Title: Context Is For Queens
Date: 2022-11-27 22:00
Category: other
-Tags: anecdotal, cosplay, Star Trek
+Tags: anecdotal, cosplay, Star Trek, review (webcomic/graphic novel)
Status: draft
> NEELIX: One of those species is the Benkarans. They occupy just ten percent of Nygean space, but take up nearly eighty percent of the space in Nygean prisons.
It immediately became clear that I would have to cosplay at one more convention in order to test this, and decided to reprise my role as [Sylvia Tilly](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sylvia_Tilly) from _Star Trek: Discovery_ (previously played at San Francisco Comic-Con 2018) at the next nearby con. There had been [a plot point in season 1 of _Discovery_](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Vaulting_Ambition_(episode)#Act_Four) that people in the mirror universe are more sensitive to light, which I had thought was lame and bizarre at the time, but now gave me a perfect excuse for why (someone who looks like) Tilly would be wearing sunglasses! (I was soon disappointed to learn that one-way glass isn't actually a real thing that you could make sunglasses out of; what's real are [_half-silvered_ mirrors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_mirror) that are deployed with one side in darkness.) For good measure, I also added of a pair of [padded panties](https://thebreastformstore.com/gold-seal-padded-panty/) from the Breast Form Store to my outfit, another solid buy.
-So Friday night, I threw my [2250s-era Starfleet uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(late_2230s-2250s)) in my backpack, put my breastforms and wig and mask in a box, and got on the train to San Francisco. (My ticket to the con was Saturday only, but it's nice to get a hotel room for the night before, and get dressed up in the morning within walking distance of the event, rather than taking the train in costume the day of.) Carrying the box around was slightly awkward, and the thought briefly occured to me that I could summon an internet taxi rather than take the train, but it was already decadent enough that I was getting a hotel room for a local event, and I had recently learned that my part-time contract with my dayjob (which started in April as a Pareto improvement over me just quitting outright) isn't getting renewed at the end of the year, so I need to learn to be careful with money (at least until dayjob IPOs and my shares become liquid) instead of being a YOLO spendthrift.
+So on the night of Friday 25 November, I threw my [2250s-era Starfleet uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(late_2230s-2250s)) in my backpack, put my breastforms and wig and mask in a box, and got on the train to San Francisco. (My ticket to the con was Saturday only, but it's nice to get a hotel room for the night before, and get dressed up in the morning within walking distance of the event, rather than taking the train in costume the day of.) Carrying the box around was slightly awkward, and the thought briefly occured to me that I could summon an internet taxi rather than take the train, but it was already decadent enough that I was getting a hotel room for a local event, and I had recently learned that my part-time contract with my dayjob (which started in April as a Pareto improvement over me just quitting outright) isn't getting renewed at the end of the year, so I need to learn to be careful with money instead of being a YOLO spendthrift, at least until dayjob IPOs and my shares become liquid.
-Saturday morning, I got myself masked and padded in all the right places, and suited up to walk from my hotel room to Moscone West for the convention! They had a weirdly cumbersome check-in system (wait in line to get your QR code scanned, then receive a badge, then _activate_ the badge by typing a code printed on it into a website on your phone, then scan the badge to enter the con), and I dropped my phone while I was in line and cracked the screen a bit. But then I was in! Hello, Fan Expo!
+Arguably, just the _time_ was more of a waste than the money. Focusing on [writing my memoir of religious betrayal](/2022/Jun/an-egoist-faith/) has been a stuggle. Not an entirely unsuccessful struggle—the combined draft [mss.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ms.) are sitting at 74,000 words—but having 74,000 words isn't the same thing as being _done already_, and back to the business of being alive, instead of enjoying a reasonably comfortable afterlife—and even a single Saturday at Fan Expo instead of being holed up writing (or pretending to) puts an upper bound on my committment to life.
+
+Worse, in the eight-day _week_ between Fan Expo and me getting this boring Diary-like post up about it, OpenAI released _two_ new GPT variants ([text-davinci-003](https://twitter.com/janleike/status/1597355354433916928) and [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/)). It's not a _timeline_ update (and most days, I try to count myself with those sober skeptics who think the world is ending in 2040, not those _loonies_ who think the world is ending in 2027), but it is a suggestion that it would be [_more dignified_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy) for me to finish the memoir _now_ and go on to sieze the possibilities of another eighteen (not five) years of life, rather than continuing to mope around as a vengeful ghost, stuck in the past to the very end.
+
+Anyway, Saturday morning, I got myself masked and padded in all the right places, and suited up to walk from my hotel room to Moscone West for the convention! They had a weirdly cumbersome check-in system (wait in line to get your QR code scanned, then receive a badge, then _activate_ the badge by typing a code printed on it into a website on your phone, then scan the badge to enter the con), and I dropped my phone while I was in line and cracked the screen a bit. But then I was in! Hello, Fan Expo!
