The Binary of Costume and Clothing

I didn’t make it to Detroit today; that airport is closed due to freezing rain and was before we even hit Minnesota. So I’m in Minneapolis tonight. There’s a direct flight from here to Cleveland so I should still be there tomorrow, about 16 hours after my original schedule. Still technically in time for my duties on Thursday but it keeps getting closer. I’m super glad I gave myself an extra day to travel, even if I’m super annoyed to have to use it. I should at least get to sleep in a bit though, as my next flight doesn’t leave until 1:30 PM.

I have decided that If I Was Your Girl is about integration. Which is sort of obvious in hindsight – I talked about how it was about isolation and power structures and survival and the cure for all of those is integration. I guess I sort of imagined the darkest timeline version of this book, where the protagonist dies (or was always dead), but that’s maybe just my mood today. In any case it’s well-constructed and I liked it quite a bit. The protagonist is burdened with challenges relevant to the plot but sort of skims by a lot of other ones (I’m the prettiest girl in school, “passes” perfectly, etc.), which I’m sure is intentional to make the appeal as broad as possible. There’s a rapey antagonist who chases down someone in a truck, pretends to be helping them on the side of the road but can’t keep his narcissism in check, and of course is motivated by some sort of resentful nonsense from earlier¹Who reminded me distinctly of Skip, not just in a general sense but like I watched him do something similar. I guess I might have but I couldn’t name a specific incident. He and I both owned trucks in high school, but for some reason I associate trucks with him and not nearly as much with myself. I guess the reason we owned trucks was very … Continue reading . Also there’s outdoor sex in November, and even in GA we’re talking 50s at best. But I do like the structure and editing, and the shape is spot on for what it’s trying to do. And as M mentions it’s got a non-terrible presentation of teenage sex, which is not common even in decent YA. I give it 3 stars, 0.25 rapey antagonists, and 1 Jonathan Coulton song²https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO6NkjbD6l8.

That said, the book makes me feel a conflict — at least in it language – between trans identities and non-binary identities. I understand the concept of the book is about a conflict in gender identity, and that it’s trying to write to an audience where the power of the binary hold significant sway. But from my non-binary perspective “I’m not a boy or girl… I’m just broken” is a slur, regardless of the intent (and to be clear, the context is to express a feeling of insufficiently femme presentation for a femme character’s own satisfaction, not an insult to NBs). I wish we had commonly accepted language that better talked about gender — and a whole slew of other artificially binary things — as a collection of separate attributes each with their own spectrum instead of an all-or-nothing lump of femme-masc tradeoffs.

Some of you have been more directly exposed to this than others, but I have been changing my wardrobe for the first time in about two decades. Having a wardrobe really, and redefining the things I already owned but called “costume” to be regular clothes. I previously arranged a life where I literally didn’t choose clothing — I had bucket full of shirts and a bucket full of underthings and I put on the first item from each bucket and rotated the stock when I added clean ones. There are lots of advantages to this plan: I virtually never thought about what I’m wearing, if I’m dressed appropriately for the weather or occasion, whether or not my bits match, if what I want to wear is clean, when the last time I wore X was, if this shirt has a stain, matches my mood or anything else. I never thought about clothes other than to remember I need them outside the house, and in terms of their technical features like “has enough pockets” and “fits around my torso”.

But of course there are lots of limitations to this plan. I don’t get to pick clothes or own a variety of things or dress for the weather or occasion. And I got into the this plan because I’ve been trained to not have personal preferences about color or fit or quality, which makes it hard to do things like pick an outfit or buy clothes that fit³Interesting note about this weird plan: because my training was so specific it only applies to me. I’m actually a big fan of fashion, know a non-trivial amount about it, and can do it for and with other people. I know about shapes and colors and all the other things 4-year-olds are supposed to learn, and I’ve applied those skills to clothes … Continue reading. It’s a strategy for making my avoidance permanent and complete without making my life terribly dysregulated. Which is a great party trick, but like all party tricks mostly useful at parties you hate, and so is perhaps better applied to ordering toilet paper than important aspects of social expression.

In any case, I’m getting new clothes and hats and makeup and whatnot. Part of that change will be aimed at expressing less masculine attributes. Not because I’m sliding across a scale to feminine — though I’m sure many of the things I do will fall into that binary label — but merely because I’m dialing down may of the signals of masculine. I don’t want to express gender as the foremost attribute of my social presentation and the idea that I have to vote straight-ticket pink-or-blue annoys me here just as much as in the politics. I know I’ll take some harassment for not keeping the lime and the coconut sufficiently separate, but really what I’m really doing is ending my participation in the sale of fruity drinks. So language that reenforces the idea that femme-masc as a singular spectrum where you have to be “enough” of one or the other is hard for me, even in the context of challenging assigned-by-authority nature of it, even even when trying to appeal to an potentially hostile audience.

Be better at your dream of universal inclusion, author of popular fiction about social topics (and everyone else, including me). Imagine not that we want to make gender user-selected and mutable but that we want to make it an optional and arbitrarily specific like “Seattle Reign fan” or “tall hat enthusiast”.

Or maybe that’s just my privilege leaking out.

Talked to Cowboy, about a hard time you’re having. I’m sorry it’s not going well, but I’m so glad you reached out. Isolation makes almost any problem worse, and so when you’ve got a problem that creates isolation it an be real tough. Good for you for breaking past that, even just an inch. Keep it up. We’ll be here for you.

Shanda noted that my steps for sharing are closely related to mindfulness. That’s definitely true, at least to the extent that mindfulness focuses on timeliness and narrative, and it’s what I’m trying to communicate when I speak about the value of the preparatory steps even if you don’t do the sharing (though obviously there’s value in the sharing too). I very much imagine sharing as an exercise in particular form of mindfulness, and it’s one of the reasons I do it. It’s one of the reasons I want your feedback, so the social part can close the loop for me and provide better regulation of all the shit I can’t handle by myself.

ZiB