#nonbinary identities

I can actually say that there are people out there with so little faith in Humanity, the scientific community, the government, and the media, that they trusted one small blog/‘news outlet’/podcast above all of it. And thought that drinking horse dewormer was really the way to save them from a deadly global pandemic.

After consuming certain bits of media this year, I can definitively say that there is a somewhat common problem for lazy authors. (The ones that don’t want to do research and risk misrepresenting a group of people.) It takes the form of them attempting to ‘make up a fake illness’ or something else and accidentally landing on a real one. Which they have simply mislabeled. Because Humans are weird.

I can inform those unaware, that there are people who believe that they are mythical creatures trapped inside Human bodies. And I look at the things I wrote above this and have to say to myself “they aren’t hurting anyone with their beliefs. Several people arrived at these conclusions independently, so it’s a thing. It doesn’t affect you. Who cares? As long as they’re happy and don’t harm others, then it’s fine.”

Years ago I explained to people why saying they identified as an attack helicopter, wall, or chair is offensive. While I now know that there are people whose gender is related to fog, space, and/or the smell of books, etc. So the only criticism I could honestly think of (besides the fact they were clearly lying/being sarcastic) was that the way they said it isn’t how people talk about gender identity.

I have had to think about how I would’ve argued with those ignorant people, if I didn’t know as much about the subject, as I did at the time. And certainly less than I know now.

And then I was subjected to seeing the opinions of people with about three times my lived experience, talk about the so called ‘menace’ of trans/non-binary people. When, as we all know, they are statistically less likely than the average population of commit crimes. In addition to being far more likely to have violence perpetrated against them.

A t.v. show lasting fifteen years had a mlm pairing with an actual lgbtq actor involved. With its other character based on a real life m-spec man. Which just so happened to trend higher than a historic u.s. election following a highly anticipated (and somewhat expected) love confession between the two.

Memes about the show (often made by people that hadn’t ever seen it, or hadn’t watched it for several years) became how some people heard which candidate was winning in the polls, and who actually won.

The format of those memes is still regularly used to inform people of whatever new thing has caused unrest among the community (and/or tumblr at large) that cares about a show that ended almost a year ago.

They/we are so passionate that we have regularly trended in this intervening year. On some memorable occasions, it was for things that we already knew about.

Summary: An ice cream cart has set up between the wine shop and the bus stop. Crowley’s in a good mood, which can only be enhanced by a vanilla cone with a flake. Providence in action.

There’s a young person already waiting at the stop, desperately arguing with someone on the phone. “No,” ey say through gritted teeth. “We’re not doing that.”

(Or, Crowley has an encounter at a bus stop. It’s rare a demon gets to help someone.)

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