Lobsterfest

Juniata College has this tradition called Lobsterfest each fall in which every club on campus can get a table and sign people up. A few friends and I put together a club called Trans* Parachute United, and this was our first Lobsterfest. Basically, this meant that I got to sit on the quad at a table by myself for three hours in the hot sun while people walked past and gave me weird looks.

Now I had wanted to look as androgynous as possible, which would normally mean wearing my binder (a shirt-type-thing that kind of squishes the developed breast tissue and pushes it away from normal boob area to achieve a flatter/more “masculine” chest) along with a button-down shirt. It was, unfortunately, far too hot for that. It was way too hot even for the t-shirt and jeans I was wearing. And, since you may not know, wearing a binder when you’re sweaty results in prolonged feelings of stickiness and grossness and general discomfort.

But while I was sitting in gross discomfort at the T*PU table, I had a paper in front of me with the Gender Diamond on it.

On the top of the paper, I wrote “Where are you on the gender diamond?” (I had also replaced “Polygender” with “Other Gender” and “Genderless” with “Agender” in fitting with my personal definitions) and had a Sharpie next to it. I labeled my own gender right at the very bottom point and encouraged everyone who came up to me to label theirs as well. I am friends with many of the people that put themselves on the diamond, and have had gender-related conversations with most of them, but there were still some really interesting things I noticed.

1. Almost everyone hesitated at putting down a point, often changing their mind at the last minute before placing a dot
2. Even people who said, “I am definitely cis” didn’t place themselves at the extreme point of their birth-assigned gender (except for one)

Point two is especially interesting to me. These people did place their dots, for the most part, within the circle I would consider cisgender, but several fell closer to the purple center than I expected. This isn’t to say that I doubt that such people aren’t cisgender – if they say they’re cis, and that’s what they identify as, then that’s their decision. I was just a little intrigued by the cisgender people placing themselves closer to the purple than I would have initially guessed. I certainly expected more dots on the feminine and masculine corners than were there.

I also thought it was interesting that people who never seemed to question their gender before hesitated greatly before finally placing their dot.

Overall, it was a good day. A bunch of people came over to the table for information. Most of them wandered off giving me strange looks, but a few people looked honestly interested. I’m glad that we’re around to get the word out and help educate people. If we want to get anything accomplished, we need to make sure everyone knows we exist.

(Eventually people will know what neutrois means… Eventually. XD)