So yeah, a little about me, to clear up any confusion, and possibly to cause some.
I used to be called George, but now I am Gwen.
The former was largely a facade built up over a lifetime of fear.
The latter is what crawled out of the ashes of that mess when it became unsustainable.
I am not a man. I am not a woman. I am not gay or straight, or any of the other labels most folks feel they need to apply to people in order to make sense of the chaos that life actually is. I am a person.
I don’t really even like the term “transgender” very much, as I feel it only serves to validate the gender binary, a social construct I have come to regard as an oppressive illusion. Having escaped that trap, I have no desire to be caught in another.
In spite of this, I still prefer feminine pronouns and terminology when suitable gender-neutral ones are not readily available, as they feel more resonant with who I am in the context of the social interactions these words are used in.
To take this even further, I don’t even identify as a luthier, mostly out of respect for those who have spent a lifetime studying and mastering all the manifold aspects of this craft, the conventions of which I blatantly violate on a regular basis.
I am an artist first and foremost; and what that means to me is that I take seemingly disparate concepts and make something new out of them.
Sometimes this is beautiful, sometimes monstrous, often both.
This is my life, this is me.