on binaries
Apr. 22nd, 2024 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
isunshowerthis is primarily a post about how, over a year after starting it, i have FINALLY finished eve sedgwick's epistemology of the closet. i read some of sedgwick's writing (in retrospect, i don't think it was actually from epistemology but rather from touching feeling) in college and enjoyed it, and i was at the local anarchist bookstore on a date and bought the book and started reading it. this was a mistake.
the thing about academia is that if you're not used to it it's just fucking word salad. bad choice for me to read this book AFTER college. yknow? for the most part, i'm understanding sedgwick's wider tracing of the creation of the closet as a concept in the 18th and 19th centuries and how queerness is denied positions on either side of the public/private binary, and how the idea of the homosexual was constructed around the same time as modern masculinity and men trying to prove their masculinity by climbing on the backs of other, less conforming men. she just... does this through literary analysis of several books that i have not read. also, she never uses one simple word where she can use twelve big ones. most of my notes are me just writing "EVE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT".
BUT I SURVIVED. i've half a mind to email my college advisor who's the one who assigned me the sedgwick in the first place, oh, three and a half years ago now? (god i'm old) just to be like hey guess what i finally finished it.
but, because i try to put thought into the titles of these posts so they're not all the same and you dear readers (all five of you!) think i'm funny, i'm also going to use this space to talk about GENDER. yeah that's right, the big scary thing. uh, so since 2021ish i've been calling myself a trans man and since 2020ish i've been going by a name different than my birth name. legally changed it and everything. but over the last few months, i've been thinking that that's not quite right... that i'm much closer to actually being a cis woman. this is sort of scary. there was a period in my life where i went really hard correcting people and trying to assert myself as a certain thing. most of my friends that i see day-to-day know me by my chosen name. (and of course people are so fucking weird about detransitioners. most detrans communities are soooo transphobic. i was never on t in any meaningful way--3 months with no real effects doesn't count imho--so i wouldn't even fit in there anyway... it's a mess.) so to find myself in a situation where, actually, i think i want to return to using the name my parents gave me? where i think that she/her pronouns alongside he/him might be okay? to miss having long hair and wearing big skirts and dresses? i don't know how to go about explaining that to people.
i don't think that i'm 100% entirely a cis woman. part of it is probably [gestures at all the mental illness] that separated me from my peers and never made me feel like i fit in. and i really don't like having breasts and dress to deemphasize them whenever i can. but also i took a big swing about my identity and i was WRONG. i'm not 100% one thing or the other. and i'm a kind of in-between that isn't easily digestible. the way i understand myself is so far from the online nonbinaryness that dominated at my college. i'm a guy who's a girl but i'm closer to a man than a woman but i like to be pretty and i think i'm more attractive as a woman than as a man. i love my soprano singing voice but my guy friends accepted me as one of their own faster than any woman in my life ever did. i don't know what i am.
none of this has really any consequence to you all. i'm not fishing for a response or anything. i just wanted to, idk, get my thoughts down somewhere. i want it on record that this is how i'm feeling.
the thing about academia is that if you're not used to it it's just fucking word salad. bad choice for me to read this book AFTER college. yknow? for the most part, i'm understanding sedgwick's wider tracing of the creation of the closet as a concept in the 18th and 19th centuries and how queerness is denied positions on either side of the public/private binary, and how the idea of the homosexual was constructed around the same time as modern masculinity and men trying to prove their masculinity by climbing on the backs of other, less conforming men. she just... does this through literary analysis of several books that i have not read. also, she never uses one simple word where she can use twelve big ones. most of my notes are me just writing "EVE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT".
BUT I SURVIVED. i've half a mind to email my college advisor who's the one who assigned me the sedgwick in the first place, oh, three and a half years ago now? (god i'm old) just to be like hey guess what i finally finished it.
but, because i try to put thought into the titles of these posts so they're not all the same and you dear readers (all five of you!) think i'm funny, i'm also going to use this space to talk about GENDER. yeah that's right, the big scary thing. uh, so since 2021ish i've been calling myself a trans man and since 2020ish i've been going by a name different than my birth name. legally changed it and everything. but over the last few months, i've been thinking that that's not quite right... that i'm much closer to actually being a cis woman. this is sort of scary. there was a period in my life where i went really hard correcting people and trying to assert myself as a certain thing. most of my friends that i see day-to-day know me by my chosen name. (and of course people are so fucking weird about detransitioners. most detrans communities are soooo transphobic. i was never on t in any meaningful way--3 months with no real effects doesn't count imho--so i wouldn't even fit in there anyway... it's a mess.) so to find myself in a situation where, actually, i think i want to return to using the name my parents gave me? where i think that she/her pronouns alongside he/him might be okay? to miss having long hair and wearing big skirts and dresses? i don't know how to go about explaining that to people.
i don't think that i'm 100% entirely a cis woman. part of it is probably [gestures at all the mental illness] that separated me from my peers and never made me feel like i fit in. and i really don't like having breasts and dress to deemphasize them whenever i can. but also i took a big swing about my identity and i was WRONG. i'm not 100% one thing or the other. and i'm a kind of in-between that isn't easily digestible. the way i understand myself is so far from the online nonbinaryness that dominated at my college. i'm a guy who's a girl but i'm closer to a man than a woman but i like to be pretty and i think i'm more attractive as a woman than as a man. i love my soprano singing voice but my guy friends accepted me as one of their own faster than any woman in my life ever did. i don't know what i am.
none of this has really any consequence to you all. i'm not fishing for a response or anything. i just wanted to, idk, get my thoughts down somewhere. i want it on record that this is how i'm feeling.
