INFORMATIONAL emails trans-phobic, says Gender Studies Department

By Andy Jones
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The department of gender studies has issued an open letter to UNC's administration, criticizing it for "going to great lengths" to reinforce the popular conception of the male/female dichotomy by using intentionally discriminatory wording in its mass emails.

"It is not our purpose here to quarrel over the extent to which INFORMATIONAL mass emails are redundant, overly-wordy, and generally irritating," the letter began, "though it is a large one. However, we wish to discuss all the emails 'seeking participants' for various painful-sounding studies at UNC hospitals, many of which feel the need to specify that they are seeking 'males or females' to endure some god-awful procedure and then get paid fifty dollars. Males OR females? Why are transgender people or hermaphrodites not invited to participate? How could the number or configuration of one's sexual organs possibly affect, say, a study on a potential link between GERD and a chronic cough?

"Okay, okay," the letter continues, "we know everyone's gut reaction is going to be that minority-gendered people are overly sensitive and that people are, as a whole, pretty accepting of us – considering how everythingphobic Americans are in general – and that whoever writes the INFORMATIONAL emails probably was just careless in his wording and never even thought about us one way or the other.

"We would very much like for that to be the case. However, the forced phrasing of the emails indicates otherwise. For example, let's go back to the GERD study. The email reads: 'If you are a non-smoking male or female between the ages of 18 and 70 who has had a cough for more than 8 weeks ... you may be eligible for a research study.' There are, like, a million lessawkward ways to word that sentence. How about, 'If you are a nonsmoker between the ages of 18 and 70...'? Or, 'If you are between the ages of 18 and 70 and don't smoke...'? Or, 'Potential participants must be nonsmokers between the ages of 18 and 70...'? The fact that the writer chose instead to go with the painfully clunky "nonsmoking male or female" indicates that the phrasing was more than a careless error. He went out of his way to reinforce the male/female dichotomy, implying that those of us of alternate genders aren't welcome to participate in the study and generally don't matter."

The letter has gotten much support from student organizations, liberal and conservative alike. The Carolina Review, for example, argued that, in a free-market economy, every person has the right to buy and sell parts of his/her/ shis body and the bodies of others and therefore should not be discriminated against for supporting capitalism.

Chancellor Moeser has since issued an open response to the department of gender studies, noting that UNC Hospitals routinely sends out emails soliciting as study participants 65-year-old pregnant Asian Latinas, so the transgendered among the student body can at least take comfort in knowing that they aren't the first people that the mass emails have made feel left out.