Intro Draft
Paper#2
I today’s society, people have an urge to put social concepts in boxes. If you don’t fit the box, you then become the target of hate, discrimination, humiliation, and the more common “What? Can you explain that one more time?” syndrome. I’m a middle eastern mixed Armenian who happened to be born in Canada and ended up growing up in France. I moved to the United States after graduating high school. Upon my arrival in Colorado, and having no experience in communicating with American college students what so ever, I was asked countless times the typical “let’s get to know each other” question: “Where are you from?” This was a seemingly simple one, and yet it took me twenty minutes every time I had to provide an answer for it. It would usually follow this pattern: “I’m from Paris”, “Paris, Texas?”, “No, Paris, France…”, “So you’re French, right?”, “No, I’m Armenian”, “Were you born in Armenia?”, “ No, in Canada”, “I’m confused, where the hell are you from then?”, and so on. Which is what I call the “What? Can you explain that one more time?” syndrome. This phenomenon is also applied in a discriminatory way towards Genderqueers and sexually deviant people, and especially transsexuals, but in their case it is called the “What the hell are you?” syndrome. These discriminations and enforcement of norm are applied to any kind of deviance.