![\"Babylon](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/IMG_3557.jpg\" "\\"baylonatmcm\\"")
<\/a>Jingle, jingle, slrrrrrrrp.<\/p><\/div>\n
Do you hug it?<\/p>\n
My costume monster, Babylon, is a non-gendered-but-femme creature, with no anthropomorphic secondary sex characteristics, but with performatively femme behaviour.<\/p>\n
Now, as it is rare for women to “perform” their femininity, performative femininity generally tends to be the preserve of people that don’t identify as women – because “performance” indicates a degree of “artifice”, and it is unusual for someone to “put on” the presentation that’s generally considered “appropriate” for their identity.<\/p>\n
(But of course, it does happen, because everything does, and identity and
presentation are two different things and being a woman doesn’t make
your presentation femme by default, so of course one
can<\/em> identify as female and also perform your
femininity.\u00a0That’s a thing that happens too. I don’t need
to explain these things to you: you know about stuff, you’re all down
with this. Back to telling the tale.)<\/p>\n
So. Big, sparkly performance femme-ness is A Thing and a grand one at that
– just, not necessarily tethered to a gender identity.\u00a0 So
Babylon is very hard to read. It’s too over-the-top femme to be a
girl, but surely boy monsters are big and spiky, right?<\/p>\n
Obviously, the answer is that Babylon is non-binary, but our average
member of the public in need of a full Gender 101 isn’t going to
assume that.<\/p>\n
I had lots of fun wearing Babylon during the convention, mostly because it
is nice to dress as a monster, but also because I discovered a few
interesting things about how people interact with an ungenderable
non-human costume.<\/p>\n
But the most hilarious demographic by far was teenage boys, and other
men in costumes.<\/p>\n
Teenage boys roam in knots about conventions, all holding papery
requests for hugs. Their knuckles blanched as their grip on their FREE
HUGS signs tightened when Babylon indicated that their desire for hugs
was the same, and came over to hug them.<\/p>\n
Oh, they didn’t like it. Oh, teenage boys didn’t like the
Babylon. Oh no.<\/p>\n
“What is it?” they said.
Babylon is not a bloke. I’m a bloke; Babylon is a Babylon.
They didn’t want photographs.<\/p>\n slrrrrrrrpp<\/p><\/div>\n
You probably see where I’m going with this. My next example
is brilliant.<\/p>\n
I Babyloned up to a group of Star Wars Stormtroopers<\/a>. Now, I rather like masks and
men in uniform, so I saw this as a brilliant opportunity to put
the “play” into “cosplay” and be an alien
at them. Which is what I did.<\/p>\n
Babylon jingled everywhere and posed for photographs, and one of
the chaps, reading Babylon as female, got a bit saucy with it.
This is fine, and Babylon, of course, sauced right back, all
jingly silver bits and long talons – and then the
Stormtrooper asked us, “Getting a bit hot are we,
ma’am?”<\/p>\n
Babylon made a surprised gesture (it doesn’t have a mouth)
and indicated that he was wrong, and it wasn’t a
“ma’am.”<\/p>\n
I wondered if this was the first time in his life that he had
ever had anyone he had not been sexually interested in being
flirtatious and forward at him.<\/p>\n
I idly thought about all the times I’ve been out with
lady friends of mine who’ve experienced street
harassment. Random strangers making sexual advances they
weren’t comfortable with. I suppressed the urge to tear
off my monster mask and bellow, “HUURARRRGGH, FEMINISM,
NYERRRGH” and spray liquid feminism at him from my
nipples.<\/p>\n
Remembering that I’ve been told that sort of behaviour
“hurts the cause”, I kept my mask on and flounced
off elsewhere.<\/p>\n
What’s the moral to this post? There isn’t one,
really. It was just an amazing, beautiful, interesting and
inspirational experience to be both fully androgynous and have
no face.<\/p>\n
I’m androgynous myself in presentation and I get
gendered more-or-less randomly, but I have a
human face<\/em>, and this means I get treated differently
from if I don’t. Some of the roughest transphobia I\u2019ve ever had was
when I was masked<\/strong><\/a>, and I don\u2019t think
that was a coincidence. Babylon doesn’t have
anything like a human face: just two slits with emergent
tentacles, and this simultaneously intimidates people and
makes them feel more free to loudly express their opinion
of it.<\/p>\n
I’ll be at the large, popular comic convention
again at the end of October. If you’re going too
this Hallowe’en, come and find us and give us a
hug!<\/p>\n
First photograph used with permission of the owner;
second picture courtesy of the
artist<\/a>. Stormtrooper image Creative Commons, from
Wikipedia.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
\n“Urgh,” they
said.
\n“Oh man, it’s a
bloke<\/em>, mate,” they said.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The Stormtrooper, who had been
happily playing moments before, rasped, “Oh my god,
you’re a
dude,<\/em>” and immediately stopped playing. He backed
right off.<\/p>\n