What’s with the name?
No, Jack Evil is not my legal name.
When making the decision to take my business online, I knew I wanted to use a pseudonym. Every little bit of online privacy is important, and an assumed name is like Identity Protection 101. It’s also really fun to get to choose how people refer to you. Much like the name of my website, Hook for a Handicraft, the name Jack Evil imparts a message about who I am as a person. It’s the surname that does all the heavy lifting. “Jack” is a pretty normal name in and of itself, and while it may beg some questions in its own right, understanding that I am a trans person moving from a stereotypically feminine name to a stereotypically masculine one is pretty much all the context anyone needs to understand that choice. Jack is my chosen name, and I now use it in my everyday life, so I have to imagine it’s the word “evil” that people are really referring to when they pose the question: why did you choose that name?
There isn’t really a short answer. The word “evil” is highly evocative, and that’s what enables it to check a lot of boxes for me in ways that a common surname could not. It’s explicit in its strangeness, and the fact that it prompts people to asks questions at all is a sign that it’s doing its job quite well. It’s also tongue in cheek. I find the concept of evil to be fairly theatrical. It brings to mind mustache-twirling villains and pitchfork wielding devils. “Jack Evil” is the kind of name I should be saying while whisking a cape melodramatically around myself, ideally followed by a foreboding peal of thunder, but that perspective could have something to do with my background.
I grew up in the American South. Whether you’re from the region or not, you may be aware of its reputation as a highly religious area of the country commonly referred to as the Bible Belt. To be as neutral as possible, what this means in practice is entire communities operating under a Christian edict rather than just church groups. I did attend church with my mother for a time, but I was so young I barely remember anything about the experience. My mother was a single parent seeking community at that point in my life, but she describes becoming disillusioned with her church following a homophobic service. Because of this, I was never part of a church community, but that didn’t stop the church from having a profound impact on my life.
The thing about living in the Bible Belt is that it doesn’t matter how religious your family is—the community will make up for it. I spent my formative years living in a small town. It wasn’t until high school that I made friends who didn’t go to church on Sundays. My middle school principal once told me not to use god’s name in vain, which was made even more awkward by the fact that he was also my best friend’s father. The grandmother of another friend once bought me a study bible and sat me down at her kitchen table to try and teach me how to use it. When I stayed the night with a friend on weekends, that meant going to church with them in the morning. When I ate dinner with friends, that meant saying grace. The whole town, including the sheriff’s department, participated yearly in an elaborate event meant to simulate the “end times” through the format of a nighttime walking trail. I never actually got invited to attend because everyone around me assumed I was already going. The older I got, the more this environment put me on edge. Religion was pervasive. Religion was next to impossible to opt out of. Religion was like eyes on me, and breaking free of that scrutiny played a huge part in saving my life.
When I was sixteen, I had an emotional breakdown. It wasn’t something that I had the language to understand, at the time. My mother could see that there was something wrong, but I had no mechanism to explain to her what was happening. It wasn’t until we moved back to Atlanta the summer preceding my senior year of high school that I gained the perspective I needed to realize just how smothered I’d been feeling. That year, I came out as a member of the LGBT+ community. I would need another decade of soul-searching to actually sort out all of my different labels, but that first act of self-expression was liberating for me. I’d been holding something back that I hadn’t even known was there while living in an environment that refused to “normalize” identities like mine. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel like an outsider.
So, what does all of this have to do with my name? Hopefully, my history serves as an explanation for why the word “evil” is one that I have chosen to reclaim. Much like the word “queer,” it is a word with inflammatory roots that has historically been used to deride the moral integrity of the LGBTQIA+ community. Not everyone is as enamored with the word “queer” as I am (and I’m sure the same can be said of the word “evil”) but for me, it serves a function that no other descriptor can. My identity is like word soup. It has shifted and evolved over the years as my understanding of myself has, but I now recognize that I am nonbinary, transgender, asexual, and demi-romantic (among other things). The word “queer” fills in all the gaps for me and encompasses the incongruous facets of who I am into one unified whole. It is a word that often defies a simplified view of the self, and I also appreciate that its history serves as an acknowledgement of all the bumps in the road my community has had to traverse. I do not shy away from the words “queer” and “evil” because I do not feel compelled to shy away from negative perceptions of my identity. I spent a long time doing that, and to exist in a space where I feel empowered to stand up for who I am, no matter how inconceivable that may be to some people, is liberating.
