Jump ahead nearly a decade, my gender expression is essentially naught. While I am well-paid for manuafcturing labor, I am exhausted working through the pandemic on a manufacturing floor thoroughly disinterested in wearing any clothing I care about to work and too tired to changed and socialize afterward.
I have code-switched and camoflaged myself so much I have forgotten who I really am; my natural manner of speech, my personal queer expression, my identity.
And I am crabby and uncomfortable as fuck!
I am desperate to leave manufacturing and find a decent job where I could succeed and not bury my authentic self. I am too tired and overwhelmed to do well in a job search, and my misery builds; I am growing angry with myself for essentially closeting my queerness after having been out and authentic for more than three decades.
Then opportunity presents itself. Someone gives notice in a position in customer service that I was uniquely qualify to do. Customer service in our plant is free of the toxic maleness that dominates the production floor, and has a different management umbrella.
I am offered and accept the job, leaving manufacturing and entering a casual office environment. And I am now working to nudge myself back to a truer expressions of myself. I dress traditionally male in clothing cuts, but not in terms of color. Men’s clothing has turned entirely drab and dull and I hate it. Thrifting gains me access to men’s clothing from a time when color was ridiculous and wholly embraced.
Color is my gender expression at work, my queerness quietly seeping back into my everyday life; brightness in a world of black and grey and khaki. Button-down collar dress shirts with coordinated happy/funky/crazy socks stack on top of often contrasting colors of trouser, and shoes with colored soles and bold laces.
Sometimes I catch my breath when setting out my clothes and push down the insecurity and anxiety of the past queer laborer that lost his way. In only a few months, I have all my old coworkers retrained to expect color and texture and shoes. I use color as an expression of my queerness at work. I slowly relax and rediscover my queer voice, my queer language, my queer posture. I slowly relax and grow comfortable in my job without feeling severed from my authentic self.
In terms of gender language, I still do not make many conversations about my pronouns and specifics of my gender, but neither do I remain silent when others do, especially others that bring up the topic with that “what stinks” look on their faces… I let my queer otherness be known in more specific terms beyond simply mentioning my husband.
For convenience, I use he/him pronouns. They have never felt inaccurate to me, I think because all those years prior I separated physical body from gender, and physically I am a biological male in a body that has never triggered dysmorphia of any kind. In terms of gender, I am they I suppose. I am more plural than non-binary. I am many; I am unicorn. I am queer; I am other. In terms of the language of the community, I most often use genderqueer, which is rather a good fit internally even if my outward expression remains “technicolor cis”.
My online profiles typically list “he/him/any” and it is accurate, although maybe more because I’m not squimmish about being called a feminine term because I don’t consider the feminine to be weak or less-than. I don’t consider being called a girl an insult. So… okay.
Technically, none of the pronouns are inaccurate. And intent of the user matters: individuals intending insult or harm lose the power of their words because I understand that I choose when and how to use my power and whether or not someone else has access to it at all, let alone to diminish it.
As to the gender expressions of my future self? I dream of a sewing room I don’t yet have, full of the fabrics I have been thrift-hoarding. I daydream of floral print suit jackets cut from floral drapery panels, and lavender puffer overcoats from reimagined quilts. Khakis dyed every color except the one they came in. Shoes and belts redyed and hand-painted into complex patterns of color and texture. Flowy caftans from gauzy tablecloths, wafting about gardens over-run with wildflowers and vegetable vines and fruit trees spilling out from our near-urban neighborhood. Colors and patterns and textures swirling into each other until bland cis-het mundanity melts away from my sight.
This is the dream of my future. This is my queerness unrestrained.
Color is my gender.
quantum man 