Hexbear is federated with instances that do not mandate pronouns.

Only if we can say "pronoun up!" to outsiders the way that PCM did about their insipid "alignment" flairs. (half joking)

It's because none of these people seem to have ever seen an actual safe space in their lives.

Of course "nobody" uses neopronouns in general society. We all know what would happen if we did. Shame, ridicule, and violence would follow. And we're very attuned to reading online spaces for transphobia as well. Despite what a lot of people would like to think, many online queer spaces are NOT inclusive and safe.

I was an old-school redditor, and I browsed the trans subs for a few months. I saw so much hatred there. The general spaces erased all identities that didn't fit the "mtf" experience, so the trans men stayed away in their own space. Both their space and the general ones were OPENLY hateful of non-binary people for years.

This is one of the first spaces I've ever seen online that is truly inclusive. The neopronoun options are already there, you don't have to ask for them. Everyone is forced to show their pronouns, none of this "well mine are normal" garbage. There is a culture that promotes repressed voices.

And when some people see this, they can't even fathom it. To them, being "an ally" means allowing trans people to wear a pronoun pin and respecting those pronouns so long as they are "normal" enough, then carrying on with life as normal. If queer discussions ever start taking place in the open, they get uncomfortable because they're not used to it. If someone who uses any pronoun besides they or she or he, they get uncomfortable. This is transphobia. They just don't recognize it as such.

This is amazing lore! Thank you for sharing.

Or, god forbid, use their Eminent Domain to take some private land along the sidewalk to improve life for poor people without impeding the ability of wheelchair users to navigate the city.

But that would anger the landowners, of course.

For the unfamiliar: "la sombrita" is the name of the corrugated metal piece on this bus stop post. It is designed to provide shade to people waiting for the bus, because the areas where these are installed have very little shade.

Due to a multitude of reasons from NIMBYs to building codes, it's difficult for the city to install anything much bigger or better than this.

If you find this interesting, you can learn more by listening to episode 545 of the podcast 99% Invisible. It's called "Shade Redux"