Passionately Promoting A More Perfect World

Anonymous asked:

I'm an amab muslim nb, and pre/no medical transition. I started wearing my hijab to signal not-male, and I found that (unless they knew me pre-coming out), other Muslims never read me as "man in a hijab". There have been some jokes about me being an "ugly girl", but a headscarf is so gendered, plus it's traditional and people usually assume if I'm religious enough to wear a scarf, I'm too religious to be queer (which is bullshit, but useful), that it's overcome my flat chest and 5 o'clock shadow

Interesting and useful! Though I wonder if it depends on where you are? People in the Bay are reading me as not-female while I’m in a bright pink dress with lace and a bow. This seems to be infinite amounts of gender-signalling.

I kind of expect that what’s going on is that the people you encounter don’t have “crossdressing man” as an available concept, but people in the Bay definitely do, because people crossdress a lot in the Bay. This is part of why I am problematically annoyed by people who present as men in dresses - they’re destroying the gender-signalling commons.

(Obviously there shouldn’t be a rule against it, but I strongly suspect that I wouldn’t be harassed on the train if only women dressed like me.)

  1. mugasofer reblogged this from sinesalvatorem
  2. plain-dealing-villain said: As a wishes-to-not-be-terrible cis person I am also annoyed by crossdressing-heavy trans-heavy communities. it is really annoying to never know gender without explicitly asking, especiallly when many people don’t want to be asked
  3. cromulentenough reblogged this from sinesalvatorem
  4. h3lldalg0 said: I was mildly perplexed to hear you ever get read as male. I saw you at the seder and perceived you as female. Spouse did too, and I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that you’re trans to him. It might be that we’ve both lived in mostly conservative areas, where anyone signaling a gender can usually be expected to be that gender.
  5. sinesalvatorem posted this