So what *is* non-binary?

The thing with non-binary, is that there don't seem to be any rules. You might suffer from dysphoria, or you might not. You might want to change the way you dress, you might not. Basically, non-binary means different things to different people. This is what I learnt when I went to 'educate myself' as we are often told to do. Non-binary can mean anything, so it means nothing.

This could also be said about trans. As you I longer need dysphoria or to have transitioned.

It is very teenage. If this had been a thing online when I was a teenager, I'd definitely have been non-binary, if not trans.

The thing with non-binary, is that there don't seem to be any rules. You might suffer from dysphoria, or you might not. You might want to change the way you dress, you might not. Basically, non-binary means different things to different people. This is what I learnt when I went to 'educate myself' as we are often told to do. Non-binary can mean anything, so it means nothing.

I'd say that most posters here are non-binary, but I also learnt from Stonewall that nobody else can tell you what your gender identity is, so I won't.

non binary = the most narcissistic special snowflake it's possible to be.

So, ‘non binary’ is basically not wanting to conform (completely) to gender stereotypes, and/or, in the case of women, challenging sexism. Both things you can do, as a woman, or man. By trying to redefine yourself, surely you are reinforcing the very stereotypes you claim to disown.
Seems to be a completely self absorbed, western, privileged, individualistic way of looking at things. Very teenage.

Do non binary people claim to have gender dysphoria? Are they suffering mental anguish due to their internal "mind" not aligning to their external body. But instead of the opposite sex they don't feel their internal being fits with either sex.

Or do people make a conscious choice to not be constrained by gender stereotypes, which lots of people have done forever both consciously and unconsciously, but now they give themselves the special little label of non binary to make themselves feel important.

Most I have seen seem to be the latter.

Your explanation sort of makes sense Fermat (not 'makes sense' meaning a sensible thing to believe, but meaning I can sort of see how people can come to that conclusion).

If people are brought up with strong expectations that they should meet the gender stereotypes of their sex, and the inevitable happens and they find that they don't, then:

• if they feel like they mostly meet the gender stereotypes of the opposite sex then they conclude that they are trans
• if they feel like they are roughly 50:50 on meeting each set of gender stereotypes they conclude that they are non-binary

If you've been brought up to believe that gender stereotypes are absolutely valid, then it must be quite difficult to break away from that indoctrination to realise that they are bullshit. And in their youth they often don't have the world experience and mental maturity to make that leap.

Gender stereotypes really are the root of all evil. Things were going in the right direction back in the 1980s. Which bastards undid all that? Is it solely down to marketeers and their blue,/pink crap?

Wellcome are a little bit sorry. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/10/womxn-row-companies-worry-word-women-excludes-transgender-people/

All these terms are just meaningless, made up words. Nobody in the real world gives a toss, because they're like, getting with life and making ends meet etc.

How can you be non-binary without first enforcing a binary.

I don't know - we just wore what we wanted, had our hair cut how we wanted, drank what we wanted, studied what we wanted...

There was a shit load more freedom for young women in the 1980s and a lot less identity angst.

raises hand guilty.

Me too ALittleBit me too.

If I were twenty-something now, I would totally be identifying as non-binary and thinking I was ever so special and so much more enlightened than the dull cis hetero-normative fools I was surrounded by. Thank god I grew out of being (a) an idiot and (b) a judgemental cunt towards my fellow women.

This is science. It's supposed to be science! Not gender politics. I expected more. And they had a (real) typo in there.

I went to have a look on the ticket site to see if the event was interesting (regardless). No details though!

Another one caught my eye - 'Women In STEM' - i thought - fab - I will get the details and pass it onto the schools science teachers! Then I read it - a tad condescending in tone and then I read:

^Sharing the past and present, shapes the future
Women have and continue to further the advances of science yet many are forgotten, uncredited or lack prominance online. Let's change the status quo by addressing the gender imbalance on Wikipedia! We also strongly encourage biographies on women who identify as LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and others) or are a POC (person of colour).^

Should I go along - purely to ask the question?

My eyes hurt. Wtf is a womxn? A WOMXN??? This is not a typo!

For the love of the wee mxn, what is wrong with these people? A fucking science museum?

FekkoTheLawyer

7. It's 7 isn't it?

The answer is 7.

Times 6.

BeyondAHF ... well, we could. There was once a morse code thread long ago which confused some people as to how many others seemed to know it!

PineappleSunrise
Yep, she's a clever person. She wrote that in 2015. Her other blog posts are excellent too.

FermatsTheorem
I totally agree.
"The process by which woman is turned against woman is seductive, elegant."
We lose girls from teens to 30s when they realise that solidarity with sisters is powerful and important
raises hand guilty.

ALittleBit - I think I said on here the other day that I saw declaring oneself to be non-binary was a bit like the 2018 version of the "cool girl" (the wonderful rant in Gone Girl - yes, I know it's voiced by a psychopath, but it's still spot on).

This bit in particular from your article struck me as brilliant; of course one isn't actually accepted as one of the boys, one is there as audience to them being the boys:

The “one of the guys” woman is there for one key purpose: absolving masculinity of its responsibility for misogyny.

They tell you these stories not because you are actually welcomed as equal to men in their group, but because you are a woman, and because they believe on some level that only a woman can tell them that their actions are not so bad after all.

That blog is bang-on.

'Not like other girls' syndrome.

culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/to-be-different-from-other-girls-on-misogyny-inside-and-out/

I got to the bit when she sternly told her mother she could still call her by her childhood pet name, but preferred to be called "spawn" rather than "daughter" and then I couldn't stop laughing.

Sorry. As a fellow non-binary (according to the Stonewall definition), I should be more supportive.

Sadly not, ihatepeppig. Medium is fap central.

Is that article by Edenthecat satire? I do hope so.

Jewel