and one that was destined to be confronted in the following decade by the homose"ual act of establishing re resentative forces in icons of the o osite se". Cames )ean has been as numinous an

icon for lesbians as >arbo or )ietrich has for gay men115 This is an essential henomenon in the further crystalli4ation of the gender identity a"is and its concurrent re resentation. $s well, it substantiates gender as itself a re resentation - not a thing e<ual to the se"ed body or indicated by the se"ed body!s dualism - a shifting S erbian roduct of numerous retellings, a rocess re<uiring re etition to e"ist, and as such, a signification necessarily subverted by its own re etition. Cudith Dutler writes% $s a rocess, signification harbors within itself what the e istemological discourse refers to as agency. The rules that govern intelligible identity1are artially structured along matrices of gender hierarchy and com ulsory heterose"uality, o erate through repetition' The injunction to be a given gender roduces necessary failures, a variety of incoherent configurations that in their multi licity e"ceed and defy the injunction by which they are generated1There is no self rior to the convergence1 rior to its entrance into this conflicted cultural field.11. 13

Aosofs#y Sedgwic#, 6ve. 35 0bid .15 0bid .8 1Dutler, Cudith. (ender Trouble &=ew Eor# 1,,,'

183-185

7 There may indeed be no self, but there are the ressures of adherence from the e"isting re resentations laying out their conflict on the cultural battlefield. $ sideta#ing, a re resentation-claiming, inevitably ensues. +ne claims the names to which they closest fit, and the names bend to the claimer!s being. (anguage in the abstract as, an o en system of signs by which intelligibility is insistently created and contested,17 accurately abstract, is not the war-time language of the everyday e" erience. Transse"ual sociolinguist Cason Fromwell has em loyed discourse analysis in his study of gender variant eo les in attem t to reveal some linguistic resence between language in the abstract &theory, objective #nowledge' and the subjective e" erience, revealing that e"cluded middle state - characteri4ed both by bodily signs and verbal re resentations of the gender variant vernaculars - the interface where re resentations of gender &among others' are e" ressed. /is studies scour an area of borderland where language itself has neither fully enetrated nor where its subjects can always fully enetrate available o tions of re resentation. S ecifically, his wor# involves the language of the transse"ual and FT?-identified &female to male' o ulations. /is wor# highlights the ressure in gender self-identification G the e"clusion from and fracturing of available diction - from e"isting discourses, noting both the identity-invasive diagnoses dis ensed by the medicosychological fields and the archaic harboring of the gender binary by radical feminists who often discount 1agency in sha ing and resha ing the meanings of bodies, se"es, genders, and se"ualities in articular and idiosyncratic ways.18 The transse"ual individual may be considered to be at the e"treme end &or more accurately, inched middle' of interface ressure, those whose bodily interface of

17 18

Dutler, Cudith &1,,,'. 183 Fromwell, Cason. Trans en )*T"s, Identities, Bodies, (enders, ) "exualities &Fhicago 1,,,'

3;-31

8 sychology and ecology are most violently embattled, who have the greatest distance to cover, and concurrently may be forced into the greatest agility of meta-re resentational activity along the gender-identity a"is and its available re resentations. ?etare resentational abilities1create remar#able susce tibilities. The obvious function served by the ability to entertain half-understood conce ts and ideas is to rovide intermediate ste s towards their full understanding.1, The intermediate ste s embodying these half-understood conce ts and the re resentations symboli4ing them, those individuals filling the ga s between the transse"ual and the cultural absolute of olar male or female, constitute the majority of the human o ulation2 and, as S erber!s modular thought indicates, it would be im ossible for most individuals to occu y for a lifetime a single oint of re resentation along this continuum. >ender as such is something one becomes G but can never be G 1 #ind of becoming or activity, and 1ought not to be conceived as a noun1or a static cultural mar#er, but rather as an incessant and re eated action of some sort.*; 0n its constant beco ing and noun-less state, its adjectival trait&or'-shi , gender can only be a set of signs, a readable te"t that attem ts intelligibility within a binary aradigm. >ender is the re eated styli4ation of the body, a set of re eated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to roduce the a earance of substance, of a natural sort of being.*1 $nd, as Hi#i :ilchins writes, 1>ender is a system of meanings and symbols G and the rules, rivileges and unishments ertaining to their use G for ower and se"uality% masculinity and femininity, strength and

1, *;

S erber, )an. 7* Dutler, Cudith. &1,,,' *1 0bid 3.-33.

