Another uncritical gender identity article in the journal Science

I don't agree either. I was a tomboy and no one minded or made life difficult for me because of it. I remember my headteacher when I was about 7, showing off an airfix kit I had made to the whole school and saying how great it was that a girl had done it (a male headteacher too). I got mistaken for a boy, but when people realised I wasn't they apologised and that was that.

I was a teenage in the 80s when gender non-conformity was everywhere in the public eye and was considered cool. I'm straight, but had short hair and didn't wear make-up - still got boyfriends.

There are still plenty of GNC people including feminine gay men, masculine lesbians and just people who resist or mix up stereotypes to a greater or lesser extent, normal people and famous people too.

I do agree that gender stereotypes have got worse and more polarised since the 80s, but it's absolutely not true that you have to adhere to them. Of course if you're raised in a very sexist household and put under pressure then it's harder, but people still break free.

I get so annoyed by this massive pretence that everyone who'd not trans is living in some kind of pink and blue binary gender world, they're not. Sex is binary, that's our bodies and what they do. The rest is personality and culture and everyone's different.

Oh yes, we don’t need definitions for any terms we use, that will so improve communication if we all just make up our own definitions for whatever we want to talk about. I decide that “sky-rats” are pigeons but you decide “sky-rats” are sea gulls. Now we can sit and argue about sky rats being grey or white, and whether they live in woods or by the sea all day long.

I stated misused that’s quite different from used.

I can see she thinks that, but in so doing she’s misunderstood what NB is. It’s ridiculous to criticise something you don’t understand and if you misuse the terminology, that just shows you know next to nothing about the subject.

Why on Earth do you think that NB means opting out of the binary of sex?

She thinks that, because that is how it is frequently used, as you acknowledge.

It's such a meaningless term which is used in so many different ways that I'm not that bothered how individuals want to use it.

Yes, in my experience people have misunderstood and misused the term NB and in so doing demonstrate that they have zero understanding of gender identities.

You can’t opt out of your sex and NB isn’t opting out of your sex. It’s opting out of the gender binary. NB isn’t not being “truthful about your sex” because NB refers to gender not sex.

IME people use it to mean a range of different things, definitely including that some people believe they don't have a sex, or that sex is just a "construct" and irrelevant. It's not a particularly logically coherent concept.

You can’t opt out of your sex and NB isn’t opting out of your sex. It’s opting out of the gender binary. NB isn’t not being “truthful about your sex” because NB refers to gender not sex.

Non-binary or genderqueer is an umbrella term for gender identities that are not solely male or female‍—identities that are outside the gender binary.

Why on Earth do you think that NB means opting out of the binary of sex? It doesn’t mean that at all.

"Being nonbinary means challenging the status quo every day."

I laughed out loud when I saw they made this the expose quote.

No, it doesn't. Being nonbinary means you stereotype and propagate the status quo of masculinity and femininity, and only proclaim that neither applies to you.

I don't agree. If non-binary provides a socially acceptable way of not adhering to stereotypes then it doesn't actually challenge them, does it? It merely side-steps them for people who "opt out" of their actual sex.

Actually challenging stereotypes is not following stereotypes whilst remaining truthful about your sex.

I can't believe we're still having to have this conversation, it feels as though some things, like pink birthday cards for girls, are more pervasive than they were years ago.

We didn’t have that before. If you were not gender conforming, you were socially excluded and stigmatised no matter what your reason was.

When I hit puberty I didn't shave my legs or underarms, didn't wear nail polish and didn't use makeup. Most of my friends didn't either. We had short hair, were focused on our school work or sports, had good senses of humour and quite liked boys in an abstract sort of way. Nobody socially excluded us or stigmatised us. We were part of the norm - some girls wore make up, some didn't, some were more interested in style, some weren't. The majority of girls in the late 70s early 80s where I grew up were like this. The stereotypes of what every teenage girl should look like are a fairly recent thing and the perfect precursor to this gender stuff.

"In my everyday life, my gender identity compels me to find unconventional solutions to difficult problems."

I really wish I could ask the writer to explain this further, because I can't make head or tail of what they might mean.