And—didn't immediately have anything to do, because conventions are boring. I had gone through the schedule the previous night and written down possibly non-boring events on a page in my pocket Moleskine notebook, but the first (a nostalgic showing of Saturday morning cartoons from the '90s) didn't even start until 1100, and the only ones I really cared about were the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous at 1315, and a photo-op with Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden (best known for their roles as Lt. Cmdr. Data and Dr. Crusher, respectively, on _Star Trek: The Next Generation_) at 1520 that I had pre-paid $120 for. I checked out the vendor hall first. Nothing really caught my eye ...
I guess it's not entirely obvious how I would tell in every case. A woman wearing a Wonder Woman costume recognized me as Tilly, enthusiastically complimented me, asked to get a photo of us. She asked where I got my costume from, and I murmured ["Amazon."](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C1LCMSB/) Her friend took the photo, and accepted my phone to take one for me as well. Would that interaction have gone any differently, if I had actually been a woman (just wearing a Starfleet uniform and maybe a wig, with no mask or breastforms or hip pads)?
-People at the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous were nice. (The schedule called it a cosplay "meetup", but I'm going with _rendezvous_, a word that I'm sure I learned from watching _The Next Generation_ as a child.) A woman in a [2380s-era sciences division uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(early_2380s)) asked me my name. "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_," I said. No, I meant, your alter-ego, she said, and I hesitated—I wanted to stay in character (that is, I didn't want to give my (male) name), but some minutes later (after the photo shoot) changed my mind and introduced myself with my real name, and she gave me a card with her _Trek_ fan club's name written on the back.
+People at the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous were nice. (The schedule called it a cosplay "meetup", but I'm going with _rendezvous_, a word that I'm sure I learned from watching _The Next Generation_ as a child.) A woman in a [2380s-era sciences division uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(early_2380s)) asked me my name.
+
+"Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_," I said.
+
+No, I meant, your alter-ego, she said, and I hesitated—I wanted to stay in character (that is, I didn't want to give my (male) name), but some minutes later (after the photo shoot) changed my mind and introduced myself with my real name, and she gave me a card with her _Star Trek_ fan group's name written on the back.
<a href="/images/fan_expo_star_trek_meet.jpg"><img src="/images/fan_expo_star_trek_meet.jpg" width="575" style="margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
My wig was coming off at the beginning of the photo shoot, so I went to the bathroom to fix it. (The men's room; I am spiritually a child of the 20th century, _&c._) The man who was also in a _Discovery_-era uniform also wanted a photo, and I ended up explaining the rationalization for my sunglasses to him ("definitely not her analogue from a parallel universe where people are more sensitive to light"—but [Doylistically](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist) because I'm wearing a mask instead of makeup this year), which he thought was clever.
-Maybe I should have tried harder to make friends, instead of mostly just exchanging pleasantries and being in photos? There was a ready-made conversation topic in the form of all the new shows! Would it have been witty and ironic to confess that I don't even like _Discovery_? (I finally gave up halfway through Season 4; I don't care what happens to these characters anymore.) I guess I was feeling shy? I did join the Facebook group written on the back of the card I was given.
+Maybe I should have tried harder to make friends, instead of mostly just exchanging pleasantries and being in photos? There was a ready-made conversation topic in the form of all the new shows! Would it have been witty and ironic to confess that I don't even like _Discovery_? (I finally gave up halfway through Season 4; I don't care what happens to these characters anymore.) I guess I was feeling shy? I did later join the Facebook group written on the back of the card I was given.
<a href="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg"><img src="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg" width="350" style="float: left; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
I did get "ma'am"ed on my way out, so that's something.
-At this point, I was kind of tired and bored and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate. But there was one last thing left to do. I went to the vendor hall, stopped by a side table and wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a strip of paper torn out from my Moleskine, then went back to the _TransCat_ table.
+At this point, I was kind of tired and bored and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate.
+
+But there was one last thing left to do at Fan Expo. I went to the vendor hall, stopped by a side table and wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a strip of paper torn out from my Moleskine, then went back to the _TransCat_ table.
-I changed my mind, I said (about buying), where does the story start? The proprietor said Issue 1 was sold out, but that the book Vol. 1 (compiling the first 6 issues plus some bonus content) was available for $25. I'll take it, I said enthusiastically.
+I changed my mind, I said (about buying), where does the story start? The proprietor said that Issue 1 was sold out, but that the book Vol. 1 (compiling the first 6 issues plus some bonus content) was available for $25. I'll take it, I said enthusiastically.
