PAGE 2 | WINTER 2018 | THE EXCHANGE
SPONSORED ACADEMIC SUPPLEMENT
THE LOWDOWN ON PRONOUN KNOW-HOW
COLD NIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN
by Clark Chesshir
I
feel uncomfortable when people label me with a gender but it wasn’t until I was sixteen that I really understood why. I am mostly indifferent when strangers refer to me as the other binary gender, but it is still somewhat prickly for me when they do so. I am elated when people use gender-neutral pronouns for me and grin while remembering times that this has happened. Finding a label that fit me was very important to me at first, as labels helped me feel that I was not alone. Eventually I started valuing my internal reality over the descriptions that I was given or had discovered.
I first started the process of understanding my gender when I went to an event in which we all were to introduce ourselves with our names and gender pronouns. I did not know until then that I could use other pronouns, but the real revelation was when many of the other people at the event told the rest of us that their pronouns were gender-neutral. Discovering that other people might be feeling the same way about gender as I did was a relief. At that moment, something clicked in my mind, and yet, when it was my turn, I introduced myself using ... somewhere in the area the pronouns that everyone had always called me by, between or completely and it felt wrong. I had not outside of man and woman. done enough self-reflection and research at that point to understand my emotions surrounding gender, and therefore was not ready to declare my pronouns as being different from what society had assumed them to be. After the event, I started researching what gender-neutral pronouns signified. My research confirmed my prior knowledge of sexual orientation being different from gender. I related to many people who identified somewhere in the area between or completely outside of man and woman. Like me, some of them tried at one point in their lives to present themselves to the world as the other binary gender than the one that they were assigned, but it still did not totally fit for me and for many of them. This research also helped me understand more about the way I view my body, as I discovered that some people changed their bodies in the ways that I want to. Many of them had pretty different experiences than I do, but I was still able to understand where they were coming from based on my own experiences. Understanding my gender has helped me become more comfortable and confident internally. Society has changed in the same time period that I have come to understand my gender more fully. For example, OSU now has gender-neutral bathrooms, and many of the events I have attended on campus included pronoun-preferences in the speaker introductions. These steps encourage me. I hope that people understand the importance of gender pronouns and can accept people regardless of their gender. This would involve more consideration towards how you use language to describe another person, and asking people about their pronouns. Prejudice is based on fear, especially of the unknown, so more knowledge can help decrease negative reactions toward people like me. 16 • DAILYBAROMETER.COM • WEEK OF MONDAY, FEBURARY 26, 2018
by Paul King
N
one of the pre-deployment training had really prepared me for how cold Afghanistan was at night. My friend Josh and I were young medics who had only left technical school a few months before we got our deployment orders. Between shifts we would sit on the roof of the hospital fighting off the cold with cigars and “near beer.” Josh rarely said things during these middle-of-the-night meet ups and we both stared at the mountains. In hindsight, neither of us had built the coping mechanisms we would need to work in a war time emergency room. We were stationed at the same base, and when we came home nothing really “fit” like it used to. Normal hospital work rarely had the same meaning. Going from dozens of trauma patients a day and switching to normal clinical work is like driving 90 miles an hour and then standing on the brakes. My friend felt like he left himself in that emergency room and what came home was never the same. He ended up killing himself less than six months after our re-deployment back to Japan. Vets hear it constantly during suicide awareness days where battle buddies, the Wingman concept, and Sailors’ assistance are reintroduced. Entire days of training were stopped to talk about suicide and the warning signs to look for in each other. However, we tend to lose this support system when we leave the service and can fall into thinking that we are on our own. We’ve taken the training, lifestyle, and mentality from the service. We also took the stresses and, on occasion, the unhealthy ways to deal with them. As a nation, we still lose an average of 22 veterans a day to suicide. A recent analysis found the suicide rate among veterans to be about 30 per 100,000 population per year, compared with the civilian rate of 14 per 100,000. These results are geared to include veterans of all American conflicts and show that veterans have a suicide rate nearly 2 to 1 compared to civilian counterparts. Oregon State has more than 600 veterans in our student body and surely every student and faculty member knows a veteran personally. This should give OSU students the onus and drive to look to each other, veteran or not, and notice if we are having a problem or see warning signs in someone else. No one should feel like they are in this situation alone. If you find yourself making plans for when you are gone, feeling preoccupied with the thought of your own death, or if you know someone exhibiting any warning signs, there are several options. Contact the Veteran Crisis line at 1-800-273-8255 (press 1 to skip the phone tree), the Veteran Crisis online chat at veteranscrisisline.net/chat, or the Oregon State counseling service at 541-737-2131. No one should feel like they have to go through this on their own. Contact a friend or contact professional help, but please, get the help you need.