"Um, well ... That's always been a hypothetical for me until now, kind of just a fantasy thing." Cam let out a little laugh at the strangeness of the place they'd found themself in. Wessex seemed genuinely curious -- trying to learn more instead of trying to trip Cam up or debate them -- which made them feel more comfortable explaining and exploring the idea of nonbinary genders. "But the thing about gender, at least the way I and most people like me see it, is that it's kind of up to each person to decide their own relationship to their gender -- to decide what gender they are and what that looks like. So even a creature that doesn't need to eat or breathe, like a robot or a spirit or -- even a god or something -- they can tell you where they fall on that spectrum, whether they're a man or a woman or if they define themselves differently. It's not a, uh, hard list of categories where you're either in the box 'man' or 'woman' or 'other' -- I understand gender as a spectrum, where you can have someone who considers themself both a man and a woman, or neither, like me, or maybe it changes from day to day. Or maybe you're like, 'OK, I identify more with womanhood than with masculinity, but I feel kind of estranged from either.'"
Cam might have been nearing their own experience with that last bit -- they had always leaned a little more towards femininity than masculinity, though they definitely didn't consider themself a woman.
Then Wessex's next question came and Cam had to sigh a little. At least it was a sincere question, and not a silly joke -- they'd had quite enough of that over the years. But Wessex couldn't have known that, if she'd never heard the word "camera" before, so they tried not to sound too put out by it. "No, the names are just a coincidence. The picture -- well, for some models of camera, it comes out of a slot in the bottom, but for most kinds you have to take out the film or the SD card and go develop it. See, for decades we had film cameras, which had a physical roll of, um, material in them, and the image would appear on that material, and then you'd go and put it in some chemicals and use special paper to make it show up and be big enough to see. And film cameras still exist, but most people these days use digital cameras -- mine is digital. That's ... a little harder to explain, but basically it stores the image in a data card, and you take the data card out and put it in a computer -- uh, a device with a screen -- and the image appears on screen. Then the computer can print it onto paper for you."
Did that make sense? Cam had no idea whether Wessex was following any of what they said, about gender or about cameras. They suspected that terms like "data card" and "computer" would require more explanation.
Cam might have been nearing their own experience with that last bit -- they had always leaned a little more towards femininity than masculinity, though they definitely didn't consider themself a woman.
Then Wessex's next question came and Cam had to sigh a little. At least it was a sincere question, and not a silly joke -- they'd had quite enough of that over the years. But Wessex couldn't have known that, if she'd never heard the word "camera" before, so they tried not to sound too put out by it. "No, the names are just a coincidence. The picture -- well, for some models of camera, it comes out of a slot in the bottom, but for most kinds you have to take out the film or the SD card and go develop it. See, for decades we had film cameras, which had a physical roll of, um, material in them, and the image would appear on that material, and then you'd go and put it in some chemicals and use special paper to make it show up and be big enough to see. And film cameras still exist, but most people these days use digital cameras -- mine is digital. That's ... a little harder to explain, but basically it stores the image in a data card, and you take the data card out and put it in a computer -- uh, a device with a screen -- and the image appears on screen. Then the computer can print it onto paper for you."
Did that make sense? Cam had no idea whether Wessex was following any of what they said, about gender or about cameras. They suspected that terms like "data card" and "computer" would require more explanation.
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
