That phrase, "brush them off your tits" is something one of my teachers can be occasionally heard saying. The same one who once remarked to me that she was probably the only teacher I could get away with telling to -jokingly- fuck off, so you know she's pretty cool.

I never really thought about that phrase within context of my own life until this weekend. At the Boulder City Renn Faire this last Saturday, it suddenly applied perfectly. As some of you know, I play with a guild, the Adrian Empire, and I also portray myself as a French woman by the name of Cosette J. Reinhardt, who is the squire to Adria's current queen. I go the whole nine yards when I'm in costume most of the time, I speak English with French peppered in as if I'm not completely fluent, I wear not one, but two corsets, I wear a dress, and I have fake breasts. It's these last two that are most important here.

Recently some of my friends from Adria and I have become good friends with a knight from another guild, Corethea (I'm guessing at the spelling because I can't rightly remember for sure at the moment). We've been out to some of their weekly fighter practices and that day at Faire, my friend Jhim and myself had gone to their encampment looking for said friend (Owen is his name). Shortly after returning to our own encampment, Owen came by to inform me privately that I was no longer allowed in Corethea because I portray a woman yet am actually a man. Minutes later my knight and queen was told the same thing and came storming back to the encampment. I hadn't even had a chance to tell (read: warn) her before she was called away. There was more that happened while she was there for her to be pissed about, but that is not my story to tell and it's probably gotten more than enough press already as is.

If you've never been to a Renn Faire or don't know how guilds tend to work, just trust me when I say that I was shocked beyond the point I've ever been because of something happening at a guild or Faire. Rennies are some of the most accepting people I've ever met all in one group at the same time. I think it might have to do with the high concentration of pagans that tend to flock to this particular hobby, but there's likely more beyond that to it. Anyway. Rennies are the last people I would have expected to catch shit about how I portray myself in game from. It hurt me in ways that my parents telling me I was going to hell for being gay couldn't have. At least I saw the conversation with my parents coming. For another thing... these guilds are non-profit organizations. Corethea is still working on getting their non-profit status... and now they're throwing out discriminatory decrees. Not such a good way to get that done.

I'm not going to bother making a response, though. I won't dignify it. Which is terrible, because regardless I've pretty much got a nice little rebuttal that I've tossed around and rehearsed in my head over the last day or so. I don't believe in wasting words, so I'll put it here instead:

I don't know who put it through, but I'm hurt by what has happened recently. You may not know this, but my actual psychological gender is neither male nor female, but androgynous. I wear this dress because it is the most comfortable option for me, and banning me from your guild's areas because of it is gender discrimination. Don't worry, I'm not making a big deal of that, I just wanted to make sure you realized that. From this point on I'll not be dealing at all with Corethea beyond the minimum interaction that can be considered civil, so you can expect nothing but politeness from me. However, I will remind you that karma is a wheel.

Mmbeh. That is all, I suppose. I feel like I'm done, so there we go. I really just needed to get that out.