13.

, vulnerability, action and assivity, dominance and wea#ness.** 0t communicates by the medium of the body. /ence, it is language. $s aforementioned, the transse"ual communication of individual identity may be the most heavily ta"ed set of re resentations. /owever, many if not most, in all s aces of se", gender, and se"uality identity occu ancy endure some form of gender as language unintelligibility. :ilchins writes, 0 don!t ull on certain clothes in the morning or style my hair a articular way because of something within me. 0 do these acts in a manner consistent with either masculine or feminine norms because to do otherwise would render me socially unintelligible.*. $lthough the author is a erson of a non-binary gender, the statement lends an interesting vantage oint into the micro-gender variances of otherwise heterose"ual, olari4ed individuals. :hat is the effect of an instance of gender variant behavior@ Iolari4ation at all levels of behavior and communication is not realistic for almost any modern individual. $t some oint, most everyone will e" erience within individual identity a re resentation that is not characteristic of their assigned birth se". The binary terms an+&o an and ale+fe ale are essentially ythical entities, having collected a range of traits unto themselves. They are signs of signs by Holand Darthes! model of mythologies, not words sim ly signifying the signified, but whole systems of values as signifiers of heightened and e" anded conce ts, ta#en hold of by the re etitive nature of re resentation that informs myth, and transformed into em ty arasites that have been freed from biogra hy in order to free the icture and allow it to receive its signified.*3 Similarly, within S erber!s a roach, neither a single version nor a synthesis of several versions is
**

:ilchins, Hi#i. 0t!s Eour >ender, Stu idJ (ender,ueer, -oices fro Beyond the "exual Binary. 6d. Coan =estle, Flare /owell, Hi#i :ilchins. &(os $ngeles *;;*' *5 *. 0bid *3 *3 Darthes, Holand. .ythologies &' 117-118

1; an a ro riate object of study. $ myth should be considered, rather, as the set of all its versions.*5 0s the contem lative, academic male-bodied individual who enjoys gardening and rides a bicycle less male than the aggressive, cor orate F6+ who gets regular manicures and drives a Hange Hover@ Dy the same accord, is the female-bodied individual who has had their breasts removed, injects testosterone, wor#s as a hysical laborer, and refers to be referred to as a man, less male by ublic signification than the other two@ Some cultural hierarchy of re resentation im acts the success of the intelligibility of all three, both rivately and ublicly. The visual artist /ector Falcon used his body as an artistic subject in an e" loration of levels of manliness. /e hotogra hed his drastic hysical transformation from a lower level of culturally defined hysical masculinity to that of a higher by what he describes as, transforming my body in seven wee#s by consuming steroids, erforming aerobic e"ercises and body building, undergoing a military diet and documenting every ste 1*The hoto documentation of the transition, /0# Altered .etabolis &which can be viewed at htt %99www.hectorfalcon.com9metalt.htm' shows a somewhat unfit, overweight, hairy man who, over the course of the e" eriment, becomes associated with the KmaleL beauty ractices in :estern culture. Falcon, at the roject!s finale, was tanned and toned, his body shaved to re resent as a hallic object. /airless, erect, with all his muscles erfectly delineated.*7 /is muscular and toned a earance to a definition of contem orary masculine identity is undeniable1with the ractice of weightlifting1Khe

*5 *-

S erber, )an. *7 )omingue4, 0rving. $ Ilastic ?asculinity. 1 elec. *;;7%3 *7 0bid 1,

