Jake admits that they love combining ‘hard femme and hard masc coded things’ and causing people to do a ‘double take’ when they see their beard paired with red lipstick or skirt with hairy legs. Basically what that says to me is that they don’t want to be a man being told they can’t wear lipstick or a woman being told they have to shave their legs??! So basically they arrive at ‘non binary’ because it’s a way to do both - how restrictive is gender eh?!
And if you explore this world you realise that it’s so ‘vanilla’ to not declare yourself into some kink. So there’s kids, say 14, years old declaring themselves pansexual, polyamorous etc... and then there’s the kids who, strangely enough, declare themselves asexual because perhaps they’re not quite ready for being a sub or a dom or a furry or a unicorn yet. Basically the world of kink is laid out before them as soon as they start surfing YouTube with doubts about their sexuality and gender. It’s like you’re instantly a bigot if you don’t profess to be ‘queer’ and aren’t open to getting it on with any sex/gender/species etc... This is the world now. See also Ash Hardell.
Jake will probably say they steer people away who aren’t old enough to be learning these things. But you only have to look at the profile of many of their Twitter followers to see there’s a lot of under 16s. And so many wanting ‘top surgery’. And so many of them depressed and battling mental illness. It’s sad and terrifying.
As I said before I hope Mermaids give Jake a lot of support because they are pushing them right out front. I’ve never seen Jake engage on the more political aspect of identity politics - it’s always just been about themselves and their friends and their fans. I sense they’re quite naive on that front although they did admit to feeling uncomfortable about the mixing up of kids and kink on Pride Marches and how they felt it was inappropriate.