I don’t begrudge anyone their faith. I think everyone should have the right to practice their religion—or lack thereof. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who would disagree with me on that, and it just so happens that a large portion of those people also represent the Christian faith. I don’t want any of those people to get confused about who I am or where I stand on issues like gay rights or abortion—pro, in both cases—because I also think that everyone has the right to know who they’re doing business with. I certainly like to keep that information in mind when choosing which suppliers I do or don’t work with (Hobby Lobby being a prime example of an organization that will never get any of my money). In this context, “evil” becomes a signifier of values. Namely, it serves to represent what I am not. The fiber arts industry contains multitudes, and while fiber arts have been used as tools of defiance throughout history, they are also tied to stereotypes of conservativism and femininity. I prefer to be explicit when it comes to declaring which areas of the fiber arts industry I do and do not align with.
Of course, one could argue that the word “evil” has a much broader significance and scope of meaning than what I have laid out so far. You may agree with me that describing the queer community as evil is inappropriate, but feel it is the best word to use when describing heinous acts of violence or serial killers or dictators. There are many things in this world too awful or unconscionable to be described—in those circumstances, surely a word like “evil” becomes appropriate. I hope you will bear with me when I tell you I cannot agree.
I think there are many times, in colloquial settings, when it is perfectly fine and adequate to use reductive descriptors or hyperbole or anecdotal evidence. Colloquial speech is not something that has to be perfect. It’s often more about conveying a feeling than it is about a discussion of facts. Not everything has to be discourse or a debate, and in these settings I think binary language is perfectly adequate. On the whole, however, I think words like “evil” are overused.
As mentioned above, I am nonbinary. While this word is primarily intended to describe my approach to gender, it can also be used to describe my approach to all binary systems. I think it is more useful to see the world for all its shades of grey. Seldom do circumstances fit cleanly into binary systems of thinking. For example, good and evil are binary opposites. But can a good person contribute to evil deeds? Can an evil person redeem themselves through good acts? How is our understanding of both these hypothetical people enabled to evolve when we use such reductive language to describe them? Through this mode of thinking, mistakes become a moral precipice, and basic decency is placed on a pedestal. We lose our ability to differentiate between acts of self-defense and the malicious violence that necessitated them. We undermine the rehabilitative intent of our criminal justice system by refusing to see anyone convicted of a crime as anything more than a “criminal.” We condemn entire groups of people rather than recognize their humanity. If I can see how inappropriate this mentality is when it is leveraged against my own community, regardless of how many people are doing it or whether or not you, reader, agree with them, then surely I can understand how inappropriate it would be for me to do the same to anyone else.
This may seem like a lot of context to pack into one word, but wasn’t the word “evil” already so loaded as to necessitate the creation of this blog post? I respect that the experiences of others are different from mine, and sometimes I even feel a little guilty presenting this name to the world, knowing that those I interact with may not understand it or be frightened by it. That does not change the fact that I believe all people deserve the right to be judged according to their actions rather than superficial stereotypes or oversimplifications. I believe that the people among us who commit the worst deeds should have every single one of their justifications brought to light that we might better prevent such devastation happening again, and that those who strive to help those around them should be given grace when owning the mistakes they will inevitably make. To me, “evil” is a human invention, a concept that belongs in fairy tales, a caricature of the complexity of human experience. I wear it like a costume, like vampire fangs for Halloween. The way that I use it, it is both a completely unserious word and an earnest declaration of values. It’s just as personal as a name.
