| Andrea Ruiz
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12-05-2002 02:49 AM ET (US)
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In reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I became fascinated with Dicks use of pronouns to speak of androids, I also became quite interested in the concept of identity tied in with the body, all of which goes back to Lamarck but this is more than just a question of being alive, or being human, its a question of what discursive practices construct us as humans. Gender/sex/sexuality all form parts of our experience as humans and can be found in something as simple as a pronoun. By analyzing the coverage of the murder of Eddie Gwen Araujo in Newark and how the press uses pronouns, I hope to show that despite the Olympic Sex Test becoming obsolete; there isnt much of a difference when we socially police the sex of people ourselves within the boundaries of our very speech. People have changed sex even without the aid of technology thus tests for checking sex have made themselves necessary because the object of the transgender or rather transsexual folk is to become inconspicuous to pass as members of the other side of the perceived biological binary. This was the case with Eddie Arajuo, who began passing as a female until that critical moment of detection when the self licensed bounty hunting begins. This happened without a PCR buccal smear or ever knowledge of the Barr body, and lead to the murder of this person. The criteria of the sex test lies within our very language
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