And then—there wouldn't be any _good_ way to bring up the thing, except that I felt that I had to try and that I was paying $25 for the privilege—I said awkwardly that I was—disappointed, that our Society had settled on a "trans women are women" narrative. The proprietor said something about there being more enthusiasm in 2016, but that coming back to conventions after COVID, public opinion seems colder now, that she was worried.
-I asked if she had heard of the concept of "autogynephilia." She hadn't.
+I asked if she had heard of the concept of "autogynephilia." She hadn't.
-The proprietor asked if I would like the book signed. I agreed, then hesitated when asked my name. Sensing my discomfort, the proprietor clarified, "Who should I make it out to?" I said, "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_."
+The proprietor asked if I would like the book signed. I agreed, then hesitated when asked my name. Sensing my discomfort, the proprietor clarified, "Who should I make it out to?"
+
+I said, "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_."
"Sylvia Tilly! Keep on exploring the final frontier," says the autograph.
-Sensing that there was no way to cross [inferential distance](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances) in a minute in the vendor hall, I said that I had some contrarian opinions, and that I had a blog, handing the proprietor the slip of paper before taking my leave. (Implicitly proposing a trade, I thought: I'll read yours if you read mine.)
+Sensing that there really was no way to cross the [inferential distance](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances) over a transaction in the vendor hall, I said that I had some contrarian opinions, and that I had a blog, handing the proprietor the slip of paper before taking my leave. (As if implicitly proposing a trade, I thought: I'll read yours if you read mine.)
+
+I walked back to my hotel room to get out the uncomfortable costume—but not fully out of costume, not immediately. I had packed a hand mirror in my backpack the previous night, so that I could look at my masked face while lying in bed. I appreciated the way the mask really does look "female"; the illusion doesn't depend on a wig to provide the gendered cue of long hair. (Of course; I have long hair in real life.)
+
+I swear it looks worse in photographs than it does in the mirror! Gazing into the hand mirror while feeling up the weight of my size-7 breastforms, it was almost possible to pretend that I was admiring flesh instead of silicone—almost possible to imagine what it would be like to have been transformed into a woman with a shaved head (surely a lesbian) and DD breasts.
+
+"Almost" might be an overstatement.
-[TODO—
+I often like masturbating into a condom (no mess, no stress!), but catching the cum with toilet paper works fine, too.
-I _swear_ it looks worse in photographs than it does in the mirror.
+---------
- * masturbating in the hotel room; the mask with no wig; imagining being a butch lesbian with a shaved head
- * a slight tear in the mouth of the mask, the nostrils look kind of ragged?
- * if Crea FX could make a female alien mask
-]
+Later, I would force myself to read _TransCat_ Vol. 1. I don't want to say it's bad.
+I mean, it is bad, but the fact that it's bad, isn't what's bad about it.
-Later, I would force myself to read _TransCat_ Vol. 1. I don't want to say it's bad. I mean, it is bad, but the fact that it's bad, isn't what's bad about it.
+What's bad is the—deficit of self-awareness? There are views according to which my work is bad. I can imagine various types of critic forcing themselves to read this blog with horror and disappointment, muttering, "Doesn't he" [(or "Doesn't she", depending on the critic)](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) "know how that _looks?_" And if nothing else, I aspire to _know how it looks_.
-What's bad is the—deficit of self-awareness? There are dimensions along which my work is bad. I can imagine various types of critic forcing themselves to read this blog with horror and disappointment, muttering, "Doesn't he" [(or "Doesn't she", depending on the critic)](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) "know how that _looks?_" And if nothing else, I aspire to know how it looks.
+I don't get the sense that _TransCat_ knows how it looks. Our hero is a teenage boy named Knave (the same first name as our author) in Mountain View, California in the year 200X, who discovers a cat-ears hat that magically transforms him into a girl when worn. While transformed, he—she—fights evildoers, like a pervy guy at Fanime who was covertly taking upskirt photos, or a busybody cop who suddenly turns out to be a lizard person. Knave develops a crush on a lesbian at school named "Chloie" (which I guess is a way you could spell _Chloë_ if you don't know how to type a [diaeresis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic))), and starts wearing the cat hat more often (taking on "Cat" as a girl-mode name), hoping to get closer to Chloie. Cat and Chloie find they enjoy spending time together, until one day, when Cat makes some physical advances—and discovers, to her surprise, that Chloie has a penis. Chloie punches her and runs off.
