September 21, 2021

"My teachers were always, like, ‘Who’s going to wear this? Who’s your customer?’ And I would say, ‘I hope I don’t know who my customer is, because they shouldn’t exist yet.'..."

"Reed describes himself as gender fluid: 'Not bang-smack in the middle of male and female, but fluid—literally anywhere on the pendulum.' Though Reed had been calling himself gay since he was nine, he began to struggle with the identity in London: 'I didn’t feel like I was a gay man. I didn’t feel like my gender fit. I didn’t feel represented by it.' For the first time, he had friends who were transgender or pansexual. 'I started meeting all these people that felt so confident expressing themselves in different ways,' he said. 'That’s when I came into the idea that being gender fluid suited me.' He adopted 'they/them' pronouns, though he was flexible. 'If I was doing stuff in Russia, it would be "she,"' Reed told me. 'If I was doing things in Latin America, it would be "he." And in very woke America and England it would always be
"they."' Embracing gender fluidity as an identity allowed Reed to preserve indeterminacy while also rejecting stereotypical categories of masculinity and femininity as they pertain to power and beauty....  Earlier this year, Reed returned to going by 'he/him.' He had grown concerned that the concept of gender fluidity, rather than being a liberation, might be its own limiting categorization.... Switching back to masculine pronouns was occasionally fraught; Reed discovered that some people were more certain about how he should be referred to than he was. But he held firm: 'I was, like, "I don’t owe anyone fucking anything—I’m just me."'"

ADDED: Notice the idea that the fluid gender flowed differently within different human cultures — Russian, Latin American, and Woke America. That makes sense. 

Gender doesn't exist within the individual alone: It's a relationship you have with the world around you. It's not possible to feel you are male or female without examples out there of other human animals expressing themselves in ways they are calling male and female, and the humans do that differently in different places, at least as Reed experienced it. 

Of course, he is also a participant in commerce, and in the commerce of fashion, the designer is integral the sales pitch, and it's savvy to vary the pitch for the customer... even when you're saying enigmatic things like My customer shouldn’t exist yet

Shouldn't! That's funny. Absurd authoritarianism.

36 comments:

rhhardin said...

I hope he's careful with plaids.

tim maguire said...

Embracing gender fluidity as an identity allowed Reed to preserve indeterminacy while also rejecting stereotypical categories of masculinity and femininity as they pertain to power and beauty

As Reed is finding out, this is the opposite of the truth. Woke is all about stereotypical categories and slavish devotion to labels. Only the trans community thinks you need to stop being a man in order to stop being a stereotypical man. Only the trans community thinks you have to stop being a woman in order to stop being a stereotypical woman. It's such a regressive, oppressive way of looking at human behavior and relations.

Good to see Reed's woken up enough to start abandoning woke.

Temujin said...

From "Height of Glamour/How the designer Harris Reed helps Harry Styles and Solange play with masculinity and femininity" by Rebecca Mead (The New Yorker).

Well, the good news is that I don't know who Harris Reed, Harry Styles, Solange, or Rebecca Mead are. And I'd kinda like to keep it that way. Such nonsense perpetrated by the esteemed(?) New Yorker. It's all so...indeterminate.

gilbar said...

the concept of gender fluidity, rather than being a liberation, might be its own limiting categorization....

seems that way to me.
If you're a guy (or a girl), you can be Anything you want
If you're a zhe (or schmee), you've DEFINED your actions, and your reality

Thus, a "gender-something" person has to constantly go on tik tok, explaining how..
When they wear a blue wristband they're 'mostly male'
pink when they're 'mostly female'
chartreuse when they're 'mostly asexual'
rainbow when....
GOD help them, if it's dark out, and they grabbed the wrong wristband : )

QUIT defining yourself if you don't want to be defined!

Enigma said...

Long ago there were warning signs that biological factors are strong.

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case

When "new" wears off and when attention fades and when everyday life returns: suicide may be common. People live in relationships, not merely introductions and labels.

Howard said...

I'm definitely down for gender fluid exchange.

Ice Nine said...

