Episode ten of the Some Gender Going On podcast: The Joy of Not Giving Shit. You can play it or download it here:

Notes

I’m Izzy Grosof, and this is the Some Gender Going On podcast, episode 10.

Today’s episode is the joy of not giving a shit.

Specifically, I’m talking about the joy of not giving at shit what other people might think about what I do, how I behave. Whenever I can.

I’ve been wearing a snake on my shoulders, when I’m walking around, at work, etc. and not just any snake, but a non-binary snake. Colored like the flag.

Objectively, what’s so weird? It’s not so different from a scarf. But I like the feel better, I didn’t like the feel of things that close around my neck, or that are too hot.

But no one else does it. And it’s very me. I’m sure I get strange looks. I don’t give a shit. People give me compliments, and that’s nice. Nice thoughts are welcome, and nothing else matters to me.

Is it an autism thing? Or neurospice? Certainly carrying and feeling plushes is a classic move in the community. A lot of people find it feels nice. I didn’t set out to imitate anyone, so it’s more inherent to me than social convention - and that’s what not giving a shit looks like. And maybe there’s something more than that. Maybe a lot of people would like it, and the level of not giving a shit to carry around a plush is also related to the level of not giving a shit to identify as neurospicy. It’s all wrapped together.

Spinning when I walk. I spin in the halls. I spin in the sidewalk. I used to do a jump spin for a while. Practice from marching band, practice from years of experience.

It feels nice, it feels free, joyous, femme. It’s me!

Fun to do with a girlfriend too. Spinning under her arm or its arm is just lovely.

I’m learning to spin in boots. Challenging, not what one might expect, lots of fun. Rainbow laces really help. But what really helps is that I’m not worried if someone sees me trip or fall over or if someone thinks that what I’m doing is pretty weird or not what a professor usually gets up to.

Reorienting in my chair when watching a talk. As I write these words, I’m lying on my couch, one foot up the back cushion, the other on the arm rest. That’s at home, but the same principle applies if I’m concentrating hard enough at work. It’s ADHD. It’s gender. I focus better. I’m good at what I do. I don’t give a shit what the people around me are thinking. Worrying about them won’t help me understand the content, those niceties just get in the way. So I’ll curl up, or twist back and forth, or what have you.

Back when I was taking classes, or now in seminars and conference talks, I sit in the front row, and I ask questions when I want to, when it’d help me. And I don’t listen when people behind me scoff or shift their weight, wanting me to get on with it. Life’s too short to waste on what they think. I’ve wasted far too many years already.

Mismatched socks. I tell everyone that every sock’s an opportunity for more color, that I wouldn’t have it any other way. And that’s certainly true, it is my preference. But also, laundry management is a nightmare for me. It drains my mana bar, my limited ability to stay at a nonequilibrium in focus-space. Mana burn, I call it. Leaves me dry, leaves me miserable, leaves me never wanting to do laundry again. Why would I put myself through that? To look more normative? Why? Better to just not give a shit.

Crying cathartically in situations where it makes people deeply uncomfortable. I could bottle it. I’ve certainly done it before. But it hurts. It’s emptying, to bottle myself. If it can’t come out, I lose connection with who I am, what I want, how I can see it from the outside, how I can ever get better. Bottling myself makes me feel empty, cold, hollow. Detached from the situation, seeing it distantly, through a screen. It’s not worth it. Better to be myself, be real, be embodied. Cry.

And yes, some people get really uncomfortable with that. Ok. It’s not my responsibility to display only the emotions that the people around me are comfortable with experiencing. I’m not going to scream or yell, but you can’t make me not cry. I need that, more than you need to not see it. And at the end of the day, I just don’t give a shit.

Pronouns reminders. It used to be I felt terrified when someone said it wrong because I felt like I should correct them, but also I wanted to remind them, I wanted to stand up for myself and I wanted them to change, but also what if they get pissed off with me reminding them and I nudge them into spiraling transphobia?

Now, I don’t care what they think. Now, if I don’t remind them, it’s because it feels like more fucks than it’s worth. I have no responsibility to make them change, no responsibility to try to change them. I can do what feels right in the moment. But I’m not scared any more. Or I wish I wasn’t.

There’s a lot of elements wrapped up in gendered presentation where the normative approach doesn’t work for me.

I wear shorts under a skirt, where some people might carry a purse. I need pockets, and I need my arms free. A purse, I can forget and lose. Pockets are attached to me. And I don’t care if it’s unladylike to reach under my skirt to my shorts in public. First, who got to decide that they have more right to decide what was femme enough? And second, who got to decide that I wanted to do what’s femme? I don’t give a shit, I’ll carry around stuff how it’s comfortable and I’ll look cute. That’s all there is.

I shave my face in public, by feel. Is it normal? Why would I care? It makes me feel better, a lot better. Why would I give a shit if it’s normal?

This is why I reacted badly to being recommended to try using women-designated spaces, not just men-designated spaces. Because it felt like I was being told I had to give a shit. And yes, I do have to. But I was already. I wasn’t asking “what makes sense” or “what would be nice” or “what would be right”. I was asking “who might I hurt”, and running scared of long odds of obscure methods of harm that are blown out of proportion to push an agenda. I was giving a shit, in other words, and it was not joyous by any means. I was sad because I was being reminded of the state of affairs.

