Horses are good company -- The Witcher

1. My hands are hurting lately so not up for a lot of typing. But also need to think some things through and writing is my way of doing that!

2. My taste/smell issue is still with me sometimes, but not nearly as bad as it was. A huge relief. I have been using my neti pot and i think it's helping.

3. One thing I like about volunteering and organizing is meeting new people, in this kind of structured way. Lots of folks at books to prisoners this week.

4. Grateful to people on the internet who have helped me de-colonize my brain around ideas of gender. It's a years-long and ongoing project but I'm appreciating what i have un-learned and what i am learning. Such as, there are infinite genders. Gender does not equal anything as mundane as anatomy, gender does not equal pronouns. etc. You can't assume people's gender by looking at them or hearing their voice.

(nota bene, I am not trans.)

had cause to think about this today when i had a very nice conversation about SF, with someone working at the library. Our conversation was one of those great ones that went right into specific titles and authors, in the way of people who like to read SF. We'd both read Ancillary Justice and Murderbot, and I mentioned that i listened to the MurderBot books.

Another employee walking by said, "Oh I know just what he's going to say! He didn't like the reader!" which caused us all to laugh.

My conversational partner said that when you read the text (with your eyes), you get a strong sense that MurderBot is agender. However the reader of the audiobooks has a masculine voice.

This is strange to me, it's the second time I've heard this exact same sentiment, the other was from someone at the dog park. Neither time did I feel confident enough to challenge that statement in the moment.

The narrator of MurderBot, Kevin R. Free, is a "middle-aged Black queer" according to him. His voice is not low, it is what some might call effeminate. He's also a very accomplished voice actor and audio book narrator (of hundreds of books), very thoughtful and skilled. He knows what he is doing. Also he is a queer man-- I imagine he's had his voice policed and commented upon and I am so curious as to what he would say about this.

Also, ok, voice does not equal gender. There are plenty of people who are cis men with high voices, you hear them on the radio every day; there are women with low voices; there are non-binary and a-gender people with all kinds of voices. There is a chorus here in town that used to be a gay men's chorus, and they changed it to be, people of any gender who sing bass/baritone/tenor (I don't know vocal ranges please correct me if i am wrong-- but my point is, they separated it out from gender).

So it then follows that the listener is assigning gender.

Lately I'm happier when I simply allow myself to be awake and active in the evening and at night, sleep during the morning, and rest during the afternoon. Resting means sitting and watching TV, usually. Ironically the main things I have to do during the 9-5 hours which involve leaving the house are doctor appointments and going to the pharmacy, ie seeking health care whilst having a sleep disorder.

Running errands at night has led to several interesting encounters with my fellow creatures of the night. Hy-Vee is our 24-hour grocery store. It's a giant place, super brightly lit, and at this hour the stockers are out shelving items. I wore my X-23 shirt today (from the movie Logan), which led to 2 of the employees engaging me in fairly long monologues about comics, which was hilarious since I know approximately zilch about superhero comics! Maybe I should get a shirt about graphic memoirs.

A few months ago, returning my library books at 2 AM, a stranger approached me in the deserted parking lot. Note that, while he appeared to come out of nowhere, I didn't get a threatening or creepy vibe from him at all. He seemed friendly and shouted "Hey big guy!" at me (seeing me from behind). When I turned around, he said, "OH I'm sorry." He then spoke very fast and told me some sort of story, to which I said, "What are you asking for? Do you need money?" I gave him a couple of bucks, and then he disappeared again. Where did he come from?? Anyways I treasure his "big guy" and it makes me think about that as a friendly term of endearment for men, while fat women don't get afforded this privilege.