hot to go: heatwaves, gender, disability and prepping
it's hot boy summer, and i mean that literally
I originally set up this substack to talk about the intersection of two of my interests: gender and prepping. It turns out there’s not that much content in the centre of that Venn diagram, so I’ve often interpreted that brief rather loosely. But summer has finally kicked into gear, and I’m here to tell you that heatwaves are very much about both gender and prepping for me.
As I go through each season in a slightly different gender from the year before, I have to work out what it looks like - what I look like - in each new set of conditions. Winter (and slow, extended spring) have given me space to experiment with different ways to present my body to the world, allowed me to try various ways to combine body with fabric to fashion a self I want to be seen as. But now the leather jacket goes in my wardrobe, the thick boots that made me taller sit to the side. It’s (nearly) just me, my body, and the world.
It’s not as if, in winter, I ‘passed’ as a man. I’m not even entirely sure I’d want that - but as it is, it’s so far from possible, I try not to contemplate it too much. But when it’s cooler, when I have the option of more layers, I can play around with my silhouette. And I can wear a chest binder, which has become important to me just in time for it to become impossible. With these things, I can at least play around and feel like I’m communicating something - butchness, dadness, some kind of gender fuckery. I could at least communicate that I’m doing something with gender, y’know? Not a man, as such, but to a specific and contingent audience, someone who you should at at least use a coward’s ‘they’ for until the pronoun go-round.
So what happens to that guy in the summer? It’s become clear in the past couple of days that I can’t wear a chest binder in the heat. It’s not a question of choosing between comfort and aesthetics - it’s not a choice, or rather it’s a choice my body makes for me. My sensory processing is wired such that, beyond a certain level of discomfort, I simply can’t think. No good projecting a nice gender if you’re too incapacitated by overstimulation and overwhelm to enjoy - or notice - the benefits.
So my chest has to bring its whole full self to the summer, no negotiation. But it’s not just that. The big stompy Doc Martens that made me taller are no good any more. With my poor balance, those Doc sandals they make seem like a recipe for (another) twisted ankle. And hats, do not get me started. I can’t be in the sun without shading my face and neck as much as possible, but big floppy hats don’t quite do what I want gender-wise. Where are the masc-coded big hats? Do men just have sunstroke all the time? (It might explain a bit…)
You’ll notice this has all taken a turn for the very practical, because that’s how it has to be. Due to its various disabilities, neurodivergences and malfunctions, my body demands quite a lot of me in terms of preparation in order to preserve its basic state. The added question of how do I, you know, gender is sometimes an additional difficulty for, and sometimes in direct conflict with, this preparation. Maybe it would be possible to wear a chest binder, but what do I wear on top, and how does it close, and what do I do if I need to take the binder off, and where will I keep the binder once I’ve taken it off (what bag do I carry? a rucksack hurts my back…) and, and, and.
There are ways around some of these things - both aesthetic and practical. To some extent, summer means I simply have to accept I will have less control over how I look, since basic functioning has to take priority. This is both frightening and, perhaps, slightly liberating. I’m trying to see it like that, at least. If you can’t handle me at my obviously-has-huge-tits and wearing-a-floppy-hat, you don’t deserve me at my very-slightly-less-obviously-has-huge tits and wearing-a-leather-jacket? Maybe? I’m hoping so.
I prep my little bum-bag that I carry my life around in, chosen because I can’t wear a rucksack. It has a tightly rolled-up bucket hat in it - presentation-wise I’d prefer a cap, but caps won’t roll up to fit in a bag, and if I can’t fit it in a bag, I’ll lose it. Not to mention that caps don’t give enough shade. So, bucket hat it is - makes my face look too round, but not much to be done. The bum bag has my keys dangling from it, which is, again, down to practicality - this time with a neutral-to-good gender effect, since dangling keys are a butch signifier, and if I can’t be a guy, I can at least definitely be a butch. A new summer challenge: I need to work out what to do with my phone, since I have no jacket pockets to put it in. My shorts have a pocket, but putting my phone in it pulls them down in a way that, I worry, brings too much attention to the shape of my hips, especially with no chest binder. At the moment the bum bag has no spare space in it, since each pocket is full with a specific item - can I lose something from it? More prep is required. More balance is required. Whew. Is anyone else hot?
Simply hold the phone in one hand constantly and look like you're on a business call
Problem: not solved