#intersectionalism

[boreal-sea]

Intersectionality doesn't mean "I'm x and y which means I'm more oppressed than you"

It means "what I am cannot be fully explained by describing me as only x OR as only y"

To use the original thesis by Kimberlé Crenshaw: a black woman is not just a woman, and she is not just black. The struggles she faces are unique due to the intersection of these identities.

In her example, a company was accused of discrimination against a black woman. The company's defense was that it hired black men, and white women. If you classified her as black, there was no discrimination because other black people worked there. If you classified her as a woman, again there was no discrimination because women worked there. But she was a black woman. And that made all the difference.

[panick-mixie-fever-dream]

A new pink tax - one where the patriarchy pays us for all the bullshittery, lies, inequities, violence, pain, suffering, and trauma it has put us through.

[b0ringasfuck]

HONESHTAAAA: è merito di Trump se c'è la tregua in Palestina, Biden CATTIVO

e altre varie sfumature di rossobrunismo.

I governi in Israele (ma anche in Italia) non stanno in piedi senza il consenso americano, un consenso indipendente dal presidente che è un fantoccio prevalentemente a uso interno. Fuori dalla nostra bolla "occidentale" si sa chi permette questo massacro.

Prova ne è per esempio che Meloni è diventata magicamente atlantista e anti-putiniana appena eletta. Salvini che non conta un cazzo, e infatti i suoi deliri putiniani continuano, come le sparate sull'età pensionabile senza che le politiche di governo cambino, è utile per giocarsi la carta "verginità" al prossimo giro.

La disaffezione dalla politica attiva, voto incluso, ha come conseguenza che quando un presidente (o un Parlamento FWIW) viene eletto, è stato deciso prima delle elezioni e comunque poco cambia tra scelta A e scelta B. More on this later [*].

L'estrema destra israeliana è semplicemente funzionale alla stessa gente che veramente decide i destini "democratici" di Israele. Utili coglioni. È chiaro che se ti sei guadagnato un pubblico di assassini dementi non hai bisogno che la sua "rappresentanza" sia particolarmente svegia. E man mano che questo pubblico di disagiati cresce... fino per dire a superare il 30% come da noi... poi ti trovi una classe politica di nutellari col rutto.

Qua ti rivolgi a una platea di dementi al grido di "porti chiusi", ma nessuno di chi decide le sorti delle elezioni ha intenzione di "chiudere i porti", se c'è qualcuno che anche tra i burattini che ci troviamo al governo che ci crede veramente, è perchè purtroppo non c'è bisogno di gente particolarmente sveglia per truffare una fetta consistente di elettorato.

Per carità, le aspirazioni della classe dirigente sono quelle di avere una rappresentanza politica di coglioni fascisti. Ti costano meno, fanno il loro lavoro e riducono il rischio che prendano il tuo posto.

A me va benissimo che vi stia sul culo il PD come i Democratici. Sono quelli che stanno tirando la volata ai fasci...

Ma proprio in quest'ottica non si può leggere il fatto che la tregua sia arrivata con Trump come merito di un'amministrazione di fasci e a discredito dei "meno fasci".

Si può leggere come una cordata di fasci e "meno fasci" nella direzione di diventare ancora più fasci.

Per dire, in Italia, la classe dirigente ha interesse a far sparire da domani il PD? Proprio sparire... NO. C'è bisogno di qualcuno che si pigli le colpe delle politiche fallimentari degli ultimi decenni, e questo qualcuno per l'interesse della classe dirigente del paese deve per forza essere più a "sinistra" di qualche cosa d'altro, per rinfrancare l'idea che la colpa è delle idee di sinistra.

Peccato che nonostante la "sinistra" si faccia sempre più destra, inanelliamo più fallimenti di prima, non c'è stata affatto una ripresa del potere d'acquisto, un miglioramento dei servizi, un aumento della competitività... né da noi né in qualsiasi altro posto dove s'è riproposta la stessa dinamica (il blairismo, la SPD con il piano Hartz, Macron...) L'unica che va relativamente meglio è la Spagna e per un po' l'Est Europa con le carrettate di soldi che ha preso dal resto degli europei per diventare il terzista a basso costo di chi quei soldi glie li ha dati.

