If you're non-binary...

Apologies to the OP for not answering your question but thought it'd be relevant to share Rebecca Reilly Cooper's excellent essay on nb identity, just in case anyone here hasn't yet come across it. A great exploration of many of the points made on this thread.

aeon.co/users/rebecca-reilly-cooper

I'd love to hear an nb response to it one day...

Sorry to hear this Annsishere 😞

I can actually see the idea that wearing clothes from the men's section and wanting to make people stop and think about how they converse with you (e.g. they/them pronouns) would make you feel different inside. More empowered to be "you" and challenge stereotypes etc. I can sort of see how it feels like it's for the good of society too, rather than selfish.

For me it comes to the simplicity of a) whether or not you believe in gender (identity) and b) the difference between sex and gender. I don't have a gender or a gender identity. For a long time I assumed I did, because it kind of made sense that my gender "aligned" with my sex.

If I did believe in gender identity, or have a gender (to accept that gender is a "thing" I'd have to believe in gender identity), from what I can work out from it all I'm assuming I'd be non-binary trans femme. Which I think means "looks pretty averagely female because of long hair but doesn't do much make-up, sometimes wears dresses , sometimes wears trousers, does some typically 'girlie' things like spas but also some typically 'boy' things like really hating shopping for clothes". Having said that, my lack of much make-up may rule me out of trans femme and edge me more towards demi-boi. I assume I'd need to think long and hard about which felt like the right fit. I'm also assuming I'd go by the pronouns she/they to reflect all this.

But I don't have a gender identity and I don't believe in gender. So I'm "just" a woman. And not even a cis woman, because I would only describe myself as that if I believed that gender exists. Perhaps it'd be nice to have a gender identity that described my personality in a more modern way.. but... sadly I'm a non-believer. So that just leaves my sex, which people can see when they look at me - even when I'm wearing trousers.

It could have just been my mental state at the time. I cut my hair really short, wore all black tracksuits, black beanie and rugged boots for a while. I felt less like a woman and people did mistake me for a man. But I was having serious mental health issues.

I don't think this is necessarily true. I wear clothes from the men's section sometimes because I'm tall and I like sleeves to be long enough.

I can be wearing a men's jumper, men's rain jacket and men's trackies and my identity is no different in my gender-nonspecific/men's stuff compared to wearing female clothes. I just have warmer arms.

I think if you wear gender neutral or masculine clothes and hair it can make you feel different inside

I would love a nonbinary person who doesn't conform to the 'female gender stereotype' to list what the features of that stereotype are, so I can work out whether or not I'm nonbinary too.

I can rattle off a whole bunch of sex-based characteristics and experiences that make me feel like a woman but am a bit hazy on the gender identity stuff.

But they do.

We see time and time again on here when womens issues come up- words being changed, terms changing, the demand to use biological language.

If it is the case validation isnt needed, you cant have validation on one side but not the other.

I have my views on NB but that is by the by. To me, if someone wants to be called Katie instead of Katherine, that's the equivalent. Cool.

I dont find it selfish and boring. What I find selfish and boring is the insistence that 'I cant possibly them they because they means more than one.

I get the argument behind womens rights and the reason of women and all pf that. I might not agree with it all but I see it.

But I find refusal to use they just because someone wont change one word in a sentence entirely selfish. I'd take a Nb person who requests they over the faux confusion of but they means two anyday.

The question is whether you genuinely want to listen or want to (along with numerous other posters) pick apart each point. It's a question of listening not just hearing, even if you disagree

*advance the rights of women

I think I might see what @HejLittleAppleBlossom may be getting at.

NB is a concept which is being co-constructed and re-constructed all the time. This gives a space in the discourse to talk about sex and sex stereotypes and gender and so on. This process may or may not lead to a general consensus as to what particulat words mean, and what such words imply.

If my interpretation is correct, then they are proposing a kind of non-judgmental dialogue. Which is fine by me.

I wonder if the difference being discussed here is partly generational? When I were a girl young woman, we had consciousness raising groups for women, and also workers' co-ops, which were basically vehicles for deciding how we could advance of women, and how work might be organised in a fairer way.

This was in the mid to late 1970's. Everyone involved was under 30, most with partners and young children (and in those days we all knew that "you can't trust anyone over 30")

For these people as they see it gender identity doesn't come from anything, it can't be reduced to anything. They just are non-binary and any attempt to explain that in terms of anything else is ultimately meaningless.

This isn't very convincing if you think about it (even things which are axiomatically true have consequences for other things, so being non-binary ought to affect things in the world beyond superficial linguistic categories), but I genuinely think this is how a lot of them see it.

