I think non-binary is actually reinforcing stereotypes and anti feminist?

I cannot thin of anything less appropriate than mocking them and taking the piss out of their choices

Genuinely, i am not mocking. If i were a teen today i would absolutely be one of those agonising, i rejected female stereotypes, chose STEM over arts, woodwork over home ec, even though I was the sole girl in both physics and woodwork. Went full goth for a while rejecting female concepts of “beauty”.

I have simply pointed out to my teens I am pretty much the poster girl for non binary. I completely agree with Boy George above, I know i’m a girl, why do I care if people mistake me for a boy?

It made them think more about what it means to be male or female, and whether they should let that label or define.

Not mocking- they realise that if their mum falls into the non-binary category, then it’s all a bit of a non issue.

This has been especially important for my 16 year old Dd, who has clinically late puberty and is only just starting to develop- still doesn’t have breasts/hips/secondary female characteristics. She has had a lot of people questioning her gender, asking if she’s trans, a lesbian, coming up to her in the school cafeteria even to ask if she’s a boy, girl or something else. She’s heavily into sport so is pure muscle, her clothes are jeans and a hoody, her likes are general, not gendered.

We have had a lot of conversations about gender identity and what makes you a boy or girl. She’s never questioned that she is a girl, but she is struggling with the social side. Seeing me do what I want, wear what i want, not subscribing to the boxes, helps, i think.

As a consequence my younger dd has been pulling people up on sexism since she could talk. Everyday stuff like teachers asking “the strong boys” to move chairs while the girls tidy pencils...

@bluebluezoo I love the idea of parents saying it too, how deeply uncool. There is no stronger motivation for teenagers than parental embarrassment!

I've been pondering over the impact of visual media in all this.

If "it's how society views is" is rigid and won't change in their eyes, where is that from?

The thing is that I don't think this is everywhere. I know of areas around me where yp do seem to be 'immune' to these boxes and know full well their sex and the fact that they can be GNC. I know a few teen girls personally like this. One described her school and said over half the girls were lesbian. No gender identity issues at all.

I think its very telling (and a great shame) that so many young people have little awareness of how many in previous generations disregarded gendered/sexist expectations of hair, clothing & roles.

I think the loss of music based 'cultural tribes' has played a part. From the early 20th century up until early 2000's music culture was a defining part of most adolescent lives and a means to express themselves and find 'their people'.

Since the internet/youtube/social media took off in a big way we've lost much of that. I'm not suggesting young people don't listen to music or have favourite artists but it no longer seems a social cohesion type activity. More of a put Spotify on in the background whilst taking selfies kind of thing.

Of course older generations always complained about music fads and bad influences too but at least (to the best of my knowledge) punk or grunge didn't faff around with major law changes and the hair dye washed out.

/so many good points on this thread.

Non-binary as a concept is dependent on the majority of people being "binary", which makes it an incredibly selfish way to "identify". It's "I'm alright, Jack" combined with "but the boxes are fine for the rest of you muggles".

I'd push her on whether she really thinks that other women fit the woman box. I'd bet she doesn't know many who do.

I think its very telling (and a great shame) that so many young people have little awareness of how many in previous generations disregarded gendered/sexist expectations of hair, clothing & roles.

The drummer is an exceptionally cool lady, who is very butch, dresses in combats and DM and shaved head, and is gay.
Pretty cool role model, that she knows personally. It wasn't enough

Maybe your daughter doesnt 'identify' as or with being a butch lesbian though?

Why is the drummer "pretty cool"? Sorry , I really don't get why any of those personal preferences about clothing and appearance deserve to be elevated as "cool". Maybe your daughter is reacting against your bias of what makes a woman "cool"

Thanks so much @R0wantrees for linking that video which I probably watched in the 80s. Culture Club, the New Romantics, Bowie, Annie Lennox,etc, all that experimenting and crossing previous boundaries - where’s that freedom gone? Why does it mean you’re suddenly not ‘properly’ female if you step away from pink and sparkly now? And it’s as oppressive to males as well. Why are we all being put back in our boxes? Do we need to be in boxes to be marketed to in the post-capitalist world?

It's profoundly regressive.
Yes, I agree it is totally oolitically regressive and also inherently divisive. This politics has no solidarity with others, it’s about individuals finding a way to escape their own oppression for themselves- it’s not about together tackling the oppression at source for everyone’s sake.
And very sinisterly as others have said, the implication that others (who do not take the enby route) must want and deserve to live under the patriarchal gender binary and must really love the oppression of sexism, thus alienating the non-binary person from other people still further. It’s all a lie- no living person can ever fully fulfil all the gender stereotypes. All human beings ever are ‘non binary’ in that sense.

Steppemum it must be really hard for you because you love her unconditionally but she is saying something that crosses your own values. But you sound calm and also quite clear in your own values and boundaries about not being put in that gender box even for her - which is the most powerful role modelling. I wonder if you could keep expressing your thoughts about this to her in much the same way you are expressing it here? NB is such an oddly cerebral form of youth culture/rebellion (if that's what it is), she may well really want to talk with you about it. As a bright-sounding girl with varied interests maybe this is her kicking off an intellectual journey of exploration about gender pressures and stereotypes and she could end up somewhere with a much deeper and rounded perspective.

