Seems to me that the costumes here are modeled after the burqa, which is seen here as providing freedom in anonymity, rather than as denying some right to self-

Seems to me that the costumes here are modeled after the burqa, which is seen here as providing freedom in anonymity, rather than as denying some right to self-expression. That the characters wear lifts and disguise their voices also seems -- I may be projecting/guessing here -- to be a direct metaphor for Jude's use of (sometimes male) pseudonyms. But while this does all implicitly, you could say, explore gender (as much simply as online pseudonymity), this seems to have been written before the standardized thought-patterns for doing that had been taught, so it's a little more interesting than what I'd expect to find in a 2023 essay. I also note the old 90s-era left-libertarian strains that are now all but dead, as Bitcoin has become more right-libertarian. An "edgier" time in style, but in substance more naive and more optimistic. Funny also how, first there was this (1992), and then there was Paypal (founded in 1998), Cryptonomicon (1999), the founding of Bitcoin (2009), and finally the crypto boom (2021?). It takes a while for these things to play out.