a non-binary future
When I asked people for their ideas for what to to do with Keep Writing in the coming years, I did the thing I sometimes do, where I already know the answer I want. I wanted to do something bigger, to expand the circle, to make something that extends part subscribers. What I liked most about the 2018 Summer Census was being able to talk to so many strangers! It’s not a thing I am good at so I like the practice.
I love getting the responses but aside from an online archive and boxes and boxes of postcards in my studio that I occasionally share in a show, I wanted more of Keep Writing to be in the living breathing world rather than the realm of archive. I’ve never wanted to make precious art, even when I was making tiny handbound books and handmade paper sculptures. I want interaction.
So let’s put our words out into the world. This month was the first in a new and occasional experiment of asking you to send a card to someone other than me, and with purpose.
It’s a small step, asking businesses you support to consider making their bathrooms gender neutral—a baby step to ask that a single stall bathroom be for whoever needs it, regardless of gender. Because, seriously, who cares about the gender of the person who used the bathroom before or after you. Bathrooms on airplanes are gender neutral (though build for tiny people). A local bar in New Orleans posts outside the bathroom door the plumbing inside the room—urinal and/or toilet. That’s really the only plumbing we need be concerned with.
Gender neutral bathrooms are a small step towards making every day life a little easier for trans friends . Both Chicago Zine fest and LA Zine fest made their bathrooms gender neutral and while it takes a moment to get used to seeing someone use a urinal when I go to pee, it is not dangerous. Really.
So that’s all I have for now. The tiniest step. I’m working on others. Have ideas? send them my way!
And for a bonus, I can’t stop listening to this album. I know, there are conflicting opinions about Against Me! and yeah, saying she was the first punk to publicly transition overlooks others who came before her (RIP Sarah Kirsch) here’s what I’m listening to driving around this summer.