We didn’t have that before. If you were not gender conforming, you were socially excluded and stigmatised no matter what your reason was.

That's what the people doing it seem to think, at least. They seem to think they're living in 1955.

Or even earlier. Victorian times perhaps.

What sort of social stigma and exclusion do you think is experienced by gender non-conforming people who don't identify as non-binary today @Discovereads?

We didn’t have that before. If you were not gender conforming, you were socially excluded and stigmatised no matter what your reason was.

That's what the people doing it seem to think, at least. They seem to think they're living in 1955.

From the outside, really not buying this. I'm pretty certain they're more socially excluded and stigmatised by their claims to not be men or women.

I think the number of people who think they're idiots and try to avoid them as "hard work" is far higher than the number who would be bothered they were just dressing weird.

Although maybe this isn't true in their peer groups, who share the 1955-style gender ideas?

Regardless, we very much did have this before, even if they forgot it.

NB doesn't challenge stereotypes.

I think it does actually. Like it or not, agree with it or not, it is in fact a socially acceptable reason for men/women to not adhere to gender stereotypes, roles and expectations. We didn’t have that before. If you were not gender conforming, you were socially excluded and stigmatised no matter what your reason was. So I think it is a step in the right direction of breaking down gender.

NB doesn't challenge stereotypes. It seeks to absolve special individuals from the burden of stereotypes while leaving them in tact for those of us who aren't clever enough to utter the magic words "I identify as...". NB can only exist (in a philosophical sense, because it sure a shit isn't materially real) if the rest of us are and remain binary.

This x 100.

I thought science was supposed to be about objectivity, once you turn it into an ideology it's not science.
Not quite as infuriating as this one though.
gcn.ie/watch-quantum-physics-helped-understand-queer-identity/

parietal, the "if" here is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting! "If as a non binary person, they are challenging the gender stereotypes they grew up with, that's great."

NB doesn't challenge stereotypes. It seeks to absolve special individuals from the burden of stereotypes while leaving them in tact for those of us who aren't clever enough to utter the magic words "I identify as...". NB can only exist (in a philosophical sense, because it sure a shit isn't materially real) if the rest of us are and remain binary.

Challenging stereotypes would be "as a woman I can do [traditionally masculine thing]". NB says "I must not be a woman if I do [traditionally masculine thing].

Exhibit A: the much missed Magdalen Berns explains beautifully

As a kid I was what was then called a tomboy. As I grew up I always preferred the activities that were in those days associated with being male - cars, sports, mending stuff, drinking beer out of pint mugs etc.

When I was grown up I married, had a couple of kids, had grandkids, got widowed, still liked cars, sport, mending stuff, drinking beer out of pint mugs etc.

Am now in my eighth decade and have only just realised I was never a girl or a woman at all. I have always, apparently, been non-binary. Who knew?

FFS, there is nothing progressive about this trans, queer, non binary shit. It is totally regressive and part of the most old-fashioned gender strait jacket narcissistic bollox ever.

I am probably ranting because in this apparently anything goes non-binary age I have just totally failed to find a birthday card for my daughter that is not bloody pink. Non binary, my arse.

Thanks fit explaining. It would explain why I didn't get the reference. It never occurred to me to do any of those things. EVER.

Hey guys, we're gonna need to change the fundamental laws of the universe. That cool?

But my most frequent question, starting when I was about 5 years old, was why am I a girl? And for that, my parents had no answer. In fact, in the 1990s, in the foothills of the Appalachians, no one did. It was my first encounter with a question that has no simple answer.

I know that in the US those that live in the Appalachians are denigrated as backwards, inbred hillbillies but seriously? To imply that in the 1990s no one in the mere foothills even knew why some babies are girls and others are boys? The fictional Appalachian parents know the spot on Jupiter is a mega hurricane but they don’t know that when a sperm with chromosome X meets an egg, hey presto that’s why you’re a girl.

I started to read it but couldn't get to the end such boring drivel!

Boiledbeetle: I take “performing femininity” to mean the gender roles associated with being a woman. So when I hit puberty I felt compelled to perform femininity by shaving my underarms and legs, wearing makeup, painting my nails etc.