#14: On gender being a scam

Actual Updates

You know, it’s kind of weird to send out a newsletter at the start of the month and then have massive, horrifying, momentous, and totally unsurprising events take place right after you’ve published, and then you don’t send it out again until a month later. So any takes are way too late. But anyway, nice country we live in, hey? The amount of institutional complicity in the attacks on the Capitol, from looking the other way to actively encouraging and financing these terrorists, is just astounding. Also, didn’t I say something like this would happen? So I’m pretty much all set with being called a cynic or for leaning too hard to the most negative possibility. Like, I know I’m depressed and see the worst in everything, but that’s just for subjects concerning myself - this is just paying attention. I have no doubt more attempts will be made. We’ll see if they’re taken a bit more seriously this time. So, with this all in mind, me and my family leaving the country is firmly not off the table.

But what I really wanted to talk about today is possibly as distant from that topic as possible. And part of it is Queerantine and how we’re all just sitting around thinking about ourselves and coming to Realizations and so on, but the other part is that I finally realized who Nico Tortorella is. So, I was aware that they’re an actor who is nonbinary, but I didn’t realize they’re in a show that I watch, namely the good spinoff of The Walking Dead (the other spinoff… isn’t). So now I’ve put a face to the name, even though I already knew both the face and the name, just not together. And the thing about them is that they are a walking illustration of how nonbinary people aren’t required to be androgynous; in their case, they hew fairly closely to what one might think of as a particular gender, and the role they play on the show is “male,” for whatever that means, and that doesn’t impact their nonbinaryness AT ALL, it’s still just as true and as real as if they had occupied a space in the exact center of the gender presentation spectrum. Here, enjoy a quick jaunt through their Instagram, which will prove that thirst traps are not the exclusive province of any one gender.

But the point here isn’t just that this actor exists, it’s that because nonbinaryness does not demand androgyny, and because the meaning of any gender can evolve and change in any one person and in society at large, I’m deciding to recast my assumptions, and I invite you to join me. Rather than starting by assuming people are at one end or the other of the gender spectrum, and making the middle the exception, I’m going to start from the middle and exceptioning my way out to the edges. It’s far more likely that someone falls somewhere along the line - even a bit! - than that they have set up camp all the way at one end or the other. The same goes for sexualities, as well; I feel like it’s way more exceptional to be exclusively attracted to one gender - first of all, there are a whole lot of genders out there, odds are good you think someone’s cute in at least a couple of them - and it’s easier to just assume everyone’s bi/pan/queer generally until they tell you otherwise.

What does that mean in practice? For sexualities, not much, because what does it mean ever unless you’re trying to ask someone out - in which case shoot your shot, because who knows, right? - but like, how does knowing who someone’s into impact your interactions with them otherwise? It doesn’t, or anyway it shouldn’t, unless you want to talk about how hard it is to sit properly in a normal chair (but if you do, hello, I am here for you). But for genders I figure it means things like using “they” unless the person specifies that that’s not their pronoun, rather than assuming they’re whatever gender they’re presenting as, and just generally not making assumptions. Didn’t we all go to elementary school? Didn’t we all have a substitute teacher who told us “assume makes an Ass out of U and Me”? So, come on, then.

Is this to be read as me saying I myself want to be addressed with “they”? No…t really, I would never turn it down but I feel like I’m fairly well-served by she/her pronouns generally. I identify more as female than anything else, but I also don’t really care for most of the assumptions and norms that go with it. And anyone who’s ever met me knows that I don’t reside at the extreme female end of the spectrum, in terms of presentation and a lot of other stuff; I’m somewhere along it, but closer to female than male, and I think closer to female than to the middle, but that’s tough to discern. Maybe I’m right at the 3/4 mark. Maybe not! But again, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean to treat me any differently; it’s just me trying to improve my own definitions. Also, not for nothing, but I just finished reading Something That May Shock and Discredit You, which concerns itself in large part with transition and how someone’s understanding of their own gender can shift over time, rather than only having to be a deep sense of not-belonging since birth, but I would like to point out I started this draft before it even arrived so I wasn’t just influenced into writing this by a book I happened to be reading! I had the idea already! In my brain! You should definitely read it, though. It’s fantastic.

