Accidental Outings

In My Humble Opinion
1

Back in April, I showed up for my annual appointment with the tax consultant and slid in across the table from him and exchanged pleasantries. Provided the usual clump of documents and expenditure summaries on cue. Towards the end of our session, I said to him, “Hey, I’m going to have a book published later this year. I’ll be doing promotional activities, and there’s also a publicist… anyway, I’ve been doing related speaking engagements for awhile now, can those be included on next year’s taxes as an expense even if they predate 2017?”

And he said, “Oh, congratulations! What’s it about?”

Not long after that, I was chatting with my primary client (I’m a database developer) and explaining that I might be taking time off, two days here and three days there, on fairly short notice over the next year because I was trying to get some speaking engagements to promote my book, and the conversation quickly swung around to the same question.

In neither case had I specifically planned to explain to these individuals about being genderqueer, what genderqueer means in the first place, or why I thought it was important to tell the world all about it.

In fact, my attitude towards these folks was remarkably similar to the attitude that many folks – the ones most inclined to say things like “I don’t see why you need to bring up all that personal stuff, can’t we all just be people together, can’t you rejoice in your own unique individual identity instead of needing to label yourself” – tend to recommend to me. I was figuring that neither my tax accountant nor my database client had any particular reason to know or to care about my gender identity, and frankly whatever gender assumptions they made based on my visual appearance as a male-bodied person were not of any particular concern or interest to me either.

I’m also a singer in the local community choir. I sing baritone. The other choristers there are a fairly conventional sampling of suburbanites from a Republican-majority county, mostly upper-middle-aged and beyond retired professionals. I don’t always feel as if I completely fit in there but they make friendly overtures and make me feel welcome and I enjoy participating; I’ve never deliberately done things that would trigger confusion or “alien in our midst” responses there; it was, once again, an environment where I didn’t quite feel driven to express and explain my gender identity, although it was a more personal activity than my business dealings with the tax consultant or my database client.

Well, last year around this time, someone in Manhattan organized a performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony and requested volunter singers for the choral movement with the proceeds to go to the victims’ families down in Orlando in the wake of the shootings. So I attended and showed up attired in a situationally-appropriate skirt. During rehearsal, one of the tenors from our community choir hailed me and said it was good to see someone else from our choir there, then glanced down and added, “Umm, is that a kilt?”
To be honest, I don’t always handle it well. Unrehearsed and uncontemplated outings are awkward. I feel a mixture of enthusiasm for explaining the topic to anyone genuinely interested, reticent wariness about giving someone a five-minute overview lecture in reaction to passing comment, and annoyance that I can’t just blithely toss off a three-or-four word phrase and rely on it to explain as much as needs explaining. Or think I can’t.

I do wish for a world where this isn’t necessary. It’s not something I greatly enjoy doing. Despite what seems to some folks to be an appearance to the contrary, I don’t actually get off on perpetually explaining to folks what a peculiarly variant individual I am. Dating back to when I was an elementary school student, I’ve just wanted to be understood for who and what I am – a coarse approximation would do – instead of correcting badly wrong misapprehensions or coping with that special flavor of perplexed curiosity that makes one feel like a pale-bodied multi-legged bug someone just discovered upon overturning a rock.
I have described myself previously as an outlier – an exception to the general rule, not uniquely so but among the minority who comprise such exceptions. That’s the limit of reasonable expectations of normalization, I think, and I’m OK with that: that folks would often find me odd and unusual, but would recognize a term for that specific oddity when it was offered as explanation, and would nod and say “Oh, OK”. Some term that is short and pithy instead of paragraphs of explanation. So, yes, a box to put myself in.

Boxes aren’t intrinsically bad horrible things that take away folks’ freedom and confine them and strip them of their individuality. Especially not when self-chosen. They can be quite cozy and comfortable and protective. They can limit the sense of being out in the open and full exposed. And it’s not just us peculiar minority folks who rely on them. I bet most people don’t do their best sleeping out in the unenclosed fields! Don’t begrudge me my box.

2

You can’t really have it both ways.

You are publishing a public book about your gender identity, doing speaking engagements about the topic, wearing a skirt in public. But you get uncomfortable when people engage you in discussing these topics.

You have to either own your ideas, opinions, publicly or keep them private.

3

Publishing a book, at least to the vast majority of us that have no idea of what goes into it (and I assume to you as well), is a big deal. If you mention not only that you published a book but that you’re going to be speaking about it, I think it’s fair for people to ask you about it. It’s small talk. Some are truly interested, some are just asking as a reflex. But having said all that, fair or not, if you don’t want to talk about your book, don’t talk about your book. You can’t bring it up and then expect the other person to know that you don’t want any follow up questions.
If you don’t want to discuss it, tell your client(s) that you may have some short notice leaves coming up this summer and leave it at that. You could even tell them you’re an understudy in the singing group or some other thing. But to reiterate, you can’t tell them you published a book and then be annoyed when they ask you what it’s about.
IMO, it would be like if someone told you they won an award last week and when you asked them what it was for they got angry, told you it was an award for being the worst employee of the month and that you need to mind your own business. There’s literally no way you could have known that and it was the other person that started the conversation.

To tack on to what Omar said, as we move forward in this world you should be able to wear a kilt (or as I remember from an old thread) get your hair braided in a salon with out too many questions. But if you say “my book got published” it’s not reasonable to expect people to just ignore that.

If you don’t want to or can’t speak about it but still want or need to bring it up, you may want to come up with a stock response to defer people’s interest in the subject.

