Why do I have to dereference my vector iterator? What does it mean?

[Senjai]

I wrote this code to test:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

struct Person {
string name;
int age;
};

int main()
{
// Populate some people and put them into a vector.

Person p1, p2, p3;
vector<Person> ListOfPeople;

p1.name = "Richard";
p2.name = "Mike";
p3.name = "Cheryl";

p1.age = 12;
p2.age = 13;
p3.age = 14;

ListOfPeople.push_back(p1);
ListOfPeople.push_back(p2);
ListOfPeople.push_back(p3);

vector<Person>::const_iterator citer = ListOfPeople.begin();

while ( citer != ListOfPeople.end() )
{
cout << (*citer).name << " is " << citer->age << " years old." << endl;
++citer;
}

return 0;
}

A clean version can be found at http://codepad.org/hAumqzNB with the associated output.

I know this has to do with pointers. I taught myself C++ once before using online tutorials but this book hasnt gone into pointers though it has covered references. This is one thing I never really understood about the language.

My questions:

Why do I have to deference this to make it work?
What exactly does dereferencing normally do?
Why on other sites do they say pointers are a type of iterator?
Lastly, object->member just a synonym of (*object).member and nothing more?

Edit: the book says derefencing gives an lvalue. Which i understand is a nontemporary object. So when you use an iterator does it act as a reference to the vector? Because I know you need lvalues to access data because of scoping issues. So does this essentially make a copy of the object in memory for the purpose of printing to the screen? aka an lvalue?

Sorry if I don't understand properly, its why im here :/

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Senjai