Curiosity usually gets the best of me, so I’d like to run an experiment. Which I am totally stealing from Eli. (But stealing without attribution brings bad blog juju, plus Eli’s blog is pretty awesome too!)
Just as a matter of record, I was wondering, what do I look like to a stranger
So dear readers, followers, fans, companions and friends, even if you have seen pictures or (god forbid!) awful videos, without peeking at anything else, just jot your thoughts down in the comements. Right now.
genderqueer.me 
I see you as a short, hyper guy with big headphones (I dont know why I think your short). I see you as a dude who likes wearing vans. You look smart and energetic. Pretty cool. (I still think your short LOL).
I dont know why i said hyper LOL. It isnt meant at all to be critical. I think i see you dancing. thats kind of how i meant it. Out at a club sort of thing. you look happy!
I think you are eerily spot on. I am very short, and I never miss a chance to mention this. I can be a little hyper – energetic, talkative, active. I don’t have Vans but that is definitely my style… now I’ll have to post a picture of my shoes. But no dancing (well, only in private :P) And how the hell did you know I have big headphones? Two pairs, actually.
Wait, are you sure you haven’t met?
LOL – I don’t know, maybe you DO remind me of someone, like maybe someone I knew if HS or college? Just fast-forwarded into the future here and now. I enjoy reading your posts a lot.
Thanks! It is interesting how you managed to pinpoint my personality and tastes just from reading a few posts. I guess that’s the point of the experiment.
maybe a little intuition helped. But also, the pict of you with the red tee, i guess i came up with a few adjectives. you looked happy! young! hip! — everyone MUSH have vans!
In my head, you have always been short, and thin, and had a soft but high pitched voice. Also, I always imagined you were white, like with a northern European background, lol.
Very accurate physical description.
I am not entirely skinny though, I just dress very well. I used to be a lot chubbier, so much so that people from 3-5 years ago do not recognize me at first glance, because my face has changed.
That happened to me too: I put on like 30 lbs. in grad school, and during the last year I lost almost all of it. Then, when I moved across country, I lost more and then some, and am thin now: people who knew me in grad school do double takes when they see me now.
Hope this doesn’t offend, but you look like a teenaged boy to me.
Not offensive at all. I actually barely make the teens sometimes, with 14 being the lucky number, although thankfully I don’t get 12 anymore.
A person.
❤
Smaill-ish, which for me hovers around 5’1″-5’2″. In my head your shoulders are a little bit rounded over, and you duck your head sometimes (enough that the people around you would recognise it as a ‘you’ gesture.) Not underconfident, exactly, but not visibly brimming with it either.
I don’t know if you have callouses on the end of your fingers. Maybe just a pen callous?
(I don’t have anything to actually justify this – just a few days’ worth of going back through your posts and a ridiculous and weirdly focused imagination.)
While I exude confidence on the outside, I am actually full of doubt on the inside. For years I’ve been building up this facade, and it seems to fool most people, sometimes even me.
Callouses – yes – when I do lots of rock climbing.
And also yes, I do have a signature head-tilted-half-smile move, but it is reserved for my girlfriend 🙂
so many comments here, so i read few… if mine is duplicitous, my apologies…
I try to read all of your posts when not doing anything else; I want to really focus on them… so i am way behind…
that said:
inspirational, educational, real and light/funny/charming… cause something about your post makes me smile
Oh thank you! Real yet light is my strategy- if I take things too seriously I get angry and depressed.
You my friend are very positive, in the best sense of the word. That is harder to come by these days. Looking up and forward can be the toughest thing to do.
thinking you might have just made my day!
btw, i am a little dense sometimes, so i was wary to post the latter of my comment, was concerned that was not exactly what you had intended… but i do seriously smile, and share your blog with others…
Well you just made me smile twice today!
EXCELLENT!
i was going to add the “as a person” comment, but i see someone else has beaten me…
not to have a go at anyone but it’s good to see others out there who don’t have to put people into little boxes in their heads…
i work with a partner, he is a young gay guy – i am asexual and trans*, very similar to maddox here – and my partner insists on trying to pick people’s orientations, and other things about them… sometimes it’s funny to watch and other times he tries to involve me, or asks what i think, and i’ve always been like dude i don’t know, they are a person to me, regardless of their gender or orientation….
anyways end sidetracked waffle… going back to lurking on your blogs now maddox… thankyou for posting such useful info! 🙂
Thanks for posting!
My partner and I do the same – we like to analyze people and guess at their orientation, but also other stuff about them. I don’t see it as pegging or boxing in, more like a lesson in learning how to read people, and realizing that sometimes you can’t, or sometimes you end up being wrong about your assumptions. I’m also just interested in understanding how other people read me and why, but I guess that will always be a mystery to a certain extent.
In the end though, I do wish that others would stop seeing a person as a gender or an orientation, and just see them as a person first and foremost.
“In the end though, I do wish that others would stop seeing a person as a gender or an orientation, and just see them as a person first and foremost.”
definitely!!
i have no issues if people want to try to guess something about someone else – as i say it’s quite amusing to watch my work partner do it some nights… but it’s when that guess affects their treatment of that person i have an issue… and people who just can’t think outside the little boxes up there in their head… male OR female, gay OR straight OR bi… nothing else exists and they won’t even acknowledge the possibility that someone might NOT fit conveniently into one of their little boxes of assumptions and stereotypes 😦
unless you’re actively trying to pursue a relationship with someone, really, nothing else should matter… “do un to others”…
getting a bit off topic, my work partner one night needed to use the toilets, i waited in the vehicle… he went in, came straight back out, and i asked what was up… he said the “male” toilet was out of order… i’m like dude just lock yourself in (we had keys to the external access door) and use the ladies, the toilet doesn’t care what sex you are!
his lightbulb moment was pretty priceless 🙂
Yes! People draw this imaginary yet unbreakable line, which they are terrified of crossing, between such silly things as toilets, clothing departments (god forbid you like that shirt, but oh no it’s in the men’s section), deodorant, even vitamins! VITAMINS!
I am going to use that line btw “the toilet doesn’t care what sex you are!” Love it.
smart, funny, charming (charming smile), compact, passionate about the things you care, focused, and with an incredible warm heart (which is what drives this blog)! those were the non-biased significant other adjectives.
now to the very-biased significant other adjectives: handsome, (very) cute, loving, caring, still compact…