4

It’s not that I had some kind of expectation that they wouldn’t ask me about my book. In fact if I’d had the foresight to think about it at all, I probably would have assumed that they would and even been miffed if they hadn’t.

(Yeah, talk about “you can’t have it both ways”!)

It’s not about that.

It’s that I hadn’t thought that far ahead and then OOPS suddenly there I am having The Conversation. It’s about THAT. (Never mind that any village idiot should have been able to predict it in these situations, especially after the 1st time).

A stock response is probably a good idea. This is going to happen more often at least for the foreseeable future.

5

How is it an accidental outing if you deliberately wear a skirt? You didn’t expect anyone to ask you about it?

6

Context. I didn’t go to the local community choir rehearsals in a skirt.

7

I don’t understand why you don’t have a simple explanation of what your book is about. I suspect people are inquiring because writing a book is pretty cool and meeting someone who has written and published one is a bit of a rarity, at least for me, anyway. Do you write mysteries? Thrillers? Sci-fi epics? Non-fiction? They’re curious, but likely satisfied with something vague along the lines of “It’s about gender roles and society”, or whatever fits best and then redirect. “How about them Blue Jays, eh?” If they seem truly interested, then you might elaborate, but I suspect that most people will just move the conversation along.

8

I understand why boxes and labels are important for communication.

But in the examples you give, I’m having a hard to understanding how a box aids communication. Like, if I ask you what your book is about, telling me it’s about your experience as a “genderqueer” doesn’t work if I don’t know what “genderqueer” is. But I would be able understand “It’s a book about my experience as an individual who challenges traditional notions of gender.” The awkwardness would potentially still be there, but at least the awkwardness wouldn’t be created from the usage of unfamiliar terminology.

In the choir example, telling someone you’re “genderqueer” when they confuse your skirt for a kilt doesn’t seem like it would be the best explanation either,because it assumes that the inquirer has familiarity with that term, and I don’t think most people do. But I think most people would be able to understand, “Nah, it’s not a kilt. I just like wearing skirts sometimes. My wardrobe knows no bounds.” I think this would be a better explanation, since it doesn’t presume that skirt-wearing is something that only guys who identify as genderqueer do.

I have multiple labels that describe aspects of my identity, and yet I still feel misunderstood sometimes and I still get questions that require me to explain myself in ways I wish I didn’t have to. I don’t think having an “all-encompassing” label would really help with this problem. What does help is just correcting misconceptions as they occur while trying not care too much about how I’m perceived by others.

9

:slight_smile: I tried that with one of the two individuals mentioned in the OP. “Oh, uhh, well back when I was in academic I delved into gender identity and identify formulation as a topic within sociology”.

“Oh, well that should be pretty topical these days. What’s the title?” :smack:

(The title is The Story of Q: A GenderQueer Tale and therefore providing the title erased the deliberate vagueness of the first answer)

Yeah, exactly. I can’t use “genderqueer” as a box yet, at least not outside the LGBTQIA environment, because folks in general don’t know what it means.

Your advice overall is good, though, btw.

10

So then simply don’t tell people you are writing a book if you don’t want people to know what you are writing about.

11

what?

12

They don’t need to assume it about you. It’s about about Q, which you are writing (presumable academic, based on your first answer) about.

I’m not sure it needs to be as complicated as you are expecting it to be.

13

Just tell them that it is a QUILTBAG book and they’ll assume you are writing a manual on needlework.

14

I enjoy your posts, though I sometimes don’t understand your fierce need to rigidly name and categorize yourself and others.

That said, two things: some of this seems a “humble brag”; I’m reminded of a letter to advice columnist Mallory Ortberg where the letter writer claimed that she was uncomfortable telling people where she went to college. She would tell people she went to school outside of Boston and dropped other blatant hints that it was Harvard (Mallory responded that the LW was playing a coy game that actually egged people on to guess the college).

Secondly: I am a lesbian and I publish GLBTQ-concentrated academic material. Because you come across as a vigorous defender of GLBTQ (etc, etc) rights, it’s puzzling that you’re embarrassed to tell people the subject of your book – it comes across as shame to disclose the nature of your work :confused::confused:

15

Two different choral environments — one being the ongoing local choir, the other being a one-time performance in Manhattan to benefit families of the victims of the Orlando shootings.

The latter was organized by LGBTetc folks, the former is not.

16

I’m not at all embarrassed to have people know. I am, however, somewhat socially awkward and while I do a good job of telling people a large amount of personal info, I’m clumsy at making the switch from exchanging insignificant pleasantries to suddenly discussing things as personal as sexuality and gender.

I suppose there’s always a complex awkwardness about interacting with people I’m not yet out to, because I’m never in the closet in the sense of reallly trying to keep people from finding out, I’m just sometimes around people to whom I haven’t had reason to do so yet.

And now my different worlds are converging more often and thin skins dividing them are being pierced.

I’ll get better at it.

17

AH3: well said. I realized my post was snarky and I apologize. I really do like reading your blog work and happy to hear you’re having writing success. -JennSNARK

18

:smiley:

No worries. Thanks.

19

I don’t agree. If you’re a doctor and you write a book on skin conditions, and you do speaking engagements on how to recognise the early signs of various conditions, you still have the right to be annoyed when people buttonhole you privately and ask if you’ll take a look at their mole.

20

I’m not sure why this matters. Did you or did you not wear a skirt out to an event? And if so, why are you surprised that someone would ask you about it?

I don’t get it.