imagine you’re a college student living
with three other roommates and you’re
struggling to make money stretch until
your next paycheck
so you’ve resulted to instant noodles
resort it’s instant noodles you’re on
your very last cup of sodium packed
ramen so you’ve labeled the box and big
bold letters do not touch you go
downstairs to go enjoy your last cup of
ramen and you find your roommate chowing
down on it lid discard it on the kitchen
counter
same exact lid with your name on it and
sharpie but and you can’t say anything
you have no way of verbally expressing
how you feel you imagine how hurt and
isolated in the loan that must feel not
to express to you’re pretty stupid
roommate but they just ate your last cup
of food before you get your next
paycheck well I guess we’re all pretty
lucky that we have language on average
there’s about 1 million words recorded
in the English dictionary that’s 1
million different ways to articulate how
you feel make others understand and to
enlighten those around you on average
there’s about 800 to 1000 words added to
the dictionary every year and in the
20th century alone about 90,000 words
have been added and still seemingly
words are insignificant taking for
granted why because of this actions
speak louder than words and it’s funny
because we have no idea who really even
said this it could have been Abraham
Lincoln or Twain who knows and yet this
little quote is still used every day to
little the importance that should be on
words and what we say but do actions
really speak louder than words aren’t
words how we define everything how we
define ourselves my beloved cousin
Sierra Joy told the world to the click
of a button that she identified as
genderqueer don’t know what genderqueer
is no worries my mom didn’t know when I
told her either
yeah genderqueer is a person who does
not subscribe to the conventional gender
distinctions but either identifies with
neither all or a combination of the
spectrum of gender confusing of course
it’s gender looks something like this
like a scatterplot with no actual trend
there is no normal when it comes to
gender there
no set boundaries to it and so in that
and we as people tend to get very
frustrated when we can’t make sense of
things especially when we can’t make
sense of them through words which brings
me back to my first point of how
isolating it can really be not to be
able to verbally express something and
unbeknownst to me my own cousin was
struggling with the prospect of whether
she wanted to be categorized as female
or male and as female or male and she
didn’t really feel like either so what
then
if genderqueer wasn’t a word which it
wasn’t always one has to deal with what
it feels like not to have an identity or
not a verbalized one at least I asked my
cousin a couple days ago you know what
it felt like not to have the word
genderqueer but prior to when she found
out what it was and she told me she’s
always felt this way and that
colloquial colloquial terms helped her
discover genderqueer a little bit just
like tomboy in the early 2000s at that
time it was really just a fashion trend
but she really identified with the term
and she didn’t know how to tell people
that she loved being a girl but she also
loved camo pants it was a sliding scale
for her she told me gender is an
expression and she’s a shapes
shapeshifter and that it’s really hard
because everyone has different
definitions for everything and in the
grand scheme of things it’s not really
that deep but what is deepest respect
human connection and love and self love
recently merriam-webster has been a has
been an lgbtq+ community Ally through
the adage of new socially conscious and
culturally conscious words to the
dictionary an article on Vox commented
that merriam-webster is always trying to
convey to its community that convey to
its community
conveyed to its community that it tends
to define words because people need
definitions as an lgbtq+ community ally
myself I also
understand how it feels not to have an
identity and not to be able to verbally
express how you feel and when you feel
that so any form of verbal expression of
who you are whether it be claiming a
physical disability or claiming a mental
disability like depression or bipolar
disorder or even just personal character
traits that is really powerful and you
shouldn’t let anybody tell you that you
don’t belong in the pages of your own
language thank you
[Applause]
with three other roommates and you’re
struggling to make money stretch until
your next paycheck
so you’ve resulted to instant noodles
resort it’s instant noodles you’re on
your very last cup of sodium packed
ramen so you’ve labeled the box and big
bold letters do not touch you go
downstairs to go enjoy your last cup of
ramen and you find your roommate chowing
down on it lid discard it on the kitchen
counter
same exact lid with your name on it and
sharpie but and you can’t say anything
you have no way of verbally expressing
how you feel you imagine how hurt and
isolated in the loan that must feel not
to express to you’re pretty stupid
roommate but they just ate your last cup
of food before you get your next
paycheck well I guess we’re all pretty
lucky that we have language on average
there’s about 1 million words recorded
in the English dictionary that’s 1
million different ways to articulate how
you feel make others understand and to
enlighten those around you on average
there’s about 800 to 1000 words added to
the dictionary every year and in the
20th century alone about 90,000 words
have been added and still seemingly
words are insignificant taking for
granted why because of this actions
speak louder than words and it’s funny
because we have no idea who really even
said this it could have been Abraham
Lincoln or Twain who knows and yet this
little quote is still used every day to
little the importance that should be on
words and what we say but do actions
really speak louder than words aren’t
words how we define everything how we
define ourselves my beloved cousin
Sierra Joy told the world to the click
of a button that she identified as
genderqueer don’t know what genderqueer
is no worries my mom didn’t know when I
told her either
yeah genderqueer is a person who does
not subscribe to the conventional gender
distinctions but either identifies with
neither all or a combination of the
spectrum of gender confusing of course
it’s gender looks something like this
like a scatterplot with no actual trend
there is no normal when it comes to
gender there
no set boundaries to it and so in that
and we as people tend to get very
frustrated when we can’t make sense of
things especially when we can’t make
sense of them through words which brings
me back to my first point of how
isolating it can really be not to be
able to verbally express something and
unbeknownst to me my own cousin was
struggling with the prospect of whether
she wanted to be categorized as female
or male and as female or male and she
didn’t really feel like either so what
then
if genderqueer wasn’t a word which it
wasn’t always one has to deal with what
it feels like not to have an identity or
not a verbalized one at least I asked my
cousin a couple days ago you know what
it felt like not to have the word
genderqueer but prior to when she found
out what it was and she told me she’s
always felt this way and that
colloquial colloquial terms helped her
discover genderqueer a little bit just
like tomboy in the early 2000s at that
time it was really just a fashion trend
but she really identified with the term
and she didn’t know how to tell people
that she loved being a girl but she also
loved camo pants it was a sliding scale
for her she told me gender is an
expression and she’s a shapes
shapeshifter and that it’s really hard
because everyone has different
definitions for everything and in the
grand scheme of things it’s not really
that deep but what is deepest respect
human connection and love and self love
recently merriam-webster has been a has
been an lgbtq+ community Ally through
the adage of new socially conscious and
culturally conscious words to the
dictionary an article on Vox commented
that merriam-webster is always trying to
convey to its community that convey to
its community
conveyed to its community that it tends
to define words because people need
definitions as an lgbtq+ community ally
myself I also
understand how it feels not to have an
identity and not to be able to verbally
express how you feel and when you feel
that so any form of verbal expression of
who you are whether it be claiming a
physical disability or claiming a mental
disability like depression or bipolar
disorder or even just personal character
traits that is really powerful and you
shouldn’t let anybody tell you that you
don’t belong in the pages of your own
language thank you
[Applause]
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