La classe dirigente aspira a un futuro senza il PD, senza nessuna opposizione? SI. Basta vedere la parabola del PCI negli ultimi 30 anni. Aspira anche ad avere una rappresentanza politica di coglioni fascisti.

Ci potrà arrivare? È veramente per loro il sistema più economico e funzionale per governare? Boh. [citazioni di Huxley e Orwell e bla bla bla].

Gli US aspirano a fare del medio oriente una colonia? SI.

Se siete convinti che la miglior strategia per la classe dirigente americana per rendere il medio oriente una colonia fosse quella di continuare a bombardare la Palestina indiscriminatamente... vi siete sostanzialmente arresi all'idea di avere un "nemico" invincibile che non ha nemmeno bisogno di arrivare a compromessi.

Israele è bravissimo a fare la vittima e ancor di più la sua estrema destra che si è lamentata delle pressioni di Trump e Trump è bravissimo a fare grandi sparate e non mantenere le promesse.

Se c'era la necessità di far credere che si sarebbero interrotti i bombardamenti indiscriminati sulla Palestina, qual miglior momento che il passaggio da un presidente all'altro? Tra i diversi side effect positivi per la classe dirigente: ulteriore polarizazione tra le fan base di fascio e "meno fascio".

Hey guarda... sono migliore di te... sono "meno fascio". Lavoro per la desindacalizzazione, odio gli scioperi, mi piacciono "ordine und disciplinen, ma "meno" e mica sono un ANARCO-INSURREZIONALISTA KOMUNISHTA come te che scioperi e non posso andare al centro commerciale... bla bla bla... È merito di Biden se c'è la tregua.

Hey guarda... sono superfascio... e porto la paaaace.

Verità: nessuno dei 2 1 schieramenti era interessato alla pace. Ma ci si sposterà ancora un po' più a destra.

Questo POV non inficia il fatto che le amministrazioni democratiche siano costituite da FdM.

Dare il merito a Trump per la tregua invece è rossobrunismo... è la strategia del "tanto peggio, tanto meglio".

AUGURISSIMI a far campagna elettorale per i fasci dicendosi di "sinistra".

[*] la differenza è sempre più piccola, ma se nemmeno voi percepite la differenza tra dire apertamente che so che i gay vadano sterminati e non dirlo, si fa passare l'idea che sia OK che i gay vengano sterminati. Non è una bella strada da intraprendere a passo di corsa solo per sostenere che eh signora mia A è UGUALE a B, è tutto un magna magna.

[joemuggs]

Who ARE They?

[motivational thinking klaxon sounds again]

I’ve been really enjoying doing a bit of teaching lately. Last week I did some guest lectures for BIMM Bristol, it was an absolute vibe being part of a Q&A about journalism for the music business students (see my last post), and even more so speaking to the ones doing a more social studies oriented course about subculture. But before I did these sessions, I thought I’d better get my own subjects clear in my head. 

For context: I’m in a major moment of reassessment right now. When I finished the major part of the writing of the fabric book at the end of 2023, I thought I was going to have some space to take stock and look forward to some fun passion projects, but the way 2024 panned out I did NOT get space but I definitely did a lot of stock-taking. 

Everything got very real for me this year – turning 50 would have been stark enough, but my birthday came in a month of three bereavements; add to that plenty more inescapable reminders of mortality and realities of neurodivergence – my own and others’ – and there were very, very few soft edges to anything, anywhere. This means it’s felt more important than ever to be clear about what I’m doing and define my terms as I cue up “fun” projects.

That especially goes for the topic of subculture. Everything I do comes back to subculture, and when I was asked to do the BIMM lectures, as with the nature of journalism practice, I thought I’d better jot down some notes on what I actually mean by that. And in fact, after two hours of back and forth with the students, the ideas became clearer still.

Funnily enough I had put quite a bit of thought over the years into depicting subcultures, without actually defining what subculture meant. As the 'If the Walls of Nightclubs Could Talk' article linked below explains, going back to the 00s, I’d consciously studied how it’s possible for writing to depict collectivity, mass movements of people, hypersocial happenings, events that unfold over long durations and myriad interactions. 

It wasn’t until I started prepping what would become Bass, Mids, Tops, in the late 10s, though, that I hit on convincing ways to do this: in short, overlaying lots and lots of individuals’ stories told in a conversational fashion full of everyday detail, and allowing the contours of the broader social movements and occurrences to emerge from the intersecting lives. (That's something we've continued to be conscious of through developing the Bass, Mids, Tops and the Rest Substack.)