Some Links

This is actually cool and way less spooky than it might seem at first glance! Archaeologists Unearth Egyptian Queen’s Tomb, 13-Foot ‘Book of the Dead’ Scroll

This is actually completely uncool and I hate it! The answer to “women are assigned body issues at birth and this is bad” isn’t “we should spread that around to men too”!! Dudes of my acquaintance: I hope you aren’t enmeshed in body miseries, but if you are, I am always here to sympathize, I know whereof you speak (unfortunately). 9 Out of 10 Men Have Body Image Issues, and Covid-19’s Making Them Worse

More body bullshit, but this is actually real. This article has been following me around the whole internet, by the way, so my apologies if it has also been following you and you’ve already read it. Yes, the Pandemic Is Ruining Your Body

Meow!! Cat “Guides Injured Walker to Safety” After He Got Lost in Swiss Alps

This is so cool. It will basically teach you how every aspect of a camera works, with lots of cool sliders and examples, and it’s very nerdy and in-depth. I spent all day, on and off, reading it and playing with it. Shoutout to the buddy who shared this in the science channel at work, who does not read this newsletter and never will: Cameras and Lenses

This sounds really cool, although do be advised that I’m a big nerdy nerd who should probably be stuffed into a locker. A New Way to Trace the History of Sci-Fi’s Made-Up Words

Gender again! But this time, through the lens of early Christianity. Turns out, all trans men go to heaven! It’s in the Bible!! The Little Known History of Transgender Saints

This is a longer read, drawing together a famous whale with a unique song, a grievous illness, and loneliness. It’s not the first article about this whale, for sure, but it’s a really nice one. 52 Blue

Tunes I’ve Been Listening To Lately

I think of Triplefastaction as a “Matt band,” since he was big into them when we met and I hadn’t heard of them at the time - they didn’t really cross the border to the Canadian airwaves - but I’m allowed to like them too. Here’s a good one.

It is astonishing that I haven’t put a Red Fang video in here yet, and I do say “video” specifically; their songs are jams, this one is particularly iconic and maybe one day I’ll use it for air guitar, but their videos are always just awesome. This one’s one of their top 3 videos, for me. Please enjoy a bunch of beardos destroying shit with a car in order to use up a check.

Ah man, how bummed was I when Tijuana Sweetheart broke up? They were one of the best bands in town. Plus they used to be named Vagiant until some other band sued them, which is a shame because that’s a great name. I will be singing this song for the rest of my life, it is so damn catchy, but it was still a hard choice as to which one to pick.

This Month’s Top 5: Things I’ve Cried Over This Month

1. The idea that my parents might be getting the covid vaccine soon (except it’ll be more like April or even May, as it turns out)

2. A frustrating experience with a pizza ordering app

3. Someone I respect a great deal lumping me in with actual smart people, e.g. engineers (who, okay, I realize engineers aren’t de facto smarter than anyone else, they just have a specialized knowledge that other people don’t have, and more to the point they have a specialized ability to google stuff, but I happen to know a whole lot of blisteringly smart people who are also engineers, so) AND this person is also one of the most intelligent, perceptive, and incisive people I know, so coming from her this compliment was doubly sob-worthy

4. The Wonder Years (twice!! what kind of a sap??)

5. Hockey commentators (on Bell Let’s Talk day, so in the context of mental health awareness and one guy’s personal story of a really tough time for him) telling each other they love one another on live tv, totally unaffectedly, no awkward bro shit, just two friends who love each other and aren’t going to get weird and macho about it. Like sure one of them said it in the format of “Love ya bud” but they’re a) Canadian and b) former hockey players themselves, so this is really just their native language. Anyway it was sweet and I welled up watching it.

Honorable mention goes to stress and being overwhelmed! Dishonorable mention goes to that day that I was crying all day over literally everything and thought my friends all hated me and I should quit my job! Thank you for playing!

Well, that about sums that one up. Time to go back to looking at the snow and thinking about why we’re doing 2015 flashback one-week-apart storms here (with way less snow, but reboots never really live up to the original, do they?).