X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2Fdrafts%2Fa-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md;h=6b6fc0150918ed05765ba14c5196e68744294855;hb=301ccd7fe0ab8659f9df0882c22380753d613267;hp=a9d32c976664dfc18108f54f4720281ce79ef622;hpb=610ce6dbe60d881d0fd471f48cd0e2e2227d2068;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git diff --git a/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md b/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md index a9d32c9..6b6fc01 100644 --- a/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md +++ b/content/drafts/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009.md @@ -1,35 +1,27 @@ Title: A Common Misunderstanding; Or, The Spirit of the Staircase (24 January 2009) -Date: 2020-01-01 +Date: 2017-12-02 05:00 Category: other -Tags: personal +Tags: anecdotal, personal, two-type taxonomy Status: draft -I remember (and the Diary entry helps, too) there was a party/meetup at someone's place down in Sunnyvale, perhaps in honor of Robin being in town. This was back a little less than nine years ago, during the golden age when the Sequences were still being written, when the _M_ and _R_ in _MIRI_ were still an _S_ and an _A_, respectively—before the Eternal September, before everyone was poly, and _long_ before everyone was trans. +I remember (and the Diary entry helps, too) there was a party/meetup at someone's place down in Sunnyvale, perhaps in honor of Robin being in town. This was a little less than nine years ago, back during the golden age when the Sequences were still being written, when the _M_ and _R_ in _MIRI_ were still an _S_ and an _A_, respectively—before the Eternal September, before everyone was poly, and _long_ before everyone was trans. I worked the 0600 to 1500 bookkeeper/customer-service shift at my supermarket dayjob that day. After work, I dropped off the week's bag of redeemed manufacturer's coupons at store #936 (what the company did with them after that, I was never told—perhaps they weighed them), bought a woefully-misnamed espresso medicinal from the hegemon's coffee kiösk there, then drove downtown and parked near the library construction site; I had some time to kill before I was scheduled to rendezvous at University and Shattuck at 1745 with a local genetics blogger with whom I had arranged to give a ride to the party. I walked to Ming Quong and bought a "FEMINISM IS THE RADICAL NOTION THAT WOMEN ARE PEOPLE‭" button to put on my bag as a replacement for the one I had bought in 'aught-six and lost at some point. I had recently reöutfitted my bag with buttons I had bought from a site I found because the proprietor occasionally commented on the blog (_the_ blog). My newly-accessorized bag could hardly be complete without a gender pin, and for some sentimental reason I wanted it _before_ taking the geneticist to the social. I have a weakness for what you might call _narrative optimization_: doing things not for any real-world utility, but rather because they would seem thematically appropriate if this were a story rather than real life. (I still have the "radical notion" pin, but it's no longer proudly pinned to my backpack. Ideology—in the general case—is not my style anymore.) -The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it should have gone +The party was amazing, as always, but there's one exchange that haunts me to this day, a moment when I was caught off guard by having been _seen through_ in a way that, at the time, I couldn't permit myself to anticipate or understand. I wish I had an actual transcript of it, so I could pencil in "corrections" of how it _should_ have gone. (Narrative optimization should be a _deliberate_ process: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather rather than letting them get blurred together in the murky, unauditable process of reconstructing the scene from an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after.) +A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. I struck up a conversation with her. (It turned out that we had previously had a tense exchange on the blog in which I had protested that gender-stereotypical behavior shouldn't be conflated with the fact of one's sex, but I didn't know that was her at the time.) -Narrative optimization should be deliberate: you should keep separate track of what actually happened and what _should_ have happened, rather than blurring them together. +At some point (to my eternal regret, I cannot recall the exact context), she casually said something about my desire for social dominance. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on something as innocuous and indisputable as my height or hair color. -(rather than the narratively-convenient reconstruction of an eight-and-change-year-old memory and a Diary entry from the Monday after), so that I could pencil in corrections of - -[...] - -A blonde woman wearing a red dress and black high heels stuck out among the predominantly male throng of geeks. - -casually referred to my desire for social dominance. - - -I stammered out a shocked and perhaps unconvincing denial. +I stammered out a shocked and probably unconvincing denial. She regarded me skeptically. "You _look_ male," she said. -"But that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" I burst out defensively, to the apparent surprise of +"But that doesn't mean I'm _happy_ about it!" I burst out defensively, to the apparent surprise of the other Robin, who was listening nearby. -The woman's skepticism was unpreturbed. "I'm not getting a tranny vibe from you," she said. +The woman's skepticism was unmoved. "I'm not getting a tranny vibe from you," she said. "Right, you're thinking of the good kind," is what I _should_ have said. "I'm the bad kind."