From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2017 18:12:37 +0000 (-0800) Subject: more missed location-masking in "Joined" X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=b1c6416c83d516fe872b3a409305bba9c9000261;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git more missed location-masking in "Joined" --- diff --git a/content/2016/joined.md b/content/2016/joined.md index 25ae64f..bb46358 100644 --- a/content/2016/joined.md +++ b/content/2016/joined.md @@ -19,13 +19,13 @@ During the next few days, I watched ["Soldiers of the Empire"](http://memory-alp (I couldn't find the liquid eyeliner myself and had to ask a store employee. She asked if there was any particular brand I wanted. "No," I said, just a eyelash hair too forcefully, "this isn't my usual area of expertise.") -So I got up early the morning of Sunday the eleventh, shaved, applied the makeup in my _inexpert_-would-almost-be-too-charitable way (smear on foundation, haphazardly dab eyeliner on sides of face to make Trill spots, waveringly bring lipstick to lips), put on a bra and my foam breastforms under the cheapo uniform top, and used [my PADD](http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/galaxy-s7-features-and-specs/) to [summon a taxi](https://www.uber.com/) to the convention. +So I got up early the morning of Sunday the eleventh, shaved, applied the makeup in my _inexpert_-would-almost-be-too-charitable way (smear on foundation, haphazardly dab eyeliner on sides of face to make Trill spots, waveringly bring lipstick to lips), put on a bra and my foam breastforms under the cheapo uniform top, and used [my PADD](http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/galaxy-s7-features-and-specs/) to [summon a taxi](https://www.uber.com/) to the hotel hosting the convention. -I arrived way too early for check-in, and walked up the road (wearing my black jacket over my uniform top) to the Mariott, which, unlike the Hyatt, has an outpost of the raktajino hegemon, and ordered a breakfast sandwich and the [vanilla sweet-cream iced raktajino specialty medicinal](https://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/vanilla-sweet-cream-cold-brew). I gave my name as _Jadzia_, but the barista wrote _Jetsy_ on the cup. (Maybe my voice was a little shaky, but _maybe_ she needed to recalibrate her [universal translator](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/11/still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/).) +I arrived way too early for check-in, and walked up the road (wearing my black jacket over my uniform top) to a different hotel that had an outpost of the raktajino hegemon, and ordered a breakfast sandwich and the [vanilla sweet-cream iced raktajino specialty medicinal](https://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/vanilla-sweet-cream-cold-brew). I gave my name as _Jadzia_, but the barista wrote _Jetsy_ on the cup. (Maybe my voice was a little shaky, but _maybe_ she needed to recalibrate her [universal translator](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/11/still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/).) A little bit of lipstick rubbed off on the sandwich and the straw. -I waited in the Hyatt lobby for a while, still with the jacket over my uniform, reading the Janet Mock autobiography on my PADD, until it was time to check in. After buying my Sunday wristband ($70), I wandered over to the photo-op/autograph ticketing table and bought a ticket to get a photo with Michael Dorn at 11:10 ($40). (Nana Visitor or Terry Farrell herself would have been my first choices for a celebrity photo, but they weren't there that day.) +At the convention hotel, I waited in the lobby for a while, still with the jacket over my uniform, reading the Janet Mock autobiography on my PADD, until it was time to check in. After buying my Sunday wristband ($70), I wandered over to the photo-op/autograph ticketing table and bought a ticket to get a photo with Michael Dorn at 11:10 ($40). (Nana Visitor or Terry Farrell herself would have been my first choices for a celebrity photo, but they weren't there that day.) There was still a lot of time to hang out before the theater opened for the actual convention programming, but that was fine, because actual convention programming is kind of boring; the actual point of conventions is to have an excuse to dress up and wander around and talk to people and get vanity photos of other people who are using the convention as an excuse to dress up. @@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ I appreciated that. On the _whole_, however, I feel like I was less enthusiastic As Pearl at Comic-Con, no matter what catchphrases I shouted during photo ops, I _read_ as "unapologetic man-in-a-dress not pretending to be anything else," which is cool _faux_-subversive gender variance. (So brave! Man Pearl is best Pearl!) Whereas Starfleet uniforms are properly unisex: the only gender cues indicating that I was trying to be Jadzia Dax rather than a male Trill lieutenant were my breastforms, the lipstick (a much weaker cue), and the foundation hopefully hiding any residual beard-shadow (a weaker cue still). That put me out of the "man merely wearing _clothes_ reserved for the other sex" category and into "man ineffectually pretending to be a woman" territory. -Maybe that's _not_ cool. Maybe that's just creepy to some people. Even at a science-fiction convention in the Bay Area. (Even if people in "Portland" are not [dumb enough to say what they're really thinking](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941).) I didn't see any other crossplayers at the _Star Trek_ con, and the only other _highly visible_ MtF crossplayers I saw at Comic-Con were the guys with beards wearing _Sailor Moon_ outfits (and as for the people I _thought_ I clocked on the ten-second timescale, who can say?—maybe they were real). +Maybe that's _not_ cool. Maybe that's just creepy to some people. Even at a science-fiction convention in "Portland." (Even if people in "Portland" are not [dumb enough to say what they're really thinking](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941).) I didn't see any other crossplayers at the _Star Trek_ con, and the only other _highly visible_ MtF crossplayers I saw at Comic-Con were the guys with beards wearing _Sailor Moon_ outfits (and as for the people I _thought_ I clocked on the ten-second timescale, who can say?—maybe they were real). I _want_ to be able to say with the unquestioning moral certitude of my youth that none of this should _matter_, that distinguishing "crossplay" from cosplaying a character that happens to be the same sex as you is discriminatory (and therefore, it need not be said, bad). I chose to play a _character_ that I _genuinely admire_, and because this character _happened_ to be a woman, I decided to wear the breastforms that I coincidentally happened to already own, in order to make the costume more realistic (given that I am a man and, unlike Jadzia Dax, don't have breasts), in _exactly the same way_ that because this character _happened_ to be a Trill, I decided to paint spots on the sides of my face using liquid eyeliner that I happened to not already own, in order to make the costume more realistic (given that I am a human and, unlike Jadzia Dax, don't have spots on the sides of my face).