18

11 is ableL to articulate a ragmatic erformative 1 Bliberates! those who ractice it of feminine characteristics or attributes.*8 Falcon has engaged other gender-related ieces as well, including 2ink, a focus on the female body in which he attached a grou of Ca anese students with a single chain lin#ing all of their body iercings, bearing testimony to the hysical im risonment of the female body and its Baccessories of femininity!1*, Falcon!s wor# lends insight, fundamental in that it is a voice not s ecifically <ueer, to discourses dealing with gender variance and gender-identity. /e <uestions the culturally recogni4ed signs that re resent delineations in gender, the male from the female, the ore ale from the less ale. /e enacts the arodic re etition of gender as mythic creation. $s the effects of a subtle and olitically enforced erformativity, gender is an Bact,! 1o en to s littings, self- arody, self-criticism, and those hy erbolic e"hibitions of Bthe natural! that, in their very e"aggeration, reveal its fundamentally hantasmatic status..; 0n enacting the surface of his body as the natural, Falcon transforms his ersonal interface between sychology and ecology into the site of a dissonant and denaturali4ed erformance that reveals the erformative status of the natural itself..1 /is lea is not that of the transse"ual. Dut, at the same time, it is. Falcon may not live as a woman in his life as an artist and then erform the an while on steroids and at the gym, but his self-alterations reflect movement along the same a"is of identity, mani ulating signs within the same coded system as that of the individual see#ing se"ual reassignment surgery. Falcon, however, never moves into a state of unintelligibility. /e is clearly
*8 *,

)omingue4, 0rving. 18 0bid *; .; Dutler, Cudith &1,,,' 187 .1 0bid 18-

1* recogni4able within the gender binary. /e lays with his adjectives, the com ulsory ordering of attributes into coherent gender se<uences, and lightly <uestions the viability of an and &o an1by the dissonant lay of attributes that fail to conform to se<uential or causal models of intelligibility..* /is movement along the a"is is relatively slight in com arison with the full otential of gender variation, but his lay is essential in conce tuali4ing the breadth of the gender continuum. /e artici ates in a gender arody that reveals that the original identity after which gender fashions itself is an imitation without origin1 ostures an imitation. This er etual dis lacement constitutes a fluidity of identities that suggests an o enness to resignification and reconte"tuali4ation1.. The full resignification, the totali4ing of signifiers to include all claimed individual identities that align as variances of the signified &i.e. all three males% academic, F6+, and laborer' creates a linguistic disru tion in the sychological homes of many mental re resentations. )isru tion occurs because an individual is ca able of articulating an identity founded u on both9and as well as neither9nor and either9or..3 This sort of disru tion is a natural by- roduct of the communication of a reflective belief. The individual belief that one!s gender identity falls outside that defined by the gender binary, while embedded in the individual!s intuitive belief, is bound to be only a theory in the minds of many others, #e t under scrutiny and o en to revision and challenge, rather than a fact that could be erceived or unconsciously inferred from erce tion..5 This half-understood ositioning is, by nature, volatile yet re lete with linguistic otential.

.* ..

Dutler, Cudith &1,,,'. .* 0bid 17.3 Fromwell, Cason. 1*8 .5 S erber, )an. ,1

1. The very structure of reflective beliefs, the fact that they are attitudes to a re resentation, rather than directly to a real state of affairs, allows endless diversity..+n a cultural level, gender variances are, at their most successful re resentational level, collectively reflective beliefs. For many individuals, however, gender variance feels li#e an innate and dee truth of ersonal identity. >ender variant eo le, s ecifically transse"uals and gender<ueer-identified eo le, and their bodies are, thus, the a3ant garde of re resentation in both its original battlefield meaning and in the aesthetic a ro riation of the term a3ant garde as well. The body may be used, as described above, to co y and imitate e"isting re resentations, to recreate definitions. $ erson can dress in the language offered to match their mental re resentations, can go as far as injecting hormones and having genital-reconstructive surgery. Dut how do verbal re resentations lay into these e<uations@ 10f gender is always an artifice that co ies something else, then all gender is a reuse of familiar stereoty es according to the rules for their use. $ll gender is drag. $nd those that fail, that are read as <ueer, are sim ly those that brea# the rules. Thus neither a Streisand drag <ueen doing Darbra nor Darbra herself doing woman is any more or less real. There is no real gender to which they might be com ared. Doth use common symbols to achieve a visual meaning. The drag <ueen a ears false because we don!t grant her access to those symbols..7 Fulturally, the drag <ueen is not addressed in the same manner as Darbra Streisand either. :e don!t offer the gender variant drag individual the naturali4ed choice to wear a dress daily2 as well, this individual!s mental re resentation of selfidentity is not reinforced -- nor is there a develo ed conce tuali4ation reflected in language for such reinforcement in most cultures G by the agreement of a culturally common address. S ecifically, 0 would li#e to address the use of the ronoun in casual

..7

S erber, )an. ,7 :ilchins, Hi#i. *7-*8.

