(S)he Bop!

Some of this
community’s recent visibility can be traced to the
emergence of a few high-profile, ambiguously gendered,
female-bodied celebrities in the last several years,
including The L Word’s Daniela Sea and
indie-rock group Le Tigre’s lesbian-identified
but ambiguously male J.D. Samson. In fact, Samson is here,
sharing a lawn blanket and a box of strawberries with
New York-based performance artist Dynasty Handbag.
Samson’s side project, a DJ duo aptly titled
“MEN,” is one of the festival’s
headliners.

“There’s definitely a trans revolution
happening right now,” says Samson. “And
[it] has been happening for the last decade, I would say, in
growing numbers. People have been letting themselves
be themselves, doing their gender as a nonbinary
situation.”

Gender-bending
and rock music have gone hand in hand for a long time, but
not usually in the female-to-male direction, nor embraced by
such a relatively young, visible crowd in the middle
of a blatantly red state.

Kristen Schilt, a
professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston,
dressed in black and white petticoats and with shocking
white hair, is in the crowd with her partner, Stacey.
“I think, particularly among young,
female-bodied people, we’re starting to see more of a
change than among male-bodied people,” she
says. “There are still tighter strictures on
what you can do if you're male-bodied.”

Her
sister-in-law, trans-male-identified Katy Koonce, whose
eponymous band is a crowd favorite, adds, regarding
Austin’s uniquely liberal Texan environment:
“If you look at this whole ‘Keep Austin
Weird’ thing -- it’s like, ‘We
can own this and make it part of our town instead of being
ashamed about it.’ Because we’re rock 'n'
roll, and we’re educated, and we’re
political. We’re this blue heart in the middle of a
red state, and I think people start to take pride in
that.”