[3W4DW] 10. Tell me about your default icon.

Superimposed male/Mars, female/Venus and trans gender symbols, with Swiss army knife tools distributed in the extra space around the edges.

I can't even remember how I first came across it - on a trans-activist flyer, somewhere, probably, several years ago - and I've been using it as my default icon pretty much everywhere more-or-less ever since.

And I thought: yes yes yes. Because: I'm trans, but I twitch at the binarism, the male-or-female, the these-are-your-choices of the traditional gender symbols; I don't think of "male" and "female" as fixed endpoints encompassing the entire range of an immutable gender spectrum so much as culturally-legible reference points. Yes, this sounds wanky, but bear with me --

-- because part of what I love so much about this image is that, for me, it says all that, but it says it wryly, with raised eyebrows, in the full knowledge that it's taking the concept of gender and spinning abstract theories off it like so much spider silk -- and it grounds it: gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail/learn how to use my hands/not just my head, I'll think myself into jail/now I know a refuge never grows/from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose/gotta tend the earth if you want a rose...

I always carry a penknife in my pocket. My wheelchair bag contains tyre levers, a mini bike pump, hex keys in imperial and metric, and a spare inner. I'm a blue-skies academic, but I'm also a geologist: I know where my hammer is, and I know how to use it. Gender isn't just an interesting thought experiment for me: I get my hands dirty, I make mistakes, I find bits I forgot about that are badly in need of props.

About ten months ago (wow, is that all?), enemyofperfect told me that the artist is Luka Delaney, via one of synecdochic's celebrate Monday posts. And then I was sad, because the way Luka captions this image is:

I am very offended that the existing symbol for transgenderism only includes three groups (Male, Female and Intersex). I feel that, for a group that has suffered as much oppression as the Transgender Rights Movement, they could be a LITTLE more inclusive of those of us who don't fit into the Trinary.

To that effect, I have designed a new model for the Transgenderism logo. As you can see, mine includes several new categories for gender identifications that have previously been ignored. I believe these additions will prove quite handy for the Movement in general.

-- but: I'm going to keep using it, because (flippantly) the author is dead, or more practically because: this icon is recognisable as me, now, and my meanings are layered on top of those Luka imparts to it. You can see through, in places, to be sure; but I am going to take this image that spoke to me, and I am going to make it part of myself. Turning mockery and cruelty into love is hard and unforgiving work, but that, at least, is nothing new.