Now I give less of a shit about gendered spaces and obscure theories of harm. Not no shits, I don’t think that’s really an option in these circumstances. But that’s Ok. It’s not one approach for all circumstances. Case by case, context and conditions. That’s navigating reality.

For a more personal example, I have chest hair on my cleavage. Not many people showing cleavage do. A lot of people don’t have it in the first place, and a lot of people shave. I don’t want to shave. I like it. It’s soft and smooth and it lies nicely. People who don’t have it don’t know what they’re missing - or they want different things than I do. Why would I prioritize their judgement? Why would I care? Or at least, I’d like to not care. That being said, I did care, for a long time. And about other things, I still do.

Not giving a shit isn’t always immediate. It often needs to be cultivated over time. I used to care what people thought. And more than that, I instinctively deferred to normativity. I wasn’t evaluating the potential for judgement, the potential for consequences. I was fleeing, scared of the busybodies in the dark. When it came to my cleavage, for instance. I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted, or about whether people’s distaste was worth prioritizing. I wasn’t thinking at all. I was fleeing, hiding, terrified. Minimizing myself, minimizing who I wanted to be. Automatically and continually. It took me a long time to work through, to get past.

But I also had trouble in the other direction. Where my desire to eject unreasonable constraints on my behavior also led me to eject reasonable constraints as well, which ended up with me doing things I regret. Cases where I hurt people, made people uncomfortable, overstepped social norms that I didn’t mean to overstep and which I regret having overstepped. I am intentionally not giving details, which should give a hint of the extent to which I regret some of the behavior in question.

There’s a voice in my head that says “See? See? This is what happens when you reject my advice, 2hen you ignore the rules. You’d be a better person if you followed the rules. And it’d be so much simpler, too. You’d never have to think for yourself, I could just hand you all the answers. So listen to me, and do what you’re supposed to do.”

Lock myself away in fear of the harms I might commit.

The saying goes “kill the cop in your head”, dating to the 1968 Paris university protests and general strike. And make no mistake, that judgemental mindset was placed in my mind, built and implanted and reinforced. The narrative that normativity is success, deviation is danger and failure and misbehavior and evil, I’ve been marinating in that mindset my whole life, much to my chagrin. The more normal the more good, the more good the more success, the more success the more normal. And on and on and on, crushing us all into a uniform mold of bland suits and fake smiles and firm handshakes with no one behind them.

But now, the jailer is gone. I fired him. Now, the gates are open. I wore them open, grinded away at them until I could snap them off, picked the locks, bent them apart. Now I walk free of that prison in my mind. Now only the whispers remain. And they do not hold me, they do not bind me. The invisibility of the normal is shattered. The supremacy of the normal is shattered. I don’t give a shit, and I am free.

I’m trans. Not giving a shit is the only way I could ever manage it. The only way I could ever be myself. The only way I could ever be happy. And I am so intensely happy.

For all that people might claim to be supportive, or allies, so often they’d rather I wasn’t trans. They’d rather they had their simple little closed-off world back. The reaction to “I’m trans!” wasn’t “Congratulations!”, like it should be when I share the happiest thing I’ve ever realized, the joyous possibilities ahead. It was “Oh,” with a strongly implied “Oh no,”. And so “I’m trans!” became “I’m trans?”, and eventually “I’m trans,”. It’s only in trans spaces where I get to be as excited as I want to be, and where I can put my hope and trust into the people around me.

Everywhere else, I lead by not giving a shit. “I’m trans”, with the tone of a lazy daydream that tells them it’s not something they get a say in, not something I’m putting out for their perusal. Just something I know about myself, just a little element of reality. One they don’t get to control, don’t get to reshape to their understanding, don’t get to put their hands on. “I’m trans” and I love it, and I don’t give a shit.

And maybe if I know you, and I like you, and I trust you, I can let you in. Give you a chance, let myself care about what you think. But you have to earn it, I’m not going to offer on spec. And if you don’t want to, that’s fine by me. I don’t need you. I love myself. I enjoy myself, free, not giving a shit.

There’s a danger there. Of becoming calloused, isolated, hardened off from the possibility of connection. Of only being able to be happy when I’m on my own. I don’t want that. I want to connect, to care, to let people in. It’s Ok to be burned, giving people a chance. I’ll be Ok, getting burned a few times. But it’s different to let a specific person in, than to let in the generalized opinion of strangers. Or, really, to let in the perception of what strangers might think, might want, an amalgamated sum of influences over time. That’s not worth it. That doesn’t just burn me, it latches on and drains me dry. So that stays out.

But you, you can come in. You’re a person, not an amalgamated stranger. If you want to join me in not giving a shit, you’re welcome out here. I’ll help you chase off the jailer, pick the lock, bend the bars. Drown out the whispers. It’s a big world, out here. We can connect. We can care. We can feel. We can be real, we can live. We can be ourselves, truly see each other. Join me?

That’s everything. Thank you for listening, and thank you for thinking.