Legal scholarship has long grappled with how to name and remedy discrimination that doesn’t fit neatly into existing legal and conceptual frameworks. We have robust vocabularies for overt bigotry, implicit biases, and increasingly nuanced understandings of microaggressions—those subtle slights that accumulate from interpersonal to structural harm. But what about the moments when someone refuses to use another’s pronouns—not with hostility, but with a shrug? When they double down, explaining they’re “not wired that way,” or that recognizing someone’s genderqueer identity is simply “asking too much”? What happens when misrecognition isn’t hidden, but rather is framed as ordinary, reasonable—even inevitable?
In their revelatory article, Blasé: Deviant Lawyers and the Denial of Discrimination, Swethaa Ballakrishnen names this under-theorized dynamic through interviews with sixty law students and early-career legal professionals from marginalized groups. Ballakrishnen calls it blasé discrimination: a form of bias that arises when emerging or less institutionally legible identities—such as nonbinary gender—are dismissed not as wrong, but as irrelevant. This is not discrimination that hides, but discrimination that shrugs. The harm lies in the casualness of erasure—where certain forms of difference are brushed aside as too trivial or inconvenient to matter. Ballakrishnen traces how identity categories in flux become especially vulnerable to denial.
This qualitative study centers three groups whose identities diverge from institutional norms within the legal profession: genderqueer individuals, Muslims, and people with disabilities. While all respondents described experiences of exclusion— particularly the questioning or dismissal of their identities—the nonbinary participants reported a distinct pattern. When they attempted to clarify or assert their pronouns, they were not met with apology or defensiveness, but with indifference. Misgendering was routinely cast aside as harmless or too difficult to fix. Interlocutors claimed they were “too old” to adapt, invoked firm policies, or cited grammar rules. These moments occurred in law schools and law firms alike. What linked them was not just the misrecognition itself, but the refusal to acknowledge that any harm had occurred—a doubling-down on erasure, framed as a minor inconvenience or personal quirk. Ballakrishnen shows how this dynamic is especially entrenched in legal institutions, which prize clarity and tradition and often render the unfamiliar illegible.
Blasé discrimination inflicts harms that are far from trivial. Ballakrishnen shows how these shrugs reinforce structural inequalities, strip targets of the language to describe their experiences, and chill participation in professional spaces. A nonbinary lawyer, told by a potential employer that they “can’t” use they/them pronouns and would instead use she or he, withdrew from the opportunity rather than risk further hostility. A law student misgendered by a professor stopped seeking mentorship in that professor’s field. In each case, the blasé response erased identity while also narrowing access and opportunity. Such injuries underscore the value of Ballakrishnen’s central contribution: a concept precise enough to name these denials and set them apart from familiar ideas like microaggressions.
The conceptual clarity of blasé discrimination is what makes this article a major theoretical contribution. While all non-dominant groups encounter discrimination, Ballakrishnen notes that individuals whose identities are more socially and legally recognized—such as Muslims or people with disabilities—at least nominally benefit from established legal protections. When these respondents identified the discriminatory behavior, perpetrators tended to backpedal or justify their actions. In contrast, nonbinary individuals were often met with outright dismissal: their identity claims were seen not only as unprotected, but as implausible. This distinction brings into focus the unique precarity of those whose identities remain emergent or liminal, making a compelling case for institutional change that moves beyond performative diversity and attends to how legal spaces respond to identity-based harm.
Methodologically, Ballakrishnen introduces a QuEer CRT approach: a fusion of queer theory and empirical Critical Race Theory (eCRT) that centers deviance, ambiguity, and marginality as starting points for analysis. Rather than comparing minority experiences to a presumed norm, Ballakrishnen draws on overlapping peripheral perspectives to illuminate institutional expectations. By intentionally sampling across multiple minority groups—rather than isolating one identity category—the article shows how the relative novelty and social illegibility of nonbinary identity shapes its vulnerability to blasé discrimination. This methodological innovation advances eCRT’s commitment to grounding theory in lived experience, while drawing on queer theory’s attention to unstable identity boundaries. It opens promising new terrain for empirical legal scholarship focused on intersecting peripheries.
While blasé discrimination thrives in many professional settings, it is not beyond institutional response—and, in some places, that response has begun. In British Columbia, where I live and work, concrete efforts have been made to counter the very patterns Ballakrishnen documents. In 2020, the BC Provincial Court and Supreme Court issued directives requiring counsel and parties to state names, titles, and pronouns during introductions.1 Likewise, the Law Society of BC advises lawyers to use the pronouns individuals request, cautioning: “don’t assume.” Crucially, their guidance recognizes the impact of mistakes: “If you make a mistake, acknowledge it, apologize, learn from it, and move on.”2 This model, grounded in recognition, repair, and humility, stands in stark contrast to the blasé responses Ballakrishnen reports. The Law Society’s next step, perhaps, is to name the harm directly: blasé discrimination. Thanks to Ballakrishnen’s powerful intervention, we now have a name for this form of denial—and with it, a sharper lens on how power operates not only through what is said, but through what is dismissed. In the quiet shrug of misrecognition, Ballakrishnen shows us, the mechanisms of exclusion endure.
- British Columbia Supreme Court, “PD-64 Practice Direction: Form of Address” (January 15, 2024).
- [2] Law Society of British Columbia, Guidance for Lawyers on Using Inclusive Language (June 2024).
