Artist, writer, comic, hacker, loud voice, and nerd of all trades from New York City.

He/him. 💙💜🩷

All original content I post here is licensed Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 Int’l.

  • 0 Posts
  • 144 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 7th, 2023
  • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldtoA Boring Dystopia@lemmy.world•Saw a nazi todayEnglish
    3·
    19 days ago

    Back in the reddit days I was pretty active on the Back to the Future subreddits, and one day an excited young man posted his new BTTF tattoo; a big colorful depiction of the 88 from the time machine’s famous digital speedometer, glowing orange numbers on a black background, in a very visible spot on his arm.

    I sent him a DM to the effect of “I get what you’re doing as a BTTF fan, but you should be aware that if you’re not a white supremacist there’s a good chance that tattoo can be gravely misinterpreted by people who see it out in the world” and linked this page on the number’s use as a hate symbol. He replied with an “OMG, I had no idea! Thanks for telling me!” message, deleted the tattoo post, and soon afterward deleted his whole reddit presence. I sometimes still wonder about that guy and how he’s managed.

  • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 85English
    303·
    20 days ago

    One analogy to consider is when someone comes out of the closet as non-hetero.

    Say you know a man called Joe Schmoe who used to live “in the closet” but eventually came out and said he was gay, he’d always been gay, and he’s ready to publicly proclaim his sexuality. You wouldn’t then look at a photo of Joe taken back before he came out and say “this is a picture of heterosexual Joe Schmoe” because he wasn’t heterosexual, he was a gay man who wasn’t yet able to outwardly live that particular truth. Past Joe was still gay, not straight, and it remains correct to refer to him as gay no matter when in his life you’re talking about. The error of his previous misidentification has been corrected, and his labels thoroughly (and retroactively) updated to reflect that.

    Similarly, it’s correct to always refer to a trans person as their true gender, preferred pronouns, and preferred name, even if you’re referring to a time in their life when they were not yet living that truth. Lynn Conway was correctly identified as a woman with she/her pronouns, and this article does her a disservice through its mixed-up pronoun use.