Wrong choice of example. I’m a bi person who’s dealt with the shitty “fake bisexual” stereotype for years. People pearl-clutching at the possibility of fakes did me lot more harm than anyone who was actually pretending did. (Never did run into one of those.)

I hear the accusations you are making—that NB people are “choosing” this gender identity as some kind of privilege-related game-playing—every time we are discussed outside of NB circles. It’s definitely being considered. 

It’s been my experience as a nonbinary person that binary people are way the fuck too concerned with whether we’re faking, because they find nonbinary identities inherently suspect.

It’s impossible for you to tell if anyone is actually faking—you’re right about that. How do you plan on having this conversation? “Hey, I think you’re insincere in your gender identity, let’s chat about that because I am an authority on who is Really Trans”?

Right, like you’d actually use ze/zem or sie/hir or ey/em or any of the other extant gender-neutral pronouns. Please, just get used to singular they.

Fair enough. The Bay Area is definitely a different climate than most part of the country.

Oh, boy.

Judging whether Ben is sufficiently or “really” queer/trans isn’t going to help anyone. I would rather we stopped spreading the message that it’s okay to invalidate people’s gender identity and sexuality. I don’t care whether Ben is faking; I care more about what they did.

Yeah, I got bad vibes from that too. They’re right that one’s identity doesn’t guarantee anything about one’s morality, but that was an unnecessarily nasty way to say it.

Thank you.

Please, for the love of god, don’t use homo, fag, or queer as a noun if you’re straight. Those are all homophobic terms in the US.

Okay, let’s not go there. They’re shit, but deciding they’re a straight cis man because they’re shit sets a bad precedent. Invalidating people’s gender & sexuality is a dick move.

I’ve never doodled a swastika, because why would I? This experience is not as universal as you think.

“Edgy straight people?” Really? There’s that annoying subset of the kink community where straight people say they’re queer because they’re kinky, but other than that, I cannot think of a legitimate reason to call a queer person straight.

What, are you asking me if it’s uncommon for queer people to commit sexual assault, or...?

I’ve seen both older and younger members of the community embrace it as an umbrella term, reclaim it from its use as a slur, or object to its use because it *has* been a slur. I don’t think there’s any consensus.

lol right, like most people think it’s a good idea to pose with a hate symbol

Uh....no. Correct pronouns are not a privilege to be revoked if someone steps out of line, commits a crime, etc. Just use the right fucking pronouns and stop whining about it. Singular “they” has been in use in the English language for ages and is widely considered correct, anyhow:

I’m so disappointed.

i can’t believe I’m reading an article about antis