13 conversation. $t the bac# of this essay, 0 have attached several ages from a website that includes a written archive of gender<ueer identities based on the re resentations rovided by individual submissions. The identities are sub-categori4ed into the following% olygendered, bi-gendered, non-gendered, third-gender, transwoman, and transman. The following are e"cer ts of identity descri tions% Ioly->endered% $.' 4...fratboy trapped in the body of a pornstar'I5 a fe inist'I get pissed if shit is fucked up, and en aren5t allo&ed to say the piggy things I do'I5 sleeping &ith a guy.6 D.' 4her aphrodyke6 F.'4' ale7identified pansexual gender,ueer leather per3.6 Di->endered% ).' 4I &as al&ays a &o an &ho &anted to be a an, &ho &anted to be a &o an.6 6.' 4'I did not identify &ith either gender entirely, but &ith nearly e,ual parts of both.6 F.' 4'tranny type'planning to go testosterone'*rustrated by li itations of dual gender syste 'see s *T. is the best 8kno&n8 description of yself, but really see yself &alking the 3ery, 3ery thin line that separates ale fro fe ale.6 >.' 4I go by t&o na es'6 /.' 4'&ould like to li3e ore ale, but isn5t cra9y about ale culture and likes dyke culture'6 0.' 4'unable to li3e as a &o an on a daily basis'dressed in fe ale clothing'she feels uch ore free and co fortable'really a "he ale'6 =on-gendered% C.' 4I identify by neither'I use both ale and fe ale bathroo s'I WI22 ha3e a beard and no breasts of the ale or fe ale 3ariety and no reproducti3e organs'6 A.' 4When faced &ith the concepts of asculine and fe inine, I feel hopelessly confused. .y capacity for fe ininity is about 9ero,'relationship to asculinity is ixed'6

15 Third->ender% (.' 4I &as assigned fe ale at birth, but clearly identify as ore asculine than fe inine. I don5t belie3e in a binary gender syste '6 ?.' 4I too feel like a third sex'Ne3er could relate to &hat the &orld says a fe ale should act or feel.6 =.' 4I &as born ale, I identify ore as fe ale, but choose to re ain &ith ale traits'I consider yself an : in7bet&eener5'6 ;< These e"am les of re resentation selection via self-identification reveal an unfilled &or artially-filled' s ace in the 6nglish language, a non-binary gender terminology. :ord choices li#e conce ts of masculine and feminine &A', assigned female &(', and what the world says a female should1 &?', indicate direct ressure on the individual identity from ublic re resentations a lied to their se"ed bodies. ?eanwhile, others li#e the Shemale who lives as a man but feels much more free and comfortable dressing as a woman in e"am le 0.2 the declaration of a ersonal historical identity with neither in e"am le 6.2 and the desire to ass as a male while not wanting to ta#e lace in male culture in e"am le /. each indicate very s ecific mental re resentations of self-identification. These either disru t at the bodily interface in that they mismatch with cultural re resentations, or they altogether lac# cultural re resentations and the language of definition. Still others demonstrate the natural creative ability to develo the necessary significations for what is largely culturally unintelligible. The herma hrody#e, &D', the male-identified anse"ual gender<ueer leather erv. &F', and the in-betweener &=' each demonstrate the mind!s ca ability to a ro riate and rearrange, to reconte"tuali4e the available language in creating s ecific names for their non-standard realities.
.8

Feldman, Ste he. :ho $re >ender<ueers@ (ender "phere. htt %99genders here.;catch.com9shereidentity.htm

1$t another age on the website, a thread engaged by several users details the search for an ade<uate ronoun for such an individual who doesn!t fit into the standard binary system. 6li writes, Eour ost made me thin# about the name9 ronoun <uic#sand 0!m currently living in1not #nowing what 0 want fol#s to call me. 0 really, really need a good gender neutral, third erson singular ronoun that is in common s o#en usage.., 6li faces a huge roblem in his9her <uest. =o such ronoun e"ists ervasively in contem orary 6nglish-s ea#ing culture. ?any gender variant individuals have ado ted the .rd erson ronoun o osite of their birth se" when it more closely fits their identity.

