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  • Monday, October 10, 2005

    Gender confusion

    My wife just sent out this email to some friends. I thought it was funny so include it here:

    Help! After all these years, I find myself facing a gender crisis. No, not the sexual orientation kind - the language kind. Being a Filipino, I am afflicted with the disease of mixing up my English pronouns. In the Tagalog (Filipino) language, our pronouns are
    generic and can be used for either sex. I occasionally hear my son exasperatedly say "Mom, you just called me a 'her'." when this disease strikes.

    Now, we're living in Spain where everything - and I mean everything - is either a male or a female. A table is not an "it" but a "she" and the floor that I walk on feels superior because he's a he. The rule is, if the name for a thing ends with the letter "a", it's a female; "o", it's a male. All the pronouns, adjectives and adverbs have to match the gender accordingly.

    This rule confuses me because it is not always followed. "Dias" is the plural form of "dia" which ends in "a" but you use "buenos" with it. "Noches", on the other hand, is plural for "noche" which ends in "e" but sounds like it should be male because it has the letter "o" in it, is paired with "buenas". It irks me to get corrected whenever I slip and say "Buenas dias". It's their own rule that's messed-up, not me.

    Furthermore, I just found out that I have male and female body parts. My eyes are male (ojos), my mouth is female (boca), so on and so forth. Then, there are gq's (gender questionable) parts such as my nariz (nose)or mofletes (cheeks). Are they male of female (androgynous, maybe)? Do having male and female parts make me a hermaphrodite?

    I am so gender conflicted. I want everyone to learn how to speak Tagalog so I don't have to worry about sex anymore - instead, I can just relax and enjoy IT!

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