Cross-dressing and the Persistent Absence of Normality: A Character Emerges

I have learnt some things about the Maker as the text unfolds in fits and starts. For one thing she is a transvestite. I didn’t see that coming but it’s absolutely true. This particular middle-aged woman has been slowly emerging as I continue to write, and the wonder of it to me is that she possesses increasingly well-defined contours despite the fact that I still have no idea what happens to her. I know something of her beginning (more on that later) and I know something of her end but I still know very little of what unfolds between those two poles.

Basically I write a short tale and another fragment emerges into the light. I have decided to proceed on the basis of possessing a faith in this process. It’s that old story of driving in the dark - the headlights only illuminate the road immediately in front of you with everything else relegated to darkness, but it is still possible to make a journey of a thousand miles this way. I forget who first voiced that thought. It has stayed with me though.

Excerpt from The End of the Maker

The Maker was not normal, if such a categorisation can ever be attributed to a human being. Do you think humans are ever really ‘normal’? I am sure that they are not.

Even so, the Maker was unique.

As you know, most (but not all) humans are gendered - either an X or a Y; or perhaps an XY; or lots of X, no Y; or all YY or all XX; or Y mostly with a little X. Occasionally there is no X or Y at all, but some Z or Q, or something else entirely. There are endless combinations and many subtle shades of personal reality. Also, the gender and sexual orientation of a human may or may not be indicated by its biological sex - the relationship is fluid and provisional at best.

In most human societies, however, a rigid simplification occurs, one that in history has often been violently enforced. There can be reductive binary assumptions made about individuals, based primarily on biology and appearance - they are either X or Y, because their bodies appear to be such - and these are accompanied by equally rigid dress codes and modes of behaviour associated with X, and different codes associated with Y.

The two are quite distinct, and many humans dress and behave in conformance to these diametrically oppositional, and socially convenient, archetypes. The passage of these conforming individuals through society can be stealthy, as they render themselves visually unobtrusive; dressing and behaving according to the rules makes these individuals anonymous, unremarkable, almost invisible, as they move among the countless hordes of other humans doing precisely the same thing.

And most humans do exactly that: precisely the same thing as their fellows.

However, within this restrictive binary construct, an alternative, socially explosive possibility also exists, with the opposite effect. It can be enormously powerful and disruptive for a Y individual to intentionally behave and dress in public according to the conventional X protocols, or vice versa. This simple substitutional practice, which is sometimes considered by humans to be provocative or indecent, is in some exclusively human communities actually illegal. In others it is celebrated, and accompanied with ribald amusement, or with any of a number of different reactions. It has various names, but we can call it ‘cross-dressing’.

The Maker cross-dressed.

Or was it that she crossed-dress? I remain unsure of the correct term.

…

…Continue reading here: The Story of the End of the Maker.