Re: scope of the SCA

[PETERSR@spiegel.becltd.com (Peters, Rise J.)]

Poster: PETERSR@spiegel.becltd.com (Peters, Rise J.)


Michael states:

>>I will also note that the correct choice of clothing is generally all
that is needed to indicated culture of origin and status, while a
change of gender is somewhat more difficult to convey (without
resorting to name tags :-))

I would argue that this is only the case because all of us think we "know" 
what kinds of indicators mark gender, and "know" them to a level of subtlety 
that goes beyond conventions of dress.  But note that this may only be the 
case because in our modern society, what would commonly be considered 
"cross-dressing" is extremely common, especially for women.  Thus, in the 
1960s, many adults found that they had trouble distinguishing hippies by 
gender, because they did not observe (then current) majority-culture dress 
conventions.  Since that time, we have grown accustomed to looking beyond 
the general clothing style for other gender indicators.  (For an example of 
how this works, remember the scene in ... was it Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn? 
. when a boy dressed as a girl was "caught out" by how he moved when 
something was dropped in his lap.  But note also that cross-dressing was 
rare enough at that point that the initial assumption was that a person 
dressed as a girl had to =be= a girl.  On that logic, a person-in-persona 
=should= automatically assume that someone dressed as a man is a man, unless 
other indicators of gender are so obvious as to be unmistakeable =to someone 
not used to looking for them=)

In contrast, most of us are not familiar enough with other cultures, across 
period, and the types of status signifiers within those cultures to be able 
to make fine discriminations.  We cannot look at someone dressed ambiguously 
and say, my, that person has the body language and hair style of a 10th 
century farmer from southern France (or whatever).  What is being conveyed 
is on a much grosser level (fancy early-period, fancy late-period, etc.) in 
most cases, and thus "correct choice of clothing" is all that is needed 
because that's all that we have the internal filters to understand.

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