Non Binary / Gender Neutral

[MissBax]

Okay so I know this may spark some serious debate. I just want to say that I really don't want to offend ANYONE, however AIBU to say that the whole non Binary trend (for want of a better word) is getting abit out of hand??
If someone was born a man and chooses to transition to a woman or vice versa I understand that, but to say you don't identify as having a gender... I just don't understand it?! I am female but have never been girly - I didn't have dolls, I despise pink, and I always played football with the guys, climbed trees and was very sporty. But I'm still a girl. I know boys who didn't necessarily like "boyish" things but they're still boys. Any girl or boy can like anything they like.
Now we have "non binary" people who SAY they don't identify as one gender or the other, yet some of them are born female, wear make up and dresses. So following typically "girly" or "feminine" characteristics. Or those who have a sex change and THEN say they're non binary?! So then why have the sex change?!
AIBU to think this is just another way to ruffle people's feathers and possibly attention seeking?
(I wait in anticipation for being called ignorant and a biggot etc...)

There is however a concurrence of trans IDing in twins that suggests it is more than just coincidental.

Loops, without being picky, you acknowledged upthread that more research is needed here.

Defining things becomes a little pointless when the language we are using doesn't accurately explain a large proportion of real people's lived reality.

I think that definitions really, really matter. Especially where legislation is concerned. It worries me that sex and gender have become conflated.

I personally rather wish they'd just do these things as women and expand the "societal box".
Cricket YY.

Loops

Yes, Ash is cool. Ash and Grace are an adorable couple.

But I don't agree with many of the things Ash or most guests tend to say.
"So, gender queer is anything that doesn't fall into the traditional gender roles or non-binary."

Yes, which is imo an issue. Because being an independent person with a personality imo immediately means that one doesn't always fall into the traditional gender roles.

By claiming that a person not doing that is actually not a man or a woman only enforces often harmful gender stereoytpes!

It's not always about doing anything horrible though - for me it's more about being comfortable. The odd time i go into a women's communal loo and there is a male cleaner or worker - i just feel instantly a bit odd, might even want to go elsewhere. I'm not even that public loo phobic like some who find weeing next to folk really uncomfortable. no 2s - traumatic and i know folk that will only poo at home. Sorry for lowering the tone 😬

I managed a few minutes of the video. Not feeling "entirely" female (I suspect they mean feminine?) is surely a day to day occurrence for almost all women. From the video definitions I find I am gender queer and a demi-girl. I am in fact a woman who is a feminist and rejects stereotypical roles for women (and men). THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE TO THIS! It's not like someone hating their body and wanting hormones and an operation to change that. It's people coming up with trendy labels to describe the state of being male or female. To compare this (as is done in the video) to finding out you are lesbian or gay in an insult.

bambam Nah, I get it, I prefer to poo at home lol I also do see what you mean, it used to make me feel uncomfortable too. But they're cleaning the ladies loos, they're an assumption that there will be ladies in there going to the loo. Do you think men feel uncomfortable if a woman is cleaning their loos? Is the 'odd' thing you're feeling some sort of embarrassment about it, cause again that's fairly norma. But aside from menstruation, we pee and poo the same as guys do. It's no weirder than peeing next to another woman. I do prefer single room toilets though, the gaps in doors are rubbish (and in the US I don't know why they bother having doors when the gaps on all sides are so big).

Cricket they are SO cute :D but yeh, you don't have to agree with everything they say, but they are somewhat better to question about it/listen to than a cis woman who has always felt comfortable IDing as a woman.

Also are there really children being meaningfully raised as gender neutral in a way that can be used to study if gender is a real innate thing and not just your sense of self in a heavily stereotyped male/female world

Find me a 'cis woman who has always felt comfortable ID-ing as a woman' then.

I know plenty of people who just ARE women, some who have never given it a thought, but none who deliberately express themselves as 'cis and totally comfortable with that'.

Iggi there are days you don't feel like a woman? I don't have days where I don't feel like a woman, regardless of how I am presenting at the time. I went through my teen years in baggy t-shirts and jeans, hated dresses or skirts, and now I am a huge fan of baggy sack jumpers and fairly 'masculine' cut jeans and dungarees...still feel like a woman, still know I am a woman, still ID as entirely female, and it had nothing to do with the fact that I have a vagina.

