CF: Alter egos | Thewell

“As glitch feminists, this is our politic: we refuse to be hewn to the hegemonic line of a binary body. This calculated failure prompts the violent socio-cultural machine to hiccup, sigh, shudder, buffer. We want a new framework and for this framework, we want new skin. The digital world provides a potential space where this can play out. Through the digital, we make new worlds and dare to modify our own. Through the digital, the body 'in glitch' finds its genesis. Embracing the glitch is therefore a participatory action that challenges the status quo. It creates a homeland for those traversing the complex channels of gender's diaspora. The glitch is for those selves joyfully immersed in the in-between, those who have traveled away from their assigned site of gendered origin. The ongoing presence of the glitch generates a welcome and protected space in which to innovate and experiment. Glitch feminism demands an occupation of the digital as a means of world-building. It allows us to seize the opportunity to generate new ideas and resources for the ongoing (r)evolution of bodies that can inevitably move and shift faster than AFK mores or the societies that produce them under which we are forced to operate offline.”

― Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism

in each window, each tab, another me. toggling between them creates the clearest picture, despite the blur, the disconnect, the contradiction.

IRL it happens slower, but different mes overlap there, too. who i was in highschool different from myself in college different from me now in radical ways.

IRL, sometimes, it happens fast. watch as my best friend and I put on costumes and become King Wa and Sello, heartbreakers performing boppy love songs. watch as Sarah Cannon gets on stage and becomes Minnie Pearl. watch as you talk to your friends, family, coworkers, lovers.

whether or not you make and use avatars online, everyone does to some extent offline. we all use alter egos to help us understand and navigate the world. it allows us to express the slippage involved with being human.