And it wasn’t until after that that I started to really think about what those movements were. I started joining groups where actual sociologists of subculture congregated, and investigating more of The Literature of the discipline. In this it struck me that a lot of thinking about subcultures is still stuck in a Boomer / Gen X model that thinks of them as “tribes”.

It’s understandable: these are the generations of the mods, rockers, hippies, punks, skinheads and so on. These were times that – and it’s staggering how little people factor this in, or even register it – were significantly more violent than now in the developed world, and it’s natural that youth did band together in localised, easily identifiable groups: for protection as much as anything.

But of course subculture always was, and is now more than ever, a lot more fluid than just joining a group and having that become your identity. As I talked to the students I asked them to name some subcultures: of course “punk” was the first one shouted out, but as we went on, we got into much more detailed discussion about modern identities like “gym bros”, “huns”, “resist moms”, protestors, petrolheads, fandoms and also subsets of things like work-related or sexual identity and how these things overlap and… yes we ended up at intersectionality.

We talked too about who gets to define what a subculture is. Of course there isn’t one line drawn around what a hip hop fan is, what a punk is, what a metaller is, what a Swiftie is, let alone around what it is to be, say, a queer punk. So given that who defines what these things are? Sociologists or anthropologists looking from outside? Specialist journalists? The generalist media? The people within these scenes themselves – many of whom will strongly disagree about what “the thing” actually is? 

Well… the answer is: all of those. The nature of scenes, subcultures, identities – as well as always intersecting in different ways in different people – is to have dynamic boundaries, constantly evolving, and constantly accumulating different and contradictory stories about what they are. Which means that we don’t define them, we negotiate their nature: every time someone talks about or reports on them, they’re adding to the mutating collective definition, shifting assumptions a little bit. The urge to impose thick black lines around areas of this flux is always the Victorian imperial cartographer's urge: it's an act of claiming ownership.

And subcultures and fandoms affect their individual participants. They affect what they know, what they read, how they interact, how they walk and move! I thought about how coming to becoming a hardcore Joni Mitchell fan quite late in life, listening intently to her and reading about her, altered the way I veiwed the history of her era: from my perspective, it actually altered the past. The information available to me about the music I loved and the person who made it altered me. I have written about THIS at some length.

All of which then gives us a choice when we come to talk about something as if we know how it is defined: are we going to be honest that that’s what we’re doing and intentional about the way we do it? Are we going to ask “Who am I to define this?” and accept that the way we in turn are percieved will affect how our attempts to define land and affect current, past and future particpants in the thing we’re talking about? 

None of which is to say don’t define things. We all need working definitions if we’re ever to talk about or interact with anything – but is it possible for we who study culture to accept them as just that: working definitions, contingent, constantly in negotiation? That can be a tough pill to swallow for people who grew up, as I did, on the classic model of pop culture journalism where the guy – it was always a guy when I was growing up – tells you how it was, and you’re expected to build your stories on that solid ground. But maybe, just maybe, have a little humility about it and you might even find your work remains just as valid and “important” as if you’d scrawled your lines around the territory you wanted to mark out…. 

Obviously this applies to all kinds of groupings of people, not just what we think of as subcultures. Clans, cliques, gangs, teams at work (in the BIMM lecture we talked about how particular flavours of humour are often a subcultural identifier, and this led to thinking about specifically health worker cultures for example, who are bonded by gallows humour, in different ways in different departments or specialism) and all the rest.

That might not sound quite like the clarity I hinted at, but trust me – as I plan future projects and go about my day-to-day work – it really is. In the face of never-ending data overwhelm, it's not just blind relativism to look at the mechanisms by which these identifiers evolve: quite the opposite, it's engagement with material realities. And it makes you realise the potential significance of your words and acts. In this never ending negotiation, whether you assume or assess makes a huge difference to where and whether you then choose to add your voice to the negotiation. And what you choose to reinforce or redefine alters things - infinitesimally, yes, but in complex systems who knows which is going to be the grain of sand that changes everything? As I've always said, it's not naive to think you can't change the world: it's naive to think you're NOT changing it.