1980's children interview Boy George & Jon Moss (Culture Club)
Includes discussion about masculinity & feminity:

I haven’t read all responses but what strikes me is that, actually, the box is growing for women because of the battles fought by women for women.
The male box is the one that now needs to grow so that males accept men who want dress/behave like women but don’t want to change sex. They should be fighting for their right to be ’feminine’ in male spaces.

Every word of this.

An individual solution to a group problem. Good neocon capitalist thinking!

Honestly, when dd was gender dsyphoric, what really pissed me off was that I saw her as choosing an solution to her problems that was anti-feminist, homophobic and anti-solidarity with other women. I felt it was a profoundly nihilistic way to manage the problem of sexism and homophobia than ran counter to every previously expressed value we'd shared.

Queer concepts are just another way to fuck with solidarity between marginalised groups of people, imo, and non-binary is no different.

Seems most of us are on the same page here! "Non-binary" looks to me like the way we were going in the 70s, dumping the old sex-role stereotypes. If only today's teenagers can steer clear of drugs and surgery.

Science, so sorry to hear about your DD. Let's hope Keira Bell's case leads to a massive changes and reforms, stopping these idiots experimenting on children.

OP, I am so glad you're supporting your DD in expressing herself as a lesbian, taking pride in being a woman. There's no better protection against the trans cult.

OP, I think that what would make my children think (I think.. they're younger, but I know I've challenged the 'girls do X/boys do Y' with them using it, and I think it would only get more depth with older children) is (genuinely) say that I felt sad that she felt that way about me that she was so happy to push me into that gender box, that I wasn't happy to be in at all. And just leave it hanging.

Encourage a bit of empathy for a person she cares about - take it away from the me-me-me.

I dunno if it would work. And it might cause more pain for you, but I'd hope that my kids would be able to think of me if I told them I was hurt by something they were saying about me.

Agree with you absolutely OP.

I am Analogue, not Binary

@anonymouse99 Yep, I had massive issues accepting my sexuality when I was younger because I thought gay women couldn’t be feminine. I know that sounds ridiculous, but all my life I had been told gay women are butch, masculine or “tomboys” who prefer to have male friends as they have more in common etc. so I thought I couldn’t possibly be gay because I liked makeup, dresses, pink, hated sports and anything stereotypically masculine, didn’t really get on with boys and men etc. This is one of the reasons why I have an issue with reinforcing gender and gay stereotypes, it hurts people on both genders and people on both sides of the spectrum.

when she’s older she may realise she can be a butch gay woman and still be a woman like every one else, that her being more “stereotypically masculine” than the average woman does not stop her being a woman.

^^This. But also she might not be a lesbian. I know women who aren’t feminine at all who are straight and married with children and I know lesbians who are the opposite. This stupid trend (which goes beyond gender) of trying to put people in boxes while complaining that “society” is trying to put them in a box needs to fuck the fuck off.

Dr Katie Alcock (Chartered Psychologist, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Lancaster University.)

'But HOW CAN YOU TELL'
(extract)
So, how do we tell whether someone is male or female? Well, we are very good at it and — like a lot of human cognitive skills — we base it on a number of cues (pieces of information). In fact, we’re very good at it from the time we are tiny babies.
One of the best ways to tell a male body from a female body is gait — how you walk. You don’t need a whole body in front of you, or even the outline of a body, to tell male from female bodies. A nice little point light display will do the trick. Adults and babies aged 4 months or older can tell male from female in this type of video (first image shows a still, second is a video like the ones used in this type of experiment).

Next up, we can tell the difference between male and female faces. Just as with gait, both infants and adults can do this.
For babies, we usually work out what they can distinguish by finding out what they prefer to look at and what they prefer to look at when we’ve bored them into submission which is technically known as “habituation”. If a baby sees something that looks the same to them, after a while, they will stop looking (I imagine them saying “OK, stop now, I’ve seen that, show me something NEW and EXCITING). This means if we switch in a new picture or sound and they now pay attention, we usually decide they can tell the difference between the old (BORED NOW MUMMY) picture or sound and the new (WOW THAT’S EXCITING) picture or sound. But babies also like to look at some things more than others. Babies who spend more time with Mum or a female caregiver can tell the difference between male and female, and prefer female. But babies who spend more time with Dad or a male caregiver can also tell the difference, but prefer male. (continues)

I’ll move on now to voices, though I could go on and on, this is a particularly helpful method for situations where you can’t see the whole of a person’s body and/or it’s dark and/or they are on the phone.
Again, babies can tell male from female voices. They may be able to tell the difference at birth (and they seem to prefer women’s voices — very likely because they have heard mainly a female voice before birth) but they are much better at categorisation (telling the difference between the broad categories of male and female rather than between individual speakers) by the time they are six months old. There is an interesting study suggesting they may even be able to tell male from female voices before they are born." (continues)

medium.com/@katieja/but-how-can-you-tell-7901324d0919

Completely agree with you. That's one of my biggest sadnesses about all of this. A tiny minority of people are really dysphoric, and need help and support and medical care. Most people just don't like gender roles and the intense pressure to fit within them. And telling girls, "you're not like other girls..." has a long, and sexist, history.