The Degenderettes, who describe themselves as a "friendly international feminist & genderqueer agitprop club," have created a badass line of patches and merit badges that leave the guesswork out of pronoun identification. However you may identify, they probably have a patch for you.

In order to procure one of these badges -- which are crudely embroidered on "dumpstered" fabric -- you first must make a selection on their "Income-Category-Adaptive Pricing Schedule," as follows:

Yup, people who don't identify as men are charged less. That means if a patch is $5, women are only charged $3.95. That's 79 cents to the dollar, ie. the current wage gap that exists between men and women in the United States. Folks who identify as Non-Binary Gender pay $3.50 for that same patch, and People of Color pay $4.50.

As you can see from the pricing schedule, there is a way to earn patches. Their Facebook page shares that those "who stand up to the Gender Police" can win them.

This Mask Magazine interview with Scout, one of the group's founding members of the San Francisco chapter, sheds some light on this process:

On your Facebook, you say that “Degenderettes who stand up to the Gender Police win Merit Badges.” How may a Degenderette may stand up to the Gender Police?

The Toronto chapter says each of their members define what they need to do to earn a badge, and then tell each other about it. LA chapter is like, “Are you shutting down the transphobic shithead who’s somehow always at the 7-Eleven at the same time you are who doesn’t shut up about how you’re being gendered in a way that makes him uncomfortable?

The use of "them" as a gender-neutral pronoun goes back hundreds of years, but the weaponizing of grammar as a way to tell people how to talk (rather than a way to understand what speakers are saying) made the practice anathema, creating strong headwinds for people looking to adapt usage to accommodate a spectrum of gender identities. Read the rest