To the Guy in the Dress at AwesomeCon — I Get It Now
So, I’m dredging up an incident that happened several years ago at AwesomeCon DC.
For those who don’t know, AwesomeCon DC is a large scale media con. I’m now a vendor there, but this was before then. In fact, it was almost before AwesomeCon DC was a large scale media con. (The first year was 2,000 people. I’ve been to every year of this con but one, when I was unfortunately cross scheduled).
The Guy in a Dress
I was out on the con floor chatting with somebody who was making an abortive attempt to start a feminist SF fan club in DC (I have no memory of what happened with it) about feminism, fandom, and how sexist Dirk Benedict was being. (I am never, ever going near the man again, yeouch, he doesn’t even hide it).
Somebody came up and, as happens at cons, wormed into the conversation. It’s a con, and we were on the floor.
Said individual was wearing a twirly blue dress, a blonde wig and facial hair. In other words, they were presenting with both masculine and feminine features.
We had a bit of a conversation and then I did what is generally considered polite in such situations. I asked him his pronouns.
He snapped back with “I’m just a cross dresser.”