“I’m surprised people find gendered costumes that exciting, frankly.” “Oh, my dear,” she chuckled at his innocence, “human culture spent, what, ten thousand years working out ways to code exciting gendered sexuality into every shirt and gesture? Our poor three centuries without it simply haven’t had the time develop anything to match.” Her eye caught on me. “It’s like a language. A young invented language with a couple thousand words might manage baby books and street directions, but Voltaire, Shakespeare, the profound peaks and doggerel troughs of literature, those take a million words.
