"Those nuns were tough!"

[bcholmes]

I was just sending an email about things to discuss in a trans panel at WisCon. One of the things I said was that when you embrace thirdness, you discover a frustrating dearth of language. I stopped myself from saying, "It's enough to make me follow James Nicoll down a dark alleyway to beat him unconscious and rifle his pockets for loose pomo theory."

It makes no sense, see, because -- heck -- there's no reason that James would be carrying around third-gender/pomo vocabulary. Cat treats, maybe. But how many conversations about third gender have really benefited from cat treats? (Shut up, you furries!)

Maybe if I got James to follow Judith Butler down a dark alleyway. But that seems creepy.

Comments

[bibliofile]

Heh -- though it'd make a better cartoon than something to do in real life.

(I wonder if there's a reason why James doesn't regularly post about the contents of his own pockets? Hmm.)

[lisaquestions]

True that. Most of my ability to describe my gender involves describing what it isn't, which I find personally frustrating.

Or I can go for a shorthand and just say I'm a woman, because whatever I call myself, that's where I get positioned. Unfortunately, it's also unsatisfactory.

[submarine_bells]

Ohhh yes, so very true. Regardless of what gender I think of myself at any given time, the rest of the world treats me as female, and so... yeah. I've kind of given up on the whole topic, because it's just plain too hard, and impossible to communicate to anyone else in less than a zillion words. I've learned to just swallow the quiet squirminess that I feel whenever I have to state my gender, and move on. *sigh*

[submarine_bells]

Heh. That sounds like so many conversations I have, where I find myself rather sheepishly ending a contribution with "... well, it made sense in my head."

[bcholmes]

"... well, it made sense in my head."

Exactly!

[serene]

Goofball.