diff --git a/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/younes.md b/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/younes.md index acbba3c1..9a8304ee 100644 --- a/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/younes.md +++ b/writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/reverse/younes.md @@ -24,9 +24,13 @@ All the same, I was young, I was dumb, and I was flaking away at the edges of th An aside: furry is a notably queer space. It's a subculture in which you present to others a new version of yourself; not always better, but almost always more earnest. You provide an avatar, a front-stage persona, that everyone simply takes at face value. There is no unwinding, no translation[^younes-translation] of the front- to the backstage version of you. We commission art and ignore the names on the PayPal invoices. We meet each other at conventions, share rooms with each other, and still never learn each other's real names. We refer to each other by species, a cute way to reinforce the idea the ostensibly human being in front of us is not what we're seeing. -There's no reason that such a space would not attract a queer crowd, yes? Some of it is doubtless the sense of safety that fandom has always provided to gay and lesbian people as well as a place where gender-bending is welcome. Still, in a place where our own original characters are normal (as opposed to a fandom centered on canon, where canonical characters are the norm), where we become those characters +There's no reason that such a space would not attract a queer crowd, yes? Some of it is doubtless the sense of safety that fandom has always provided to gay and lesbian people as well as a place where gender-bending is welcome. Still, in a place where our own original characters are normal (as opposed to a fandom centered on canon, where canonical characters are the norm), where we become those characters, one is primed to play with identity. +So I did. +I was going by Makyo at that point, had been for a few years. Those around me, those within furry spaces at least, saw me as that well-dressed arctic fox, the one in the subtly pinstriped suit based off my old suit from jazz choir. It was the most comfortable performance of masculinity that I could manage: one based off looking good. Not looking masculine, per se, just looking good. Looking nice. A focus on clothes, on looking good with the knowledge of how to look good. There was, in retrospect, a desire for some shallow interpretation of femininity involved in this. + +It wasn't enough, though. I needed something more. More explicit. More integral. -----