[frottinggg]

sorry to not keep this to the tags but ive been entrenched in community activism and feminist studies lately and the current major issue is that the declawed version of feminism + weak concepts like "choice feminism" became the face of the movement. i would argue that there was no fourth wave to begin with because it was so plagued by liberalism and consumerism-- the past decade has regressed into exclusionary language and practices that dont "embody feminism" because either there is no praxis/its all semantics or the "movements" of the 2010s, unlike prior waves, operated within existing frameworks (i.e. the ongoing debate of decriminalizing vs legalizing sex work etc). to continue operating within existing frameworks, mainstream liberal "feminism" has been appropriating terminology, research, and movements from smaller grassroots groups and marginalized identities (i.e. what has happened with recent ecofeminism). the introduction of the concept "choice feminism" made it easy for the public to not care about actual praxis and enabled TERFs and trads to shill gender essentialist + benevolent sexist bullshit to reinforce the patriarchy while making it seem like the presence of the term feminism in the cultural zeitgeist was enough. while groups at intersections of identity are doing community work or educating themselves because they are the groups experiencing the worst of existing frameworks, politicians and culture at large pretends that progress has been made because of the puppeteering of the word "feminism" which masks the oppressive systems still in place.

can we just have, like, any feminist movement whatsoever. did everyone just stop caring?

[petervintonjr]

"A lot of people relate to politics as a kind of intellectual exercise. They are knowledgeable about the major issues oppressed people face; they follow current events; they may express opinions or write about injustice. What they are less likely to do is to get involved in the day to day work of organizing to make fundamental political change. They do not put themselves in situations of learning from and being led by those who are most directly targeted by systemic oppression. My observation is that all of our major leaps forward toward liberation come from the grassroots, not from the top down."

This Pride Month I have been (at the insistence of several dear friends) reading and studying the writings of Barbara Smith; author, educator, and activist. Smith was born (along with a twin sister, Beverly) in 1946 Cleveland, Ohio, to a family that prioritized education --her mother Hilda was the first generation in her family to graduate from college. Though Hilda sadly died when her daughters were only nine, her maternal grandmother then took up the responsibility, and in 1969 Smith earned a B.A. from Mount Holyoke, and then in 1971 attained her Master's from the University of Pittsburgh. She promptly took a faculty position at Emerson College.

Activism would seem to have been baked into Smith's very soul; besides being a part of the some of the earliest boycotts and protests of the 1960's, one of her earliest and still most significant accomplishments was in 1974; the founding of the Combahee River Collective in Boston, Mass. Its mission statement (co-authored with her sister Beverly and Demita Frazier) stated, in part, a commitment to exploring the intersection of multiple social oppressions within the wider feminist movement; not just racism but also heterosexism. The Collective and its published analyses encouraged more women to identify as lesbian or transgender, or in fact any other sexual orientation in the context of their social justice work. Over the course of her burgeoning lecturing and publishing career, Smith's orbit intersected with that of Audrey Lorde (see Lesson #12 in this series); and in 1980 they developed Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, significant as the first U.S.-based publisher of books for women of color. In 1983 one of Smith's projects, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, became the first publication to consciously integrate Black lesbian authors with those of other Black writers.

In 1994 Smith received the Stonewall Award for Service to the Lesbian and Gay Community, and in 1995-1996 served on the advisory council of the Arturo Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (see Lesson #131). In 2005 she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and that same year briefly entered politics when she was elected to the Albany, NY city council.

[waywordsstudio]

𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄: "𝗕𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿" 𝗯𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘇 (𝗦𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗵) -

Gimenez plies her way through a complex cross-section of marginal identities and works to reconcile not only her internal understandings but those which work upon her. The collection's title is a call to action for all of us.

[b0ringasfuck]

Avete notato come comunque per ogni Santanchè che "promuove i valori tradizionali" ma ci si sciacqua la fregna nel privato, ci siano 10 Salvini che fanno altrettanto?

È sempre una questione di posti disponibili e di privilegi e di gente che si sente "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", e si aspira a essere veline, calciatori, influencer e quindi alcune donne ambiscono a essere delle ricche stronze, spesso quelle che ce la fanno sono già ricche... la gran parte riesce solo a essere stronza e rimanere povera.

Così come per i Sowell o gli Iwobi, i Kanye West, i Dolce&Gabbana o i Platinette... qualcuno diventa la rappresentazione (teatrale) di un modello... gli altri rimangono negri e froci.

