As a trans woman using Linux, imo it’s using something beyond it’s original design. Similar to how we ‘hack’ our bodies to go beyond our AGAB, a lot of us run Linux (on machines that come with windows) or hack consoles such as a 3ds we take machines with inferior software and make them better.
Or a may just be reaching and it’s just that security concious and nerdy communities are also largely queer ¯_(ツ)__/¯
It’s natural as a queer person to seek to protect yourself, because the world is more dangerous for us.
Isn’t there something also about expressing oneself in here? With the limited freedoms society gives our bodies and behaviours, hacking our hardware to get it to do as we please is a form of liberty, and of self-expression. With a healthy dose of show-them-the-middle-finger to everything oligarchic, capitalistic and conservative that dominates the world around us.
That, of course, with the desperately needed privacy on top.
This sounds a lot like how one of my friends describes it. She’s a riot — she jokes that she came out as trans because as a chronic tech nerd, she reached a fork in the road where it was either “libertarian tech bro” or “anarchist cat girl”.
Unrelated to that anecdote, as a queer cis woman, certainly a lot of the joy and catharsis I get from tinkering with tech feels like the same fulfillment I derive from queer community. I think there’s a lot to be said for how a person’s perspective influences how they approach problems. Like, as a scientist, there are definitely areas where I feel like being a queer, autistic woman affects how I approach a problem.
