Am I the only person in the world for whom letters are gendered?
This is not something that I have engineered. Since I was a child my letters have always had an assigned, fixed gender. I always figured that everyone's letters had a gender until one night (undoubtedly by the light of the green lantern) my ex and I were talking and my peculiar alphabetical sex assignment came to light. He thought I was making it up and made me write out all the letters in the alphabet, along with their particular gender. He then spent half the night quizzing me to see if he could trip me up. I completely freaked him out by being able to state each character's gender with 100% accuracy (according to me). It's not very post-modern of me, but all my letters have a gender and those genders never change.
I still have the sheet that we wrote it out on. It's on the back of a flyer for a ronnie burkett show (Who, by the way, is amazing. If you ever get a chance to see any of his shows, you must!).
Here is the list in a slightly expanded form:
a = the matriarch
b = boy
c = girl
d = boy
e = male (e and f are the Ace and Gary/Bert and Ernie of my alphabet)
f = male
g = strong girl
h = male
i = female but in an asexual/sterile kinda way
j = girl, of course
k = male
l = male
m = guy
n = guy
o = female
p = female
q = female a la Janet Reno
r = strongly male
s = strongly female (maybe 'cause she's so curvaceous)
t = masculine female
u = frumpy female a la Laura Bush
v = femme fatale
w = male in a Dad kinda way without being patriarchal (see below)
x = male (curiously opposite to the way science has labeled things)
y = woman (also curiously opposite to the way science has labeled things)
z = male (definitely the patriarch)
I've often wondered if I could blame my atrocious spelling on this unique way that I interact with letters and language. My numbers also have gender and my math is worse than my spelling...
I feel a doctoral thesis in there somewhere.
4 comments:
What a cool type of synesthesia to have. I see letters and numbers in colour, but not gender--although now you've inspired me to look at them in that way!
I sometimes feel colours inside people's knots and muscles when I give them a massage, but this happens only rarely, when I'm relaxed and have time to concentrate. (Also, it sounds flaky, so I don't mention it much.)
Makes one wonder about all the beautiful and strange life experiences we are missing, due to lack of attention or mindfulness....
But which letters are GAY?!
But seriously, that's really cool. I love hearing new forms of personal applied logic. If I were a ghetto bitch, I'd post about my wheel of dreams and how I managed to scam the mechanism and avoid nightmares for most of my youth.
Thanks for sharing.
Philly may be my kind of city, but you're my kind of gal... keep rocking the green lantern. I like where it takes you.
So who's going to write that thesis? You? Or me?
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