“We are playing to two audiences at once like a Shakespearean fool; we are something else, not completely separate, but adjacent…” Kristina Togafau writes in Affirming our Liminality and Writing on the Walls: How We Welcome in Our Writing Center when describing the inherent queerness of existing within and between the gender binary, specifically in the harsh binaries of the writing center. Existing as a queer person often means existing within two different identities, especially those who are still closeted. Existing as a fully or semi-closeted person often means burying one’s truth as deep within oneself as possible in crucial moments of life. It can also mean embracing that truth, squeezing the life out of it, in other instances.
Queer existence often means putting on two different masks, or, as Togafau notes, performing to two somehow related audiences. Queerness and campiness are perceived as performance, as living the life of the “Shakespearean fool” Togafau mentions because they are regarded as a source of entertainment and not as actual people. This results in an otherness that so many queer people inherently feel. It’s a shared experience, to feel alone or othered, in a multitude of different identities. It’s interesting then, how this otherness can promote a sense of community and even create thriving communities.
The word “peer” suggests the absence of a power structure. The gender binary subverts and perhaps even directly opposes the notion of peerness, as this gendered concept thrives on the notion that everything is binary, black and white, one or the other. Perhaps the idea of peerness is obsolete, is it possible to even find the absence of a power structure or actual equality in our world? A wishful, naive answer would be “yes, there is.” More pressing questioning of the world around us would have us come to the real conclusion that “no, there isn’t.”
The writing center cannot be exempt from this struggle, because as we search to obtain peerness, we first must address and destroy the power structures that work to oppress. In the writing center, we must shed the normalization of the gender binary and work to embrace the flowing spectrum that gender exists within.
To continue on this existential tirade, because the binary is made up, then can it not just as easily disappear? Be dismantled? Must it continue to be perpetuated everywhere humans exist? Harry Denny, the author of the iconic work Queering the Writing Center, writes that “Writing centers are places overflowing with structural binaries…”. The writing center serves as a sort of microcosm of the larger world in the sense that it reflects social norms and activities of society. So, such harmful binaries are able to continue to exist within the writing center, including the gender binary.
Dismantling the gender binary may seem easy in theory but is much more difficult in practice. It must first start with the introduction and re-education of pronouns and their usage. This in and of itself proves a challenge because “…queerness, in all its iterations, is too often deemed “delinquent” within academic spaces.” (Togafau) If you exist outside of the gender binary, identifying as non-binary, genderqueer, agender, gender non-conforming, or a host of other valid identities, you then must exist within the queer community. As much as we like to think it is, the LGBTQIA+ or Queer community (or -ies) still isn’t widely accepted, in both national and international lenses. There is a poignant otherness that comes hand-in-hand with queerness in politics, academia, and even on a personal scale.
Pronouns are a staple of the English language. They are used in place of names in order to shorten sentences and break up repetitive speech patterns. But, like most everything else, they’re entirely made up. So why then, must we classify a set of made-up words into structured binaries? While this is a question that I suppose can be applied to the rest of the English language as well, let’s focus it on the gender binary. So, to get back to the question, why do we employ the binary in our language? It’s rhetorical. I don’t know why. A simple answer would be to normalize power structures- to allow one gender power over the other. Language has often been used as a tool for repressing marginalized groups, especially in institutions of learning, such as through standardized testing (an example being the SATs). A more complex answer could be that the English language is a joke that no one can seem to find the punch line of.
This question often leads to more questions and very few answers. If the gender binary is made up, and if pronouns are made up, then why can we not introduce a wider array of pronouns into our everyday language? I am asking all of this from a non-existential perspective because I feel many of these questions provide only existential answers, as I’m kind of ripping English apart for being subjectively stupidly framed. The answer to this question then, is just “I don’t know”. Because I don’t know why we cling so tightly to the gender binary when that in and of itself isn’t even concrete. The concept of a third gender or a range of genders outweighs the western gender binary by millennia. With colonization came, among a million other terrible things, the enforcement of a gender binary.
The gender binary persists in an array of institutions and existences, like the writing center. However, although we are unable to completely dismantle this binary, we are able to combat its harsher implications through instituting a pronoun policy. A pronoun policy would simply entail saying or writing out one’s pronouns in the normal introduction that most sessions with tutors involve regardless. I firmly believe that a pronoun policy would be beneficial in the writing center, and am planning to pursue research on this next semester. As noted, the spectrum of gender outweighs any western notion of binary gender by at least centuries, but academia still allows itself to be ruled by the binary. Whether it be professors denying the usage of the singular “they” pronoun and rather enforcing the use of binary “he/she” pronouns due to some outdated grammar rule, or just the lack of both physical and educational spaces for students who work to fight against the binary, academia thrives within binaries.
The pronoun policy would then be able to fight against this outdated academic terminology, and would have the potential to be incredibly beneficial within the writing center among tutors and tutees alike and would be rather easy to physically establish and thusly practice. Making note of one another’s pronouns early on in a session, or even before a session occurs, helps to establish a connection with the tutee and perhaps can even ease the conversation. Establishing a connection with a tutee is one of the first and most important things that must be done in any tutoring session. Pronoun introductions tend to feel personal, and cracking that layer of conversation can help create a welcoming, comfortable environment during the session. As well as this, pronoun policies can ensure that students don’t have to feel as though they are outing themselves time and time again, but rather are taking part in an organic discussion in which this is the norm. On that note, discussing and identifying one’s pronouns outright can help ease any anxieties. If an introduction of pronouns happens before the session can even begin, then there can be no room for mistakenly misgendering a student. A pronoun policy, most simply, will continue to promote the writing center as an inclusive and welcoming space for all students across campus.
If we continue on the path of not mandating a system for pronoun introductions, the results will be much more harmful than good. Misgendering a student, unwittingly as it may be, can be incredibly harmful to one’s mental health, and would start any tutoring session off on the wrong foot, most likely resulting in an uncomfortable or awkward meeting to come. A misgendered tutee would more than likely have a difficult time relating to and therefore being tutored by someone who has misgendered them, and would, therefore, be unlikely to return to the writing center due to this negative experience.
Instituting this policy would be practically harmless. My vision is for pronouns to be shared at the beginning of each tutoring session during the usual introductions and before the actual tutoring begins. As well as this, I believe adding a brief question on the page where students sign up to be tutored that simply just asks “what are your pronouns?” would be very useful. During the research period of this, I would also include a short survey after each tutoring session for both tutees and tutors to see if the pronoun introductions were useful.
Peerness, as mentioned, cannot exist in the face of power structures. However, this does not mean we can work to dismantle these power structures, and redefine how we interact within the writing center. As Hunter writes in Preferred Pronouns In Writing Center Reports, “… As with any rupture of the assumed, they may also shove us headlong into learning anew what it means to work responsibly and in more principled ways…”. Peerness entails responsibility, which means respecting one’s peers as students, scholars, tutors, and tutees.
Works Cited:
Denny, Harry. “Queering the Writing Center.” Writing Center Journal, 2005.
Nordstrom, Georganne, et al. “Affirming Our Liminality and Writing on the Walls: How We Welcome in Our Writing Center.” The Peer Review, no. 3.1, http://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/redefining-welcome/affirming-our-liminality-writing-on-the-walls-how-we-welcome-in-our-writing-center/.
Hopkins, Justin B. “Preferred Pronouns in Writing Center Reports.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, http://www.praxisuwc.com/hopkins-152?rq=gender binary.
Pure Vibes. 