By Anonymous
Robyn Ochs has taught me many things in her/their clear, gentle, and kind way. She/they has been a teacher to many. The main lesson I recall is about identity policing. What stands out most about this concept to me is that no one gets to tell someone else who they are or how they identify themselves in any arena of life. People make all kinds of assumptions, but the best thing is to let people tell you who they are. It’s intrusive to do otherwise. One example is someone could see an apparently cis woman with short hair and assume they are LGBTQIA+, but maybe they just like having short hair! Or maybe someone thinks someone is trans, and assumes their pronouns instead of asking. The lesson I learned was to let people tell you who they are when, how, and if they choose. Assumptions are intrusive and can make people uncomfortable. We don’t know why people do things unless they tell us. Don’t police people’s identities.
Anonymous lives near Boston, Massachusetts, in the U.S.