Rethinking Gender
Why” is a difficult word to define. Most don’t consider the implications ingrained in its three letters. It questions our reasons and sometimes even our deepest, most immutable traditions. It also facilitates easy answers. Why not?Why should members of the Exeter status quo be bothered by the quarrels and quibbles of a small, perhaps currently inexistent portion of our so distinguished community? Gender identities aren’t a present issue at Exeter, so why should we concern ourselves with their toil? Why fight a fight that isn’t our own?The crude, badly designed, “Why so gendered?” posters spread throughout campus, do nothing to shake our convictions. In fact, many denounce them as nuisances, and faculty has even begun to take them down. Even last week, I published an article humoring the idea of co-ed bathrooms, published in these “comic-sans” manifestos.From an advertising point of view, the posters are horrible. A4-sized papers with large googly letters have rarely shaken deep-rooted principles. Yet, the words therein question some of the very traditions that unknowingly work to oppress us: Us. Furthermore the posters point out an inconsistency in the academy’s policies. We live in an environment that stands to praise our individuality and welcomes diversity, yet contradicts these pillars of belief in their own regulations and restrictions regarding dress code among other types of gender segregation.It is easy to depersonalize this issue, to portray any call for change as blubbering by people who should find something else to do, because it doesn’t really matter. Yet this attitude stands in the face of the very notions on which this institution was founded upon: Non Sibi.Transgenders aren’t a group; they’re individuals. They’re Franks and Maries, who don’t know, or don’t care, if their Maries or Franks. They exercise the most valuable of human rights, a right acknowledged by dogma and doctrine. A right that functions as the very cornerstone of modern western society and, in many ways, is the principle argument for the existence of this very nation. The right to choose, to freedom and the pursuit of happiness, are immortalized by John Stark in the motto of this very state, “Live free or die.”Those are hard words, perchance because they convey an even harder truth. The death of choice is the death of individuality, and a coffin to our own personal identity. The maintenance of the dress code is not problematic, but to restrict certain clothing based on gender or identity alone, is a refutation of the moral values entrenched in the language of those who fought for the rights of those, whom today, may consider themselves proud members of the status quo.This leads us to revisit the question. Why fight for the rights of this transgender minority, even if we might disagree with their practices and beliefs? The answer lies in non sibi. When we fight for those who aren’t ourselves we fight for the strength of the collective and for the preservation of our own individual freedoms. That doesn’t preclude our disagreements with other lifestyles, you can still disagree or hate whoever you wish, the negativity of that hate notwithstanding, but it also doesn’t impede their choice, and in a future it provides a precedent for permitting our particular choices.It’s also a matter of compassion. Skirts or ties might feel like binds to those who, either biologically or personally, do not identify with the associations inherent to those cloth trappings. When you’re in a social environment trying to define an identity, which will perhaps extend after high school, the lack of choice can be damning, oppressive and even an unnecessary burden on a student’s psyche. In sum, humans get hurt by these seemingly small things, more than that, your friends might be hurt by these policies that force integration with a particular identity and deny our own individuality.I entreat you to be a little rebellious, untuck your shirt, wear a blouse or use the male bathroom; help a brother, sister, or both out. For the sake of freedom, kindness or even good old fashioned fun. Reinterpret your definition of gender and realize that not only do institutions of power not hold influence over our own sense of identity, but our biological limitations also have no say in what or who we want to be. And if you disagree with this article, my preceding statement or regard me as an idiot, give your inherent life given right to disagree. Most of all, try to go beyond stepping into each other’s shoes, and see yourself in their heels, skirts, ties, homes and hearts.