Messyfilter
About the author
My name is Sarah.Most of the internet is my office.
This part is my living room,
where I'm allowed to be emo
and not wear pants.
I don’t have to be happy for at least another seven years. Think of how much I can accomplish in that time!
Comments
Please support the Genderplayful Marketplace
A marketplace.
Where we sell clothes.
Clothes that actually fit.
In every sense of the word.Want to see it happen?
Then please support the Genderplayful Marketplace. This is a plan for an online clothing marketplace that celebrates diversity in gender presentation and body types. Genderplayful is for anyone who can’t easily find what they’re looking for in a typical clothing store, with special support for androgynous, unisex, butch, dapper, femme, gender-bending, gender-transgressive, and gender-fanflippingtastic clothing solutions for all kinds of bodies.
Genderplayful cares about custom solutions, and the marketplace will host a lively community that finds and creates those solutions together. Vendors will include indie designers, crafters, clothing makers, tailors, and people selling things from their closets and local thrift stores. Community members will pool notes on what they’re excited about, and vendors will take cues from buyers on what to create more of. The goal is to create a culture-rich gorgeous Internet bazaar for the playful, the exquisite, and the just trying to get dressed in the morning.
About the Fundraiser
If Genderplayful can raise $5,000 in community funding by January 15, 2011, founder Sarah Dopp will commit to making the project a reality. Anything above that baseline number will go toward making the project happen faster and better. (Really, she needs more like $50,000, but she’d rather do it cheaply than wait to do it perfectly.) You can donate at genderplayful.tumblr.com. All financial backers will receive perks based on their contribution level.
Questions? Many are answered over here.
Curious about what others are saying? Check out the genderplayful.tumblr.com for the stream of letters and comments.
A Genderplayful Marketplace – Do you want it?
I want to build an online marketplace for gender-variant clothing solutions.
Not a store where I sell to you, but a service like Etsy and Ebay where we sell to each other, in a focused, supportive community. And while we’re at it, we also trade all sorts of tips and inspirations on how best to look the way we want, gender-be-damned.
You know what I’m talking about. Tuxes for hips and breasts. Size 16 extra-wide high heels. Custom alterations, custom orders, custom tailoring. Hot unisex indie designer labels. Hand-made t-shirts. That awesome skirt from your closet that doesn’t fit you anymore. A good chest binder. That amazing jacket you found at a thrift store for $5 that you want to resell. And while we’re at it, let’s bring in styles from every subculture that celebrates androgyny, which is pretty much all of them.
Um, YEAH FUCK YEAH.
*GRIN* Thank you!
My mom’s been saying I live out loud. It comes out like a mix between love and justification, like it’s my life goal, and I always thought it was a cop-out of a perspective. Living out loud is like being a writer — in fact, it probably is being a writer — and the trouble with being a writer is that it only works if you have something worthwhile to write about. Living out loud is meaningless and narcissistic unless it’s paired with a more worthy cause.
But now I see it differently.
Sincere presence is challenge and cause enough.
Comments
“Sarah Dopp taught me how to reach out and connect to people, and I watched her make her dreams happen, and make other people’s dreams happen, at Genderfork. And when she noticed the way that she brought people together, and realized that she loved it, she took to helping other people do that very same thing. When she knows where she wants to go, she jumps, and she falls, and she believes in the net (the Net) that will catch her.
“I don’t believe in the net, though I haven’t told her so. I believe that when she falls, she flies.”
Comments
I miss your promises. I miss the lottery, the “We Just Sold a Bridge!” sushi celebrations, the what-if games, the scheming, the adventures. I miss how casual you were when you announced you were taking me out of school for the seventh grade to travel the country. And I miss how hard you fought for it when the rest of us told you: No way. I miss your self-made cliché one-liners: Know your environment, respect your environment, but don’t fear it. I miss watching new doors open just because you knocked on them. I miss your ego, your pride, your disregard for assumptions and expectations, your frankness, your vision, the laws you constructed for the people in your world, your kingdom. You named me princess for a reason, and I always hated that name, but sometimes I do miss our castle.
I think you’d be proud of me. I’m smart like you. I find the holes in the rules and exploit them to my advantage, like you did. I love lots of people, like you did. I learn new technology and I use it, like you did. I make up my own titles and I tell people how I’m valuable, just like you used to. And whenever I’m not sure about where I am, I stop what I’m doing and go on an adventure. Just like that. Just like you.
Comments
Dear net,
We still have that deal where after I leap, you appear, right? Just wanted to make sure. I might need to take you up on that soon.
Hey, if you ever wanted to try switching the order up so that you go first… No? Okay, sure, yeah, we can do it the traditional way. That’s cool.
Thanks again, Sarah
wandering through craigslist
i want a big house with high ceilings and lots of sunlight.
a large common room with magnetic whiteboards on the walls and desks and comfy chairs and computers.
a big kitchen. a big wooden dining room table. a big garden. a dishwasher.
bedrooms everywhere. outdoor cottages.
a tv room. a big porch. a hot tub.
a big body of water nearby. the ocean? a lake?
a house full of people. techies. artists. queers. activists. sex positives. quirkyalones. brilliants. independent world-changing dreamers with overactive work ethics and a long-term hot romance with the internet.
close enough to everything but far enough away.
our own little collective destination.
how’s next year sound?
The person who showed me how to write to live just emailed me after a dozen years of us being lost from each other
i wrote back the story of how she changed everything, plus…
Yes, please.
Sarah