-The hero of _TransCat_ is a teenage boy named Knave (the same first name as our author) in Mountain View, California in the year 200X, who discovers a cat-ears hat that magically transforms him into a girl when worn. While transformed, he—she—fights evildoers, like a pervy guy at Fanime who was covertly taking upskirt photos, or a busybody cop who suddenly turns out to be a lizard person. Knave develops a crush on a lesbian at school named "Chloie" (which I guess is a way you could spell _Chloë_ if you don't know how to type a diaeresis), and starts wearing the cat hat more often (taking on "Cat" as a girl-mode name), hoping to get closer to Chloie. Cat and Chloie find they enjoy spending time together. Until one day, when Cat makes some physical advances—and discovers, to her surprise, that Chloie has a penis. Chloie punches her and runs off.
+... how can I explain the problems with this?
-And it's just—so disappointing, like _Nevada_, but worse. Superficially, this comic was clearly made for _people like me_. Who better to appreciate a fantasy story about a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who can magically change sex, than someone who remembers being a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who fantasized about magically changing sex? (Okay, I was _East_ Bay; this is _South_ Bay. Totally different.)
+Superficially, this comic was clearly made for _people like me_. Who better to appreciate a story about a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who can magically change sex, than someone who remembers [being a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who fantasized about magically changing sex](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#beautiful-pure-sacred-self-identity)? (Okay, I was _East_ Bay; this is _South_ Bay. Totally different.)
-But I can't enjoy it—not just because of the bad art, or bad font choices (broadly construed to include the use of ALLCAPS rather than **bold** or _italics_), or numerous uncorrected typos, or unnecessarily drawn-out pop-culture references that I didn't get—but because the whole thing is told from inside an ideological fever dream _that doesn't know it's a dream_.
+But I can't, appreciate it, other than as an anthropological exhibit—not just because of the bad art, or the bad font choices (broadly construed to include the use of ALLCAPS for emphasis rather than **bold** or _italics_), or the numerous uncorrected typos, or the unnecessarily drawn-out pop-culture references that I didn't get—but because the author is living inside an ideological fever dream _that doesn't know it's a dream_.
-The magic hat is interpreted as revealing our protagonist's true form. "[A]m I a straight boy with a girl on the inside? Or am I a gay girl with a boy on the inside?" Knave wonders. And just—what does that _mean?_
+The foreward by Tara Madison Avery mentions the subset of transfolk "whose gender journey involves hormone replacement therapy." The "episode zero" primer tells us that the hat brings out our protagonist's "True Form". "[A]m I a straight boy with a girl on the inside? Or am I a gay girl with a boy on the inside?" Knave wonders. When Chloie's former bandmate misgenders her behind her back, Cat tells him off: "Chloie is a woman, even without the pills and surgery! You don't get to decide her identity based on her looks, or what she did to attain them!"
+And just—what does any of that _mean?_ What is an "identity"? How can you "be trans" _without hormone replacement therapy?_ I was pretty social-justicey as a teenager, too, but somehow my indoctrination never included this _nonsense_. (Is is an East Bay _vs._ South Bay thing? Is it of critical importance whether the _X_ in the year 200X equals '4' or '8'?) When I was a teenage boy fantasizing about being a teenage girl, I'm pretty sure _I knew I was pretending_.
-[TODO— why TransCat—
+And just—there are _so_ many interesting things you could do with this premise, that you can only do if you admit that biological sex is real and "identity" is not. (If not, why would you need the magic hat?) The situation where Knave-as-Cat is pursuing Chloie as a lesbian, but Chloie doesn't know that Cat is Knave—that's interesting! I want to know how the story would have gone, if Chloie (cis) found out that her girlfriend was actually a boy wearing a magic hat: would she accept it, or would she feel betrayed? Why would you throw away that story, but for the ethnic narcissism of an "everyone is [our sexual minority]" dynamic?
-typos: anme (name), Cloie, thier, bringin (in the afterword!), vegitarian
-cafe painting reference in book 5
+And if you _do_ want to go the ethnic narcissism route and make Chloie trans, why assert that Cat and Chloie are equally valid "even without the pills and surgery"? It seems to me that Cat's identity is more legitimate on account of the magic! How would Chloie (trans) react if she found out that her cis girlfriend was actually a boy wearing a magic hat? Would she _die of jealousy?_ Would she bargain to try to borrow the hat—or even just steal it for herself?
-Side life things to note—
+(The conclusion to Issue 1 establishes that the hat's sex-change magic doesn't work on Knave's male friend, at which our hero(ine) infers that "it was meant for me." But is the power sponsoring the hat as kind to other [(sufficiently)](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) gender-dysphoric males? If so, I'll take back my claims about "identity" being meaningless: whether the hat works for you would be an _experimental test_ demonstrating who is really trans.)
-* memoir progress
-]
+[TODO: tie up—the scene about art criticism, social justice in general]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff