My journey through gender does not have a clear beginning or end, it inhabits the diffuse lines or shared borders between the feminine/masculine. Gender has never crossed bodies in a static way, not even in cisgender experiences, since it does not remain immutable beyond our skin either. There are moments that radically evidence this fact, daily rituals, whether private or social, that mark new ways of relating to this category. In this text I focus on clothing as one of the first prostheses placed on the body, modifying how it will be read at a morphological, aesthetic and symbolic level; clothing as a possible ritual object of self awareness, resistance and movement. Thus, the title is an ironic wink to the word gender in two of its meanings: one that speaks of quality fabric and the other that implies being a woman© or a man©.

In this sense, my experience is strongly marked by the use of the bra as opposed to the binder, by how to generate a feminine or masculine silhouette using the textile. This starting point allows me to string together different aspects of trans*, “flat tits” throughout history, the ideals of virility through clothing, “being metrosexual but clearly not homosexual”...

I start from my experience as a white European transmasculine person who has identified most of his life as a tomboyish dyke. In coherence with the approaches of the text, the neutral plural is used, formed in Spanish with the -e.

This publication arises from the Call for artistic research and experimentation projects La Escocesa 2019 ‘ritual #’ by Mario Peinazo