Body as Processor of Biopolitical Fictions
Last night I dreamed that my childhood home caught on fire. Grew from an unknown disease in the walls. The bones of the house began to smolder simultaneously, the corners of panels peaking out, edged in orange, crackling and jumping to flames. Catalyst unclear. Eyes wide, realizing we were about to lose everything.
At the end of October, a pretty and rather unethical developer in Den Bosch pressed me for a second meeting. I had already declined. When archiving his texts, something switched off; I stopped doing what I had been doing - working at a thing called “pulling men towards me.” This “pulling men towards me” function is just one default2 aspect of feminine gender.3 Although I’ve sloughed off other bits of femininity before, this is like the last block in a Jenga stack. Since that point, rubble. Testing the edge of an extremely private and terrifying precipice. I’ve been hovering over a mechanistic4 lack of belonging in either gender, and my body feels like a robot. Or a lazy and androgynous compromise. I’m drawn to crash my own gender expression simultaneously5 using both high-femme and masculine6 signifiers, but panicked that it could damage relationships, and turn my body into a target7. Currently, I’m inclined to use my body as a guinea pig, and follow panic as a design prompt.
At the end of October, a pretty and rather unethical developer in Den Bosch pressed me for a second meeting. I had already declined. When archiving his texts, something switched off; I stopped doing what I had been doing - working at a thing called “pulling men towards me.” This “pulling men towards me” function is just one default2 aspect of feminine gender.3 Although I’ve sloughed off other bits of femininity before, this is like the last block in a Jenga stack. Since that point, rubble. Testing the edge of an extremely private and terrifying precipice. I’ve been hovering over a mechanistic4 lack of belonging in either gender, and my body feels like a robot. Or a lazy and androgynous compromise. I’m drawn to crash my own gender expression simultaneously5 using both high-femme and masculine6 signifiers, but panicked that it could damage relationships, and turn my body into a target7. Currently, I’m inclined to use my body as a guinea pig, and follow panic as a design prompt.
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