document updated 14 years ago, on Oct 8, 2010
I've been thinking about various bumper stickers I could get that serve as a shibboleth — a signal to those in the know, but that is otherwise opaque to outsiders (ie. to avoid employment discrimination, and to avoid harassment generally).
I think one good candidate is the word "binary" with a circle and slash through it.
Originally, I thought of using "gender binary" with a slash through it, but that's less discreet. Though outsiders don't instantly recognize "gender" as a keyword that carries much importance, the phrase "gender binary" is something that can be googled if I somehow pique someone's interest as being "different" in some way.
The word "binary", all by itself, is interesting for several reasons:
- It can't be Googled. The search results are heavily obscured by stuff that's related to the engineering meaning.
- (note, however, that if someone "goes fishing" because they suspect something's amiss, and searches for things like <gay binary>, they will quickly run into the term "gender binary", so the dominant meaning doesn't completely obscure the alternate one)
- Although "binary" isn't necessarily IMMEDIATELY clear to members of the ingroup, it's still something that they can figure out in short order.
- "binary" IS a loaded term within the community... it has a certain amount of emotional baggage attached to it, so it's more likely to pique someone's curiousity if they're in the ingroup. If they're in the outgroup, "binary" has zero baggage.
- Putting the slash over "binary" IS odd. It's making a value judgement.
- If someone initially thought I intended the engineering meaning of the word, that doesn't really fit — people don't usually (can't?) make value judgements about such an abstract and ascetic concept.
- But if they're in the ingroup, then they may consider the alternate meaning of the word. And THEN it suddenly becomes clear. Of COURSE people make value judgements about the gender binary. So that must have been the intended meaning.