Reduced

As usual, I have several half-finished drafts that I may never post, and instead I'm choosing to write about something that I also wrote about two weeks ago.

This post is about a Twitter thread. Someone I used to follow tweeted a joke about two kinds of people (those who insult dogs but in a cute voice so the dogs get excited, and those who get angry at group A), and I felt invisible. Not only am I neither of those types of people, but my literal existence is erased by binary thinking every day, so when another aspect of my life/life in general is reduced to a binary, I feel even more invisible. After I replied to the tweet, OP (who is, as far as I know, a straight cis white man) told me that "being reductive for the sake of comedy is a trope as old as time." I attempted to explain my issue with this, and he said "I'm sorry that this funny post about dogs has given you such a negative reaction."

I don't need an apology. I need to be listened to. Comedy should not be used as a shield for microaggressions. I am not the only nonbinary person who feels invisible; saying "I'm sorry you feel hurt by this" is dismissive and harmful and directly contributes to my invisibility.

I've run out of words. I hope what I've written is enough.