?any more, however, as demonstrated above, do not feel a ro riately9ade<uately addressed by either he or she. 0s this linguistic ursuit realistic and9or necessary@ :hat actually is the im act, if any, of re etitive social address that does not match an individual!s identity@ Firstly, when an individual is addressed in the third erson ronominal, this automatically suggests the resence of at least one other individual. The re resentation of the selected binary ronoun &he or she' is immediately re licated as three different mental re resentations. The cultural im lications of the he9she address are multi-fold and could constitute an entirely se arate 5,;;; word a er, es ecially regarding the im act of the o ular ress on the dominant gender binary. =ot only is the s ecified individual named by a s ea#er, they are re resented as this binary selection to a resent third arty. Their gender identity &and all that is culturally determined by it' is e"ternally determined at least twice in their resence. 0dentity as male or female by way of the ublic address immediately ta#es on social meaning. Hoger Fowler writes, /aving established a erson
.,

htt %99gender-s here.;catch.com9transbutch.htm

17 as an e"am le of a ty e, our relationshi with that erson is sim lified% we thin# about that erson in term of the <ualities which we attribute to the category already ree"isting in our minds1may harden into stereoty e1,3; and this act G reinforced rimarily by the media G occurs at a very rimitive level when differentiating between se"ed bodies by way of ronoun. To the gender<ueer-identified erson, this act can border violence. 0n her e" loration of language as hysical entity, and as such, otentially violent, Cudith Dutler describes language as having real hysical ro erties within the body% (anguage sustains the body1it is by being inter ellated within the terms of language that a certain social e"istence of the body first becomes ossible1one must imagine an im ossible scene, that of a body that has not yet been given social definition, a body that1becomes accessible on the occasion of an address, a call, an inter ellation that does not discover this body, but constitutes it fundamentally1the address constitutes a being within the ossible circuit of recognition and, accordingly, outside of it, in abjection.31 She osits that if language can sustain a body, it can e<ually threaten its e"istence, that to be injured by s eech is to suffer a loss of conte"t,1not to #now where you are1 To be addressed injuriously is1not to #now the time and lace of injury, and to suffer the disorientation of one!s situation.3* 0t then follows that to be dis laced from identity re eatedly by s eech in the form of address is to be injured re eatedly by it. Dut, in that dis lacement there might e"ist the ossibility of disru ting and subverting the effects roduced by such s eech, a faultline e" osed that leads to the undoing of this rocess of discursive constitution@3. The site of re etitive injury is, thus, the site of otential reconte"tuali4ation. 0t is e"actly at this site that <ueer and gender<ueer-identified individuals have begun to both subvert e"isting
3; 31

Fowler, Hoger. 2anguage in the Ne&s & 1,,1' ,* Dutler, Cudith. Excitable "peech &=ew Eor# 1,,7' 5 0bid 3 Dutler, Cudith. &1,,7' 1,

3* 3.

18 language and create new language. S ecifically regarding the ronominal address, a whole range of alternative ronouns has develo ed within gender<ueer subcultures over the ast two decades. The most common of these have included hir, 9e, and s+he & ronounced see'. These, often re<uested as referred ronouns by those finding them well-matched to ersonal identity, very clearly mar# the origin9s read of change 1 due to Bsocial meaning! and are <uite obviously indicative as le"ical variants of the attem ted creation of norms which constitute and identify that grou 133 Social ressures, including historically enforced norms, the o ular ress and media, are cultural agencies of meaning and, as demonstrated, lay a huge role in the imitative ca acity of the individual mental re resentation2 so they can be granted some res onsibility in motivating the grou &as much as the gender variant community can be considered a single grou ' by subjecting its se arate identity1to some sort of internal or e"ternal ressure.35 Stress on a grou does induce change. /owever, the origin of gender identity is not, nor should it be, the object of this essay. $s Sedgwic# warns against see#ing the origin of that twin a"is, se"uality identity, the same holds true for gender identity, 1there e"ists no framewor# in which to as# about the origins or develo ment of individual gay identity that is not already structured by an im licit, transindividual :estern roject or fantasy of eradicating that identity.3Therefore, the focus on the social meaning of develo ment and im lementation of the alternative ronominal address must be shifted away from the o ressor and toward

that of the inno3ator. 0n res onse to the radical feminist in<uiry of where the transse"ual community was during the decades rior to these most recent highly visibly diversified,
33 35

)ownes, Dill. 2anguage and "ociety &Fambridge 1,83' 0bid 3Sedgwic#, 6ve. 31

*5.

