my icon is inspired by an idea i’ve seen lots of lil references to scattered about the internet. ‘gender pirate’ is a term that gets mentioned alongside genderqueer sometimes, with hints of a definition here and there. here’s my attempt at stringing it all together into a fuller definition!
if going ‘stealth’ is for ninjas, pirates are the exact opposite. they are a flavor of genderqueer which is about being aggressively, loudly, visibly queer.
gender pirates take what they like from the existing ideas of gender around them and weave it into something flashy and dangerous. they try to disrupt the average person’s ideas of gender normalcy by appearing charming and menacing, multifaceted and single-minded. gender piracy is as much an action as it is a presentation as it is an identity. it is both hyper performative and incredibly authentic. these people are the the foppish highwaymen, the dapper gangsters, the daring corsairs. you don’t have to incorporate a nautical aesthetic to be a gender pirate, but it helps!
i consider myself a gender pirate because being visibly gender-nonconforming is very important to my sense of self. i don’t care about being read as a man or a woman, but i do care about people thinking i’m cis – the thought of that makes me really dysphoric!
and yes, i do relate heavily to the nautical aesthetic 😉 but that part is not mandatory! the aesthetic associated with this label (if you want to associate any aesthetic with it at all!) is inspired by all kinds of swashbucklers.