[carapaced]

how did we lose the plot so hard with feminism and activism like seriously… are we forgetting that being kind and loving to the men and boys in your life, teaching them as kids if you are a parent to be kind respectful humans, and showing them how to be emotionally vulnerable and making a society in which it is safe to do so was like…. A huge part of feminism, dismantling patriarchal values, and creating a generation of loving men who are held accountable for their actions?

Why is it “kill all men yes even the trans ones and if you say otherwise you’re an MRA” and not “let’s maybe create a world that encourages good men.” Did we forget that feminism was supposed to be good for everyone and that the patriarchy harms men and boys as well?

Like maybe we should care about male loneliness and the male suicide rate BECAUSE MAYBE WED HAVE LESS SOCIETAL PROBLEMS if 100% of the population wasn’t traumatized by gendered expectations and not being taught decent communication skills/how to be emotionally vulnerable. And definitely we would if fucking redpill echo chambers weren’t the places most willing to accept and nurture (groom into hateful ideology) young men.

The problem has never been men, cis or trans, being uniquely capable of evil the problem has always been the fact that cishet patriarchal culture encourages and rewards shitty behavior that makes everyone involved bitter and miserable and calls it masculinity.

[panick-mixie-fever-dream]

Almost like the whole fucking thing was a contrived capitalist bourgeois privileged patriarchial bullshit plot to distract the masses once again and dupe a bunch of people into uniting and thanking a god damn r*pist power hungry misogynist bigot. Just another day.

[b0ringasfuck]

Appresa la notizia Trump a già dato la colpa all'ideologia gender...

[guardianspirits13]

Decided to redraw my Candle Girls from last holiday season, and a new friend of theirs that someone suggested I include- Kwanzaa!

Once again, happy candle month to all who celebrate!

[b0ringasfuck]

Gente che ragiona ancora come se stessimo aspettando l'invenzione della ruota.

Che davvero bisogna essere un po' sadici e masochisti per bearsi del fatto che "solo i maschi possono lavorare in fonderia".

Che è come bearsi del fatto che le donne soffrano durante il parto.

E infatti nelle declinazioni deteriori del femminismo abbiamo chi insiste che solo le Vere™ Donne® possono partorire.

it's stupid because you've been on the earth for a while now and every time someone says oh you're a feminist, wait until you need to open a jar or yeah everyone wants equal rights until it's time to pay the bill huh you mostly just grit your teeth and suffer through it because you've been up and down that argument before about a million times

so you talk to your bathroom mirror about it: are you aware women only got the right to open a credit card during my mother's life? the ECOA was passed in 1974. if you want, i could ask her to pay.

interesting that their biggest argument against feminism is just "sometimes you'll need help with things, and then you'll be sorry". interesting that they think of women as being damsels in distress and they can swoop in and save you. when you ask someone to take the trash out, you're just asking for support - it's not a gendered thing. interesting that they think of these tiny moments where they can offer any service to their community as "proof" that men are secretly their better. that everyone owes men for these small moments, just because they may occasionally take on a tiny request. interesting.

the bathroom mirror isn't useful. murmuring your soliloquies into your shower. delivering the presidential speech that about how there should be no discussion on rights, justice, and equality.

but there's something deeply sad in there, too. because at the core of it, it's that you're always being reminded of your weakest moments. the times you've realized - oh fuck, i really am not strong enough. the times you've had to call your dad because, yeah, you don't know how a car works. the times where you were horrifically, terribly - acting like a girl.

because god forbid one of those men sees you like that. something in their eyes just... lights up. like you're an emblem of everything they've always secretly believed. you're having a bad day; you fuck up the parallel park. when you get out of a car, a man says women! like he's been waiting to drop that particular bomb. your family is falling apart and you're stressed at your job and you don't have time to grocery shop but when you raise your voice after being interrupted; your coworker's eyebrows shoot up. okay, let's calm down for a moment. i thought you said more women deserve a promotion?

over and over again; that resounding belief: sure but you all actually secretly love the patriarchy. because god forbid you ever need a man to pull you out of a burning building. god forbid you ever stand on your own two feet. you are constantly in the space of either proving them wrong or proving them right - but you always have to be proving something. and it's a tuesday, and you come up on one of these fucking moments where suddenly and fucking terribly - you're weak.

you need someone to just fucking help you. like literally, anyone else. fuck, goddamn it, you can't get this stupid cap open. you're having a flare up of your carpal tunnel. you've already tried using a towel and even your teeth.

it's just... the look of that sly fucking triumph on his face. like see? nobody's really a feminist. not really. at the end of the day, you all need me.