1, Cason Fromwell writes that these o ulations were resent but living as homose"uals. $s such, transgendered and transse"ual o ulations &whose identities were to some degree still sublimated' were largely Bmarginal! to dense grou s37 and, hence, ositioned as otential innovators. The identity of an innovator is generally not one of com lete solidarity with their rimary subculture. $s transse"uals and those in other stages of transitioning begin to ass and in some instances move away from <ueer communities, they have the otential to transmit new variants into tightly #nit grou s.38 This is one otential e" lanation for the language innovation of the ronominal address. The aforementioned e"am les of ronouns alternative to the aradigmatic binary have not become culturally ervasive elements of language. There remains no common gender-ambiguous or third gender ronoun. This could lead to a classification of these ronouns as elements of an anti-language, arallel to an anti-society2 it is in fact generated by it.3, These anti-languages are characteristic in art of the need to maintain solidarity under ressure15; and are said to be the vehicle of resociali4ation. 0t creates an alternative reality% the rocess is one not of construction but of reconstruction.51 $lthough these fit the gender variant o ulation, this o ulation, at the same time, cannot be limited to a tight-#nit anti-society of solidarity as demonstrated by Falcon!s wor#% gender variance stretches from entirely Bfemale! to entirely Bmale! and whatever the definition of these words entails. Ierha s some mi" of social relevance, still artial or fragmentary wides read cultural conce tuali4ation of gender variance, along with new strong-networ# trans communities holding too few contacts with e"ternal
37 38

)ownes, Dill. *50bid 3, /alliday, ?.$.A. $nti-languages &1,7-' 2anguage and "ociety. &(ondon *;;7' 5; 0bid *7; 51 0bid *7.

*-5

*; early ado ters5* is a more accurate categori4ation. 1$ grou can lead an innovation only if the choice of the new variant is relatively less significant as a networ# mar#er.5. Ierha s also, as was e"em lified by the historical lurali4ing of the second- erson ronoun, you to thou, lurality is a very old and ubi<uitous meta hor for ower.53 Hesistance to gender lurali4ing the third erson ronoun could reflect some remnant of the recognition of granting em owerment. Fom aratively, it is interesting to note that )r. 6laine Stot#o of Cohns /o #ins Mniversity ublished an article detailing findings that schoolchildren in Daltimore had begun G seemingly s ontaneously G to use the word yo as a ronoun for gender ambiguous eo le or as a gender-neutral ronoun. The researcher and her student, ?argaret Troyer, tested the #ids! use by showing them a icture of a gender-ambiguous erson and as#ing them to write a sentence describing the figure. Several of the children used yo as a ronoun in the subject to identify the figure. Some res onses to the article suggested that the #ids had ic#ed the usage u from a television rogram, but the actual origin is still un#nown.55 The develo ment and micro- ervasive use of the gender-neutral ronoun by a o ulation not homogenously identified or identity-im acted by its use is fascinating in contrast with the attem ted overt im lementation by the gender<ueer o ulations. To date there is no ervasively acce ted ronoun in use for either individuals desiring an identity-based alternative or for use in situations where gender is
5* 5.

)ownes, Dill. *50bid *55 53 Drown, H. and >ilman $. The Ironouns of Iower and Solidarity &1,-;' Co unication in *ace to *ace Interaction. 6d. (aver and /utcheson &?iddlese" 1,7*' 1;5 55 Fogarty, ?ignon. Eo as a Ironoun. (ra ar (irl# =uick and >irty Tips. 6 isode ,1% Canuary 11, *;;8. htt %99grammar.<uic#anddirtyti s.com9grammar-yo- ronoun.as " &citing article% 1. Stot#o, 6. and Troyer, ?. N$ new gender-neutral ronoun in Daltimore, ?aryland% $ reliminary study.N A erican "peech, Ool. 8*. =o. ., Fall *;;7, . *-*.'

*1 unintelligible. )e olari4ation continues to de loy along the gender identity a"is, o ening to new ossibilities for linguistic change.