Washed

Cleanliness.

Whiteness.

White-washed.

I am so tired of living in a world washed over by

 cisgender

heterosexual

white

norms.

I am so tired of being told I do not exist

because people assume they can look at me

 and know how I am.

I am so tired of being washed into a status of

 generalities.

So I'm done.

What else can I say?

I'm done. Finished. Zip.

I am angry and motivated.

But you know what, that's good fuel.

I have a brain... a working body... so I'm in this world to make a change.

I'm in this world to leave my mark - 

I will not become a statistic.

And I will not become a binary statistic.

But what if I want to be anonymous?

What if I want to help others who need their anonymity?

My discipline has taught me to wash everyone into ambiguous categories.

But

when there is only a handful of us, when we are well-recognized --

what then?

How can I protect those I want to help?

I call it pronoun washing.

Hide us the few in plain sight.

Everyone becomes "them"

from an outsider's view.

<But what about our statistics?! How can we make sense of data without gender!?!>

Fuck gender.

Base your groups on something else.

Split up people into different affiliations.

<But then we'd be assuming things about those groups without a basis!>

Yes.

And we have assumed women were created to be in the home.

And we have assumed men cannot be caretakers.

And we have assumed children are robots destined to become their parents.

And we have assumed the color of skin dictates the morality of a human being.

And we have assumed gender is binary.

We make a lot of assumptions.

We can assume norms will change.

We can assume change is positive.

We can assume queerness is positive.