#you could perhaps argue bisexuals who are strongly presenting as masc or femme are in their way being gender deviant

[briar-rolfes-research-oubliette]

—Really enjoying this k.d. lang quote from a 1994 Vanity Fair article.

The full quote is a little different:

​The real points of interest to me are ‘I use my sexuality, but I eliminate the gender from it’ + ‘androgyny… is making your sexuality available to everyone.’ I’m about to have spicy gender thoughts.

I think our current western understanding of gender as something totally disconnected from sexuality (the gender bread man etc) has served its limited purpose… it’s time to think about how queer sexualities ARE genders. Butch is a gender, bear is a gender, twink is a gender—they each come with their own modes of dress and speech, social roles, a rough ballpark for sexual interests, and a rough idea of possible pronouns and terms of respect to use—which are what a gender needs in order to serve its social function. (I don’t think gender exists beyond a social function; gender is outward-facing, it is a combination of signals that tell people how to approach you. It’s for this reason that I don’t believe gender exists as an immutable feature of souls, genitals, or hormones. I think this is why autistic people are so good at realising they’re trans… they’re more likely to think about their social interactions from different analytical angles).

ANYWAY, this lang quote has made me think about how the thing androgyny communicates is bisexuality. Realising I was bi and that, if I wanted to be noticed, I needed to dress the part was the reason I started thinking about my gender in the first place. Whenever people say ‘nonbinary people don’t owe you androgyny’ it has always pissed me off, because it’s been so clear to me that I owe it to myself FOR other people (not straight people, lol. my gender is illegible to them, but that’s okay… it’s not For them). Maybe that’s because my gender is just communicating my sexuality.

I’m simply not gonna start unpacking the idea of Elvis as androgynous. I just can’t do it… not tonight…