What

I have seen this statement from several people - not just one of the OPs of the most recent biphobic blow up (and I won't be addressing that saying Mary should have been nonbinary somehow invalidates Ed as bisexual, since bisexual means attraction to all sexes, not just two) - and, as a nonbinary person, I really wanted to address it.

Very strong disclaimer that: nonbinary looks a lot of different ways. My experience of nonbinary may not resonate with other nonbinary people. Maybe Mary Read WAS nonbinary for whatever definition of that would have been understood by an 18th century pirate. But why HAVE some people gotten it into their heads that OFMD is being disrespectful by not portraying her that way?

Read has an extensively sourced and researched wikipedia page which demonstrates how little we know about the historical figure of Mary Read (and it's a really interesting meta-article about how her supposed sexuality was constructed by later authors). It also notes that the likely inaccurate but first popular depiction of her has her dressing as a boy when she was young in order to receive money from a relative. Then she and Anne Bonny are both said to have dressed as men in order to sail aboard pirate ships. And that's… it. So why, exactly, should Read be portrayed as nonbinary? Even leaving aside the disputed accuracy of these sources, is it because she's said to have dressed as a boy from a young age, but then is also said to have saved herself from hanging by claiming she was pregnant? That's all I can think. And that seems like a gross misreading of what it is to be nonbinary - without even getting into a discussion of what gender identities and sexualities were like in the early 18th century Caribbean.

Butch is also a gender with a long history and a lot of contested argument. Butches are celebrated in many places, but they've also been criticised as bad representation, as giving lesbians a bad name, as abandoning the fight for women's rights by trying to emulate men. For all these reasons and more, it's really hard to find depictions of true butch characters in popular media.

*looks at a few other tabs*

Wait, why the fuck am I even on the computer? *closes computer*

*looks down at the thing on my desk I was about to deal with like an hour ago*

TL;DR: On June 4, 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published “Move Fast, Surveil Things,” confirming through static code analysis that Meta has already deployed facial recognition code to millions of Ray-Ban smart glasses. The internal “Name Tag” feature converts every face in view into a 2,048-number faceprint array and matches it against a stored database. An EFF researcher activated the feature in debug mode and watched the glasses detect a known face in real time. Meta’s spokesperson says this is just “evidence of exploration.” Exploration doesn’t ship to millions of devices. This is staging for launch, and internal documents show Meta planned to flip the switch while privacy groups were too busy to fight back. ...You don’t need a central database when every user builds their own local faceprint collection. The faces still get scanned. The biometric data still gets created. Meta just outsources the storage to your phone, and the legal liability to you.

-via State of Surveillance, June 7, 2026. Emphasis mine.

But good news! There are things you can do to protect yourself and your community. As quoted from the article:

What You Can Do

Assume You’re Being Scanned

If someone near you is wearing Ray-Ban Meta glasses, treat it like a running camera, because it is. The small LED indicator that’s supposed to signal recording can be covered with tape, and Meta’s “always enabled” mode processes video without activating it [6]. The Nearby Glasses app can detect Meta Ray-Bans via Bluetooth.

Lock Down Your Meta Profiles

Name Tag matches faces against Meta platform data. If you have Facebook or Instagram accounts, set your profile photo to something that isn’t your face. Make your accounts private. Better yet, consider whether you need them at all. Every photo of your face on Meta’s platforms is training data for identifying you later.

Support the Legal Pushback

The EFF, ACLU, and EPIC are fighting this on legal, legislative, and technical fronts. Texas’s investigation proves state-level enforcement works: Meta paid $1.4 billion last time Texas came knocking over biometrics. Push for biometric privacy laws in your state. Illinois and Texas showed the way.

Don’t Buy the Glasses

Every pair sold expands the surveillance network. Meta has shipped millions already. Each one is a camera pointed at everyone else. If you own a pair, understand that the facial recognition code is on your device right now, and Meta can activate it with a software update whenever they decide the political moment is right.

Hey good news they're already quietly removed the code!!!!

Public outcry matters!!!

With capitalist health insurance, you pay for other people's healthcare AND rich people's profits.

Governor Pritzker signed the following measures into law:

HB 4834: Removing testosterone from the Illinois Prescription Monitoring Program (Rep. Cassidy/Sen. Johnson), effective immediately

HB 5095: Enshrining the self-selection process for gender markers on state IDs and driver’s licenses (Rep. Guzzardi/Sen. Ellman), effective January 1, 2027