>>Embracing gender fluidity as an identity allowed Reed to preserve indeterminacy while also rejecting stereotypical categories of masculinity and femininity as they pertain to power and beauty.... Earlier this year, Reed returned to going by 'he/him.' He had grown concerned that the concept of gender fluidity, rather than being a liberation, might be its own limiting categorization....<<

Jesus, my head hurts. This is like wine snobs who just have to tell you all the absurd flavors they supposedly detect in a particular wine. Just drink the fucking wine. Just be whatever sexual aberration you want. Save the play by play.

Joe Smith said...

First he was like, gay (boring!) and now he's like, gender fluid (interesting and hip!).

What a bunch of like, crap. What he definitely is, is like, an attention whore : )

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

"...rejecting stereotypical categories of masculinity and femininity as they pertain to power and beauty..."

So he is ugly and weak. Noted.

Birches said...

I google imaged his name. What I find interesting looking through the many pictures that come up, is how in candid photos, he looks like a very thin man wearing outlandish clothes. Definitely a Ziggy Stardust vibe.

It's only in the posed magazine or Instagram spreads that he appears feminine. And I'd guess if we were in the room when those pictures were taken, it would still seem fairly Ziggy Stardust. The allusion of feminity is only faked through the camera and/or filters. It's an aesthetic that only exists online or in print.

WK said...

Schrodinger’s customer - you don’t really know if they are a customer until their gender is revealed.

PM said...

In case you were wondering what became of "if it feels good do it".

Misinforminimalism said...

Funny how gender fluidity is always defined in terms of the masculine and feminine. Kind of like expressing the value of crypto in dollars.

Howard said...

If this gender fluid beeswax bothers you, it means you have gender identity insecurities. Like homophobia, it's a sign your place on the spectrum makes you uncomfortable.

Roger Sweeny said...


Absurd authoritarianism. Designers and architects.

Butkus51 said...

Its like masturbating in public now.

Ann Althouse said...

"Definitely a Ziggy Stardust vibe."

The source material for Ziggy Stardust — if I am to believe "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs/Episode 77: “Brand New Cadillac” by Vince Taylor and the Playboys" — was Vince Taylor:

"One of the people [Vince Taylor] got to know in London in the mid-sixties was a young musician named David Jones. Jones was fascinated by Taylor, even though he’d never liked his music — Jones’ brother was schizophrenic, and he was worried that he would end up like his brother. Jones also wanted to be a rock and roll star, and had some mildly messianic ideas of his own. So a rock and roll star who thought he was Jesus — although he sometimes thought he was an alien, rather than Jesus, and sometimes claimed that Jesus *was* an alien — and who was clearly severely mentally ill, had a fascination for him. He talked later about not having been able to decide whether he was seeing Taylor as an example to follow or a cautionary tale, and about how he’d sat with Taylor outside Charing Cross Station while Taylor had used a magnifying glass and a map of Europe to show him all the sites where aliens were going to land." Several years later, after changing his name to David Bowie, Jones remembered the story of Vince Taylor, the rock and roll star who thought he was an alien messiah, and turned it into the story of Ziggy Stardust...."

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Shall I just be crass and ask whether "they" have a dick or not? You can be as "gender fluid" as you like, but there's still anatomy to consider. If "they" don't have a vagina, certain sexual activities are just not open to "them."

Doug said...

Remember when people didn't identify themselves by what they did with their genitals?

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

speaking of glamour...

Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
· 2h
POLITICO reporter @SchreckReports has a new book *confirming* the emails from Hunter Biden's laptop about Joe Biden's business deals in China & Ukraine are genuine.

People complaining about pre-election censorship by Google in Russia cheered Big Tech's censoring this reporting.

rhhardin said...

Less restrictive would be gender gas instead of gender fluid. A fluid has only one direction at one place; a gas has many directions at one place. Navier-Stokes vs Boltzmann.

Gender solid is traditional. Guys looking for pussy.

Joe Smith said...

Re: Bowie...he was very smart and invented an entire genre of rock.

He wasn't just another pretty (snaggle-toothed) face...

Tom T. said...

The difference with David Bowie is that Bowie simply put himself out there, in whatever guise he'd chosen. He didn't also release a set of talking points identifying and labeling his sexuality.

Owen said...

Pathetic self-absorption —> lucrative career

Where do I sign up for some of that?

Lurker21 said...

