If I walk into a train station and there’s a person in a red ball cap openly carrying a firearm I’m going to be extremely comfortable with my decision (as a man wearing a skirt) to sit far fucking away from them. They might be an absolute darling of a human being but generalizations are quite useful for assessing risks since we can’t know everyone.
We should be extremely careful in the generalizations we make but generalizations are a useful tool for our safety.
I wouldn’t discourage you, though perhaps this is because that’s not exactly the same thing. Like I said, generalizations aren’t bad to keep in mind. The seat you choose on a train is your discretion, and a stranger with features indicative of someone who might give you a hard time is a fair thing to gamble against. But you wouldn’t be generalizing them themselves. I too am LGBTQ+ (via asexuality) and would jump at the opportunity to avoid many seeming incels or radical feminists (to use two examples, and not judging radical feminists themselves, many just clash with the sphere of asexuality) if I were choosing something like workmates, but I wouldn’t do anything to verbally single them out based on things about those individuals I have not confirmed, such as making inclusion harder for them. In fact, if I had to choose either “innocence” or “guilt” as an emergency default, I’d choose innocence.
If I walk into a train station and there’s a person in a red ball cap openly carrying a firearm I’m going to be extremely comfortable with my decision (as a man wearing a skirt) to sit far fucking away from them. They might be an absolute darling of a human being but generalizations are quite useful for assessing risks since we can’t know everyone.
We should be extremely careful in the generalizations we make but generalizations are a useful tool for our safety.
I wouldn’t discourage you, though perhaps this is because that’s not exactly the same thing. Like I said, generalizations aren’t bad to keep in mind. The seat you choose on a train is your discretion, and a stranger with features indicative of someone who might give you a hard time is a fair thing to gamble against. But you wouldn’t be generalizing them themselves. I too am LGBTQ+ (via asexuality) and would jump at the opportunity to avoid many seeming incels or radical feminists (to use two examples, and not judging radical feminists themselves, many just clash with the sphere of asexuality) if I were choosing something like workmates, but I wouldn’t do anything to verbally single them out based on things about those individuals I have not confirmed, such as making inclusion harder for them. In fact, if I had to choose either “innocence” or “guilt” as an emergency default, I’d choose innocence.