There's a trans person hiding in your inbox
I'm not that scary and all I'm really here to do is share my writing tbh
Way back in a whole other decade, I decided I was Not Quite Ready to leave academia. I was way into monster theory and queer theory and Viking literature, so I applied for the Medieval to Renaissance Literature MA in UCC.
It was class, lads, can’t lie.
You may recall that at the beginning of this decade, a plague descended. I had not yet finished classes and I still had a whole thesis to write, which was less than ideal.
Still, write my thesis I did, and this was it:
Of Monsters and Thems: Problematising Cis-Heteronormativity in Old Norse and Old English Scholarship
Look. Look. I get it. The language is dense and you’ve gotta know a lot of jargon. It’s intimidating. I didn’t write my thesis thinking anyone was gonna read it for fun.
At the same time, I’m proud of it, and I think I made some like, okay points.
So…what if I made my thesis both ACCESSIBLE and FUN TO READ, like Dr Alison Killilea’s translation of Beowulf into Cork slang.
The world is on fire, Kel, why is this important?
I am doing this for a few reasons, or rather, a few target audiences.
A lot of media coverage about trans people is extremely frightening and negative. If you judged by mainstream headlines alone, you would think trans people are out to eat your children.
Maybe you are a parent/guardian who is terrified for your trans child.
Maybe you are someone who doesn’t know anything about trans people but you’re trying to learn.
Maybe the stuff you’ve heard on the news makes you think feminism and trans rights are incompatible.
I know my thesis looks at literature, but all the theory applies to our real, tangible lives, too. So I want to share, and hopefully even one person will read it and think, “Huh okay this is interesting, I will do my best to be kind to my fellow humans”.
I won’t post the whole thesis in one SuperMegaUltraBlog, because that would be…….inaccessible. And also a lot of work to do all at once.
To sate you in the meantime, check out this article I did for Good Day Cork’s WeSearch series.
For now? Tog go bog é. And be nice to a trans person.