Imagine you’re hanging out at a party. You’re one of us queers who thinks sexuality transcends boundaries of sex and gender. You see a hot person at the end of the bar and you get frisky.

Your friend cautions you, “They’re a gender essentialist…a purist…you know…” But they’re sexy and you wanna sack ‘em.

Spike Lee pops into your head, “Do the right thing,” But you ask him, “Spike, I don’t know what the right thing is?”

Neither does he.

So, like the yuppie you are, you pop out your fancy-ass phone and type in, “How to hit on gender essentialists when you’re gender/sex doesn’t match their desires,” and you find this petite-treatise.

The answer’s obvious. Tread lightly greenhorn.

Should you hit on the essentialist? Sure. Don’t expect him or her to like you. There are no guarantees they’ll take you home, but desire is precarious, and borders are flimsy.

When Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho, do you think he sat around whining that the walls around the city were impossible to penetrate? No. He knocked those fuckers down.

Now greenhorn, if you were to wage a battle to “knock down” the walls of gender-essentialism that hurt your ability to bag your crush, you, my friend, would be a first-rate asshole.

Instead dismiss what your friend said. How do they know your new-found crush is an essentialist? Even if they heard right, how do they know that person hasn’t changed their mind? Even if that person is an essentialist rock, nobody says essentialists can’t change?

So instead of acting like an asshole, insulting the essentialist’s right to have arbitrary boundaries of gender and sex determine desire, go up to the fox and say “Hello.” Start a conversation. See where it goes. Flirt.

If, after sufficient flirting, they don’t seem to mind you’re around, take it up a notch. If they start backing up, looking at a clock, or out-and-out screaming, “get away you creepy fuck,” in that case, take a hint, take a hike.

But if they flirt back, heavens, if they start to kiss you, you know what? You’ve proven something critical. Even a puritanical, homo or hetero essentialist can slide down the slippery slope of queerness and fluidity towards our utopian wonderland of seahorses, where  binary gender and sex melt into euphoria.