Androgynize Me, Captain

Bill Nighy

Hugh Laurie

James McAvoy

John Lithgow

Katherine Parkinson

Keira Knightley

Kit Harrington

Leo Woodall

Mackenzie Crook

Mathew MacFadyen

Matt Berry

Nick Frost

Paul Whitehouse

Peter Serafinowicz

Riz Ahmed

Shirley Bassey

Simon Armitage

Simon Pegg

Stephen Fry

Stephen Mangan

whatever we do, we can't win. we can't be seen as actually nonbinary. people binarize us and often mock us or get aggressive or dismiss and ignore our nonbinaryhood or something else.

if we don't medically transition, we are "just cis trenders."

if we do medically transition, we are "just [binary trans] eggs."

we are "technically transmasc or transfem anyways" if we don't use these terms.

we are lumped together with binary trans men and trans women if we do use these terms. our nonbinaryhood is ignored or seen as some kind of "gender-lite."

we are aggressively pressured to disclose if we're AFAB or AMAB, TMA or TME, transmasc or transfem, "boy nonbinary" or "girl nonbinary." and if we refuse to answer, people get double mad at us and pick something for us anyways.

if we show the slightest hint of something that could be interpreted as binary gendered, we are immediately binarised.

if we put a lot of effort into looking the most ambiguous or androgynous or neutral, people still try to find something. and they become aggressive. people often EXPLODE [PT: explode] when they can't gender someone by glance.

our ways of expression are constantly mocked and ignored (like neopronouns, nonbinary-centering labels for gender and orientation, basically all things that are associated with nonbinary people).

but if we choose more typical ways of expression (for example, use "he/him" or "she/her" pronouns), people use it to ignore and dismiss our nonbinaryhood.

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]