Gender does have a lot to do with the larger culture. Things that were ridiculous, scandalous or impossible for earlier generations become possibilities for people as the culture changes.

If gender is a matter of relations with other people, what does that mean for the "gender fluid"? What does that fluidity do to their relationships with other people? What happens to one's relations with other people when one upsets the categories that are most fundamental to them?

You can sort of fit straights, gays and trans people into the two gender categories. Nonbinary people who reject or blur the categories seem to constitute a more fundamental challenge to the traditional gender model.

Traditional tribal societies, we're told, were very much for binary categories and didn't like things that didn't fit into them, yet many of them evolved categories for those we might now call gay or trans people. Nonbinaries would probably have been slotted into one of those categories, but then tribal people weren't forever thinking and talking about such things.

FWIW: If that's Harris Reed's natural hair color, being ginger may have been more of a problem for Harris growing up than being nonbinary.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

"Reed describes himself as gender fluid: 'Not bang-smack in the middle of male and female, but fluid—literally anywhere on the pendulum.'

So, Reed is a sexist pig who thinks there's only one way to be male, one way to be female, and if you aren't those precise things you're "gender fluid."

Are you a "tomboy"? Then you're "not a real girl". Are you a lesbian? Then you're "not a real woman"

Looking for a racist, sexist, bigot? Look for a "Progressive". Because no matter what the decade, they're always the same

Saint Croix said...

Gender doesn't exist within the individual alone: It's a relationship you have with the world around you.

Sex is only relevant when we're talking about human reproduction. Men impregnate women, and a baby is created. That's the biological reality of human reproduction. Much of this seems to me to be a denial of biological reality. It's fantasy, role-playing, and make-believe.

I have no problems with people engaging in fantasy. I can see where it might be fun. But it's insane, in my opinion, for people to say there is no such thing as biological sex.

Liberals have been saying this for a while now, because they are so hostile to unborn children, and have been defining them out of existence. This lie is spreading like a cancer. Now liberals not only don't know what a baby is, they don't know what a woman is, or a man.

It's indoctrinated ignorance. It's religious insanity. And I call it "religious" because it's oblivious to biological reality, and hostile to the world that has been created by God. It's a new religion, and an ugly one.

Smilin' Jack said...

Reed describes himself as gender fluid: 'Not bang-smack in the middle of male and female, but fluid—literally anywhere on the pendulum.'

But too many swings of the pendulum and the accompanying ‘gender-affirming’ surgery might make kind of a mess down there.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Howard said...
If this gender fluid beeswax bothers you, it means you have gender identity insecurities. Like homophobia, it's a sign your place on the spectrum makes you uncomfortable.

You got one thing right, Howie.

This line of bullshit is just like the "homophobia" line of bullshit.

I have no use for mentally fucked up bigots (like the "trans" crowd), and I have no time or use for people who think that being attracted to your own sex is in any way valuable.

The mental illness is in the trans and gay, not us normal people

Maynard said...

I have no issue with men doing what it takes to live as a woman. I have no problem addressing such individuals by their preferred gender.

However, let's not kid ourselves. A guy with tits and no dick is still a guy. He has just used medical science to look different than his birth, for whatever reason.

Birches said...

@Althouse

Wow!

Wa St Blogger said...

The comments got me thinking... All this gender stuff is basically sexual LARPING in public. We have people who want to be elves or klingons and what not but want you arrested if you don't respect their new found identity. They should wait for the convention like everyone else.

Bunkypotatohead said...

What gender is a publicity stunt?

Tina Trent said...

WE are destroying these children’s futures. When they wake up at 30 with AIDS, or 40 with no children, the blame lies with us. For not being brave enough to say this now.

Lawrence Person said...

"Reed describes himself as gender fluid."

I always see the words "gender fluid" as a sign that it's immediately time to stop reading the article that uses them.

gilbar said...

Wa St Blogger said...
The comments got me thinking... All this gender stuff is basically sexual LARPING in public


i'm pretty sure, that's what our Professor really meant; about the Tik Tok people being Actors
She doesn't think they are THAT flaming in real life; they're using TikTok as their Comic Con
And, she's probably right; they probably aren't THAT flaming in real life...

However, to imply that that means that they're Not Crazy;
would be to imply that Comic Conners aren't crazy either... and we KNOW that's not true