Queer and gendered language

I just read David L. Wallace and Jonathan Alexander’s article Queer rhetorical agency. I’m still digesting the content and it’s clear that I’ll need to read it several more times to fully grasp much of the subtleties of the authors’ arguments, but what I especially appreciated in my first reading of this article, was the recognition that the theories of Gee and Delpit, two theorists whom I hold in high regard for their work advocating opening linguistic avenues to power, “[fail] to account for the erasure of identity and the need to reclaim the same in queerness” (p. 799). Perhaps due to my experience with Spanish, where most adjectives differ by the gender of the noun/person, I have often found the heteronormative nature of language to be an impediment to true expression. Lately in Spanish, people are choosing to end adjectives and nouns with @ or x instead of o (masculine) or a (feminine). The difference being that @ includes both masculine and feminine (still a binary) whereas x includes all people. We could do this in English as well, not with adjectives and nouns, but with other words, especially those having to do with romantic partners and spouses. In fact, when first meeting people, I often refer to my spouse without any gendered language. It is always interesting to see who notices that and who just assumes that my spouse is a man.