[shinyasahalo]

[b0ringasfuck]

Why do we need to know the gender of a random stranger on the street at all?

Che come scrivevo pocanzi a proposito di Vannacci...

L'effetto contrario a quello di parlare troppo di figə?

Che se insomma uno si relaziona agli altri solo pensando a scopare...

E aver paura di portarsi a letto un trans senza accorgersene credo faccia parte della stessa categoria di problemi di relazionarsi agli altri solo pensando alla figə (o non avendone poi molta dimestichezza).

Di persone con cui ho relazioni pluriennali e profonde [not that kind of pun] non so ancora se gli piaciono i funghi, preferisce il mare o la montagna o tutte e due... e la volta che mi dicessero che gli piacciono le lumache mica penserò che vogliano obbligarmi a mangiarle. E se lo avessero fatto[*], non avrei ritenuto un problema farmi delle domande sulle mie insicurezze enogastronomiche. Se fatto con garbo, lo avrei preso come un invito a mangiarmi una pizza le lumache.

Che se ci pensate bene... un invito a mangiarsi una pizza si accetta o si rifiuta in base a criteri non dissimili da... perchè se non ti piace la pizza, non ti piace chi ti invita, non ci sono le circostanze, il cazzo che vuoi e quando è NO vuol dire NO... etc... che non è che ti mettono la pizza in bocca a forza, che se non ti piace coi peperoni, non la prendi, che se a metà ti stanchi non devi finirla...

E se uno sconosciuto ti invita a mangiarti una pizza e ti dice che una pizza con te la mangerebbe volentieri così di punto in bianco...

Che non è mica disinteresse per tutti quelli a cui piacciono le lumache, al massimo per le lumache o la pizza. Che va beh la pizza è sempre la pizza. Ma questo lo dico io.

E può essere la pizza, ma anche le lumache che non è che non ci sono persone a cui piace la pizza che rompono i coglioni come quelle a cui piacciono le lumache. Non è che la pizza o le lumache fanno la differenza se uno rompe i coglioni.

E non è che da questo poi si possa passare ad "eh allora il Pride...".

Oh cretini, mica discriminano o menano per la strada quelli che mangiano le lumache o la pizza ed è un attimo che è "non tutti quelli a cui piacciono le lumache...".

[*] no, che adesso la prima cosa che mi passerebbe per la testa è rispettare il patto con cui mi sono impegnato con moglie, che è una maniera cortese ed eufemistica per non descrivere la valanga di vaffanculi che mi riserverebbe. Ma questa è un'altra storia.

My dear lgbt+ kids,

Recently, someone complained to me that you can't tell women and men apart anymore. You could walk past someone on the street and have absolutely no clue what their gender is.

Maybe you have heard something similar before as well. It may have been an explicitly transphobic talking point, or maybe they just thought about cis people who don't fit into gender stereotypes. We could discuss either (or both) points in many ways - but I want to focus on an easy question here:

Why do we need to know the gender of a random stranger on the street at all?

Now, of course you could argue that it can be the opposite of transphobic or close-minded to want to know - don't you need to know, so you can make sure you address them correctly and don't misgender them? But this assumes a situation where you will address them.

In any situations where you two end up talking for long enough that it becomes important for you to know their name and pronouns, you will automatically learn them at some point. They will introduce themselves with their name or you'll get the chance to ask for their name, or maybe they'll simply correct you if you accidentally address them the wrong way. Either way, if their gender is relevant for you, you will find out their gender (or at least their name and pronouns) at some point. You don't have to be able to assign them one by just looking at them.

But you don't end up talking to every stranger you see on the street. You don't end up talking about most of them, either. It's really not important to know the gender of the person next to you on the subway, or the cashier at the supermarket, or the stranger walking past you - so it also doesn't matter if they present in a way that leaves you entirely unable to guess their gender. It's none of our business anyway, and if it does become our business at some point (because we interact with them regularly enough that we need a way to address them), we can just ask for their name.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad