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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • The best analogy that I can imagine is this: Imagine that you went to go get fitted for a suit. You go to a seamster, get fitted, and they make you a suit. You put the suit on and it doesn’t feel right. You tell the seamster and they insist that the suit was made to your measurements and that it is correct (they even have patterns and measurements to prove it.) You shrug, pay the fee, and leave with your new suit. Wearing it out, you confide in your friends that the suit doesn’t fit, but they all tell you that you look great. Despite your insistence that the seams on your shoulders don’t line up and that the waistline is far too off-center, your friends insist that your suit is well-fitted and you look great-- that you should be happy and grateful to have such a fine suit. Meanwhile you feel awful; dreadful. You just know that somebody is going to notice and call you out on your bad suit. You’re trying your best to accept and maybe even show off your expensive, non-refundable, sold as-is attire, but the weight of it and off-balance feeling it provides is a latent part of every move you make and every word out of your mouth. Furthermore, present circumstances have made it impossible for you to have another suit made. Even if you did, they’d just use the same measurements, come up with the same patterns, and make the same mistakes-- No, you’re the one that has to wear the suit; they don’t. You have to feel the fabric against your skin. You have to feel its seams snaking over your body. After wearing it all night, you know what’s wrong with it (or at least what will make it feel right.) Your only recourse is to find a tailor willing to help you alter it to your specifications or to alter it yourself. Let the opinions of everyone else be damned. After all, they’re happy in their suits.


  • I don’t want to butcher the English language

    Singular they/them/their is a concept brought to English in the 14th century. It’s not butchering the English language to use they/them/theirs to refer to one person. You probably do it automatically without realizing it when referring to people wholly unknown to you when nothing can cue you in about their gender, like when referring to somebody that somebody else is talking to on the phone: “Who was that? What did they want?”