"Ooh. How thorough is that disguise? And actually is shapeshifting possible?"

"It's very thorough. With enough glamour I could look like you or either of us could look like a ten-foot ogre. The catch is that the bigger the difference the more likely it is to fall apart, and the worse the backlash will be when it does. It's a good idea to take it off purposely before it snaps. And it's very strongly recommended to leave and remember at least one potentially noticeable difference so you don't lose track of yourself.

As for shapeshifting, few things are definitively impossible. It's a question of tradeoffs. Turning into animals has a long history, but you become more like the animal in hard-to-control ways. It's possible to change bodies completely, and survive, but that's expensive in terms of power and raises the question of where you're getting the new body. Getting the ability to take arbitrary forms at will is probably possible, but I don't know where to learn that or what the cost would be."

"I'll definitely want to look into that. I'm genderfluid, shifting the way my body looks is a huge step beyond just makeup, clothes, the binder, and presentation."

"....Genderfluid?"

"Yeah, you know, gender identity not constant, and sometimes not strictly part of the gender binary."

"If I understand you right, the next thing you say might be that you're sometimes male and sometimes female. I would strongly suggest that you not say that."

"That's—what I was going to say, yes, why would you strongly suggest that?"

"Because you aren't allowed to lie and the spirits judge truth. The very traditionalist spirits."

"I—" Pause. She folds her arms and looks very unimpressed. "The spirits are transphobic."

"The spirits enforce hospitality norms from thousands of years ago. They treat family lines and inheritances as more important than people. I gained an advantage over their system by reinventing feudalism! Yes, the spirits are transphobic!"

"That," she says, "is going to be a problem."

"Yes. Yes it is.

You'd be, maybe not constantly but regularly, running the risk of losing power and karma until you get so far in the hole the universe takes an opportunity to squish you. You'd be running that risk even if you were acting completely safely otherwise. You are going to have to be very careful."

"Am I supposed to, what? Just not say it? Would it be safe to say I present as male as opposed to am male? Or to talk about my gender identity as opposed to my gender? I have some practice policing my speech, that shouldn't be hard, but what exactly should I be looking out for, here? And would the spirits' opinion change if I glamoured myself, or learnt how to shapeshift genders?"

"The spirits will see through glamour. Shapeshifting might help, in the same sense as you could say "I am a bear" if you turned into a bear, but you wouldn't be able to say "I am a bear and not a human." Presentation would be safe in a vacuum; it's not a statement or an action in the sense spirits listen to but they might consider it deception. Deception is usually fine, by the way, as long as you don't lie while doing it, but any practitioner or Other could challenge you on this and the universe would take their side.

If you talk about gender identity, they'd at best not know what you mean. They go listen to the next practitioner over instead, where everything's clearer, and your voice and statements get marginally weaker. Or if they affirmatively misunderstand you, and hear "gender identity" as referring to "the gender that you are," they'd interpret it as a falsehood half the time."

"Why would presentation be any more deceptive than using different kinds of makeup or wearing different clothes?"

"Those might too. In themselves it wouldn't matter; that kind of thing changes much too fast for the spirits to pay attention to the associations. The danger is from intelligent enemies. Imagine someone saying you pledged that your actions would have the same weight as your words, and by wearing that appearance you're making a statement and the statement is false. Then the spirits would pay attention. Your opponent could even say you're doing it intentionally, so the spirits see a lie instead of an honest falsehood.

How much weight this carries would depend on the circumstances. If someone takes different actions based on other people's genders, they'd have more ground to accuse you because it would have cost them. And this could be anything. Earlier I told the spirits "you will know her as Sadde Woods." If it's actually the case that they know him as Sadde Woods then even I might have to claim to have been misled. Though I could at least word it to cost you as little as possible.

If it's someone with no stake at all, who knows nothing about you other than this, they'd have no standing to challenge you. But they don't strictly need that; spirits listen to practitioners in general."

"But that's—" Pause. No absolutes. "That sounds literally just as arbitrary as saying another practitioner could challenge me for wearing jeans instead of a skirt, or for acting deferential when around a teacher or a boss and not otherwise."

"It would be hard for them to say that wearing jeans is a statement of gender. If in your case it is, and they know that, then they might be able to go through another contortion or two and say it anyway.

The one about acting deferential is a good point. The spirits don't divide all humans into people who act deferential and people who are acted deferential around. That'd be a bizarre world. They do divide all humans into male and female. Arbitrary maybe, but what matters is that it's extremely well ingrained."

"Are spirits very local, then? Because gender roles are definitely not the same everywhere, there's no way you can reasonably do a one-size-fits-all categorisation. How do binary trans practitioners deal? And are spirits homophobic too?"

"They're local but mobile, is probably a good way to put it. But it's not about gender roles. For exactly the reason you said, they don't expect particular behaviors of men or women. It's just a statement with a truth value, even if they don't care about the implications.

They won't by default care who has sex with who, either, though practitioners do sometimes end up with promises on the subject or family traditions around what kind of person they marry.
I've never heard of trans practitioners. You probably aren't breaking new ground in ways to have the universe dislike you, but if you're not that doesn't imply anything good about how successful the earlier ones ended up."

"Okay... You said they listen more to more powerful people, right?"

"They do. If you were legendarily powerful, they'd side with you even if you were challenged. Though getting there just got even harder. And you'll be able to be safe within your demesne, once you have one."

"Well, it looks like getting a demesne just became a much higher-priority goal. If I became legendarily powerful and only then started claiming to be one gender or the other, would that be better or worse than having done that all along while getting powerful? Which is to say, will the spirits reward my being consistent about genderfluidity when I eventually get there, or will they simply not care?"

"Good question. It'd definitely be better to be able to say you were consistent all along, but since being consistent all along would involve regularly telling apparent lies it's hardly an option.

If you're successful enough that people talk about the Seals of Solomon and Sadde in the same breath then your name will carry weight and you'll be part of the way toward not having to watch yourself. But remember everything I said about how unlikely it was before all this."

"Might the spirits get inured to the 'lie' or believe it, if I say it often enough? Perhaps if I say it often enough in my demesne and then expand or something? If other people agree with me?"