”.. perhaps it's unreasonable of me to ask people to validate me as nonbinary”

Yes, yes it is. Nobody owes you validation.

I too don’t get non binary. I understand not signing up to gender stereotypes, I thought that’s what it was all about in the 90s? But how does that make anyone anything other than just uniquely themselves?

I find all this self identity stuff so bloody selfish and boring.

Well, quite.

This is why I see declaring a non-binary identity (particularly when done by a woman) as cowardly, selfish and stupid

Cowardly because it is an attempt to opt out of a problem rather than confronting it.

Selfish because it recognises the adverse effects of gender and sterotypes on everyone (especially women), but attempts a personal escape rather than fighting to improve society as whole for the benefit of all.

And stupid because it doesn't work. As shown by the marathon fiasco. The physical and social barriers are still there, and pretending they don't apply to you doesn't make them go away.

That’s one of the points I’m trying to make - I don’t think anybody understands NB and the way it, as a concept, will find a place within current societal norms…. all we can do is posit ideas, share experiences and share the ways in which we currently understand it….there isn’t a definitive answer to be found, and nor is there, presently, a concensus understanding in society I don’t think.

Calling my answer word salad is quite unkind. I think it’s an interesting discussion, but a discussion becomes a not very constructive argument when people start mud slinging. I think my answers are clear, if they aren’t clear to you then okay.

Can you - can anyone - give any real, concrete examples of how life, treatment, whatever, is actually affected by deciding that you're non-binary?

I can give two examples. One is someone I know who since identifying as non binary suffers from misgendering and this makes them both sad and angry.

The other is one of the marathons where they have a category for non binary runners and an AFAB non binary person suggested they split the non binary into male and female categories to make it more fair.

Oh, now of course it's undefinable. Of course it is. I shall learn to negotiate and engage with it by giving it as much consideration as it deserves, which is.... undefinable!

@HejLittleAppleBlossom I almost don't see the point of responding given that you think I'm deliberately misunderstanding you. Your comment is word salad. Your response is more of the same.

So, by explicitly telling people that you are non-binary, you somehow make it possible for people to consider how they usually treat women and to challenge existing norms? How? How does that that open up new patterns of communication and behaviour? Other than stumbling over how to use they/them so as not to offend the person demanding you defer to their special identity.

Not necessarily I don’t think…. maybe some do, maybe some don’t, but equally don’t want to identify as NB, maybe some don’t give a shit at all, maybe some choose to react against negative treatment of women in other ways… I can’t believe there is one single essential way of understanding NB - it’s relative widespreadness today is something that everyone in society is learning to negotiate and engage with - just the same as happens with male and female gender identities all the time….but just now NB is foregrounded in the public domain so there are a lot of questions to be asked. But as I say, i find it highly unlikely, in fact impossible, that there is one sole ‘answer’ to be found.

Then NB is regressive in the suggestion that women who do 'align with a female gender' do want to be associated with all the female stereotypes.

Claiming a NB identity is an attempt to send a signal to others that one doesn't wish to associate with sex stereotypes.

The tricky bit is to how much of a degree we are actually able to compel or control how others respond to us.

Polite people may respect our pronouns.

But we remain dichotomously sexed mammals.

I don’t think NB always means saying you are not biologically female / male. It is about a different way of relating to the societal discourses about gender. I think you’re deliberately misinterpreting what I’m saying about aligning with the dominant binary gender identities - of course no woman is actively signing up to be treated like shit. By ‘making a space where there are options to be treated in new ways’, I mean that by presenting as NB, all concerned are given occasion to consider how they interact with a person - what they say, and how. What they don’t say, and why. It opens up for new patterns of communication, of behaviour. Of ways of being that challenge existing norms.

"I think that while being female does by no means mean that you accept all the shit women get in this life, it is nonetheless an active alignment with the gender. NB is, I think, more like an active disalignment with the gender identity - making a space where there are options to be treated in new ways."

I find this infuriating. Being female is just a fact about my existence that cannot ever change. It just is. It is not a bloody "active alignment" with a gender identity. And what in goodness name does "making a space where there are options to be treated in new ways" mean?? Do you mean that it forces people who are entrenched in stereotypes to drop them, but only for female people who claim a non-binary identity?! Not for the rest of the stupid women who "actively align" with the shit thrown at them?

On the point about women saying they’re non-binary to escape sexism, there was a non-binary category at the New York Marathon 2022 and surprise surprise all non-binary prizes were won by males. This led to complaints by some and the suggestion that there should be two categories for Female non-binary and male non binary and thus creating a binary 😅
The point I’m making is it’s futile to do so and doesn’t actually remove sexism.