Creative Representations of Gender

In my last post of 2022, I searched the walls of the Museum of Greek Folk Instruments for clues as to the gender politics of modern Greece. In 2023, I'd like to get more creative about representations of gender. This means stepping away from the assumption that most people are comfortable with the gender (binary) they are assigned at birth. It also means relying less on terms like 'woman' and 'man', and 'feminine' and masculine' to describe people. People are unique and multi-faceted human beings, with potential for performing different genders in different contexts, changing their gender dramatically through the course of a lifetime, and many other variations on traditional gender roles, so I hope to be as creative as I can in my representations of them. 

I am a good case study: Most of the clothing I wear comes from the women's section of a department store, but I also feel drawn to clothing from the men's section (and I even have some). If the world was more relaxed towards, or even rewarding of, gender diversity, I might feel more comfortable considering myself non-binary, genderfluid or genderqueer. Right now I have self-selected 'gender non-conforming' on my online dating profile, a more subtle rebellion, but I regard it as a signal that I wear my 'cis' label lightly.

While I indicate that my pronouns are she/her on Twitter, I also feel drawn to the gender-neutral stylings of 'they/them'. 

I might be able to express myself as such: I wanted to be treated by all people with as much respect and dignity as can be afforded any person. I can see that, in the current state of Australian (or global) patriarchy, I might achieve such a goal more quickly if I used 'he' pronouns. If I were less afraid of what people were to think of me, I could add 'he' to the end of my bio, after they, so that my list of pronouns would read: 'she/they/he' 

Maybe sometime in the future I will. 

In the meantime, I hope to be more attentive to gender variance in my work.