Lancelottie I meant me lol so yeh, I am a cis woman (I ID as a woman and have female reproductive parts), I am very comfortable IDing as cis, because I am cis (cis is not an identity, it's a descriptor).

Cricket they are SO cute :D but yeh, you don't have to agree with everything they say, but they are somewhat better to question about it/listen to than a cis woman who has always felt comfortable IDing as a woman.

I'm not cis. Now you have to take listen to me instead :D

No, seriously, according to this video you posted I'm definitely genderqueer/gender non-comforming.

Plus, I simply reject the "cis" label.

"Do you think men feel uncomfortable if a woman is cleaning their loos? Is the 'odd' thing you're feeling some sort of embarrassment about it, cause again that's fairly norma. But aside from menstruation, we pee and poo the same as guys do. It's no weirder than peeing next to another woman."

But society has made it different. Women are shamed much more than males in regards to peeing and pooing (then there's how shamed and icky we are made to feel with menstruating) and fetishised. I go on a heavily male dominated forum. The way they talk about women. The number of threads about is it acceptable for hot girls to stink or shit etc. It's not an equal playing field when it comes to toilet habits.

Then there is the just feeling more vulnerable due to societies expectations and discriminations and the fact we are physically smaller and weaker.

And I'd have to ask men if they feel uncomfortable with a woman in their loo, answer might be interesting.

I object to "cis". Because I'm a woman, I don't identify (whatever that actually means) as anything else and I don't believe I should have to qualify that in any way.
Incorporating a "descriptor" to clarify that I am not actually male should not be necessary. Why can't transwomen describe themselves as transwomen, and let the term woman mean what it's always meant?

Bambambini
Reminds me of this:

There is however a concurrence of trans IDing in twins that suggests it is more than just coincidental.

Okay. So if it was an innate essence (or internal sense of identity), if one twin had it, the other one would have to have it. They have the same genetic make up. The fact that there is a coincidence amongst twins, only shores up the nurture argument, not the nature.

They would have been subjected to the same environmental circumstances. Outside influences would have played a part, and their individual experience may have been just different enough to make one of them trans and one of them not.

There may be be a neurological blip that provides a propensity for things like trans - e.g., general body dysmorphia, transablism, anorexia, otherkin, etc. So a possible proclivity for some kind of disassociative disorder, which requires circumstance to fulfil it.

You get plenty of effeminate men, and plenty of masculine women.

There have been brain scans, MRIs, all sorts of studies, which are still inconclusive.

So even if a man was found to have had something that made him more effeminate (whatever that is, I can't even think), he'd still be a man.

This idea that it is your brain that makes you one sex or the other and not your body doesn't hold water. Because it is your body, that gives you the lived experience of being that sex. Both in actual biological terms and the way the world treats you.

In terms of being non-binary, it's interesting, but I definitely think it's a social preference. You may not feel completely masculine or completely feminine but, hello, welcome to the human race.

Getting people to accommodate you in this, is something else.

People don't care. And the more you try to make it significant, the more they think you are driven by ego and self interest. And they go from not caring, to being annoyed.

It can only possibly be motivated by how you want other people to treat you. Otherwise you wouldn't need a label and a fanfare. You would just live it, irrespective.

They're this close to the idea of abolishing gender, but mess it all up by making it all about how they are treated, and not how they treat others. If they started a movement with they treated everyone else as genderless, then we'd be getting somewhere.

Loops

Do they really not feel like a woman or do they just not fully feel like the stereotype they have in their head (or what society expects) of what a woman should be like.

I also don't believe everyone who ids as NB really feels they are neither sex or gender but is just a new trend.

You can't want equality (or to work towards equality) if you also want to other a 'lesser' kind of woman. Cis was created so that all women (whether they are trans or not) are equal to each other, so that it's not just trans women who need the descriptor. Of course, women could just say they are women, and people could not assume that means that they were born biologically female, but that's probably not acceptable to you either.

Bambam I doubt that all NB people feel exactly the same, they're not a hive mind. You'd probably have to ask them what they mean when they express that they are NB, it may be a 'trend' but I can't really see what they benefit from making themselves 'different'. It's not like LGBT people have all this privilege

In the video they said someone might feel they were male when working out, and then female at another time while stroking kittens presumably when I'm doing the diy then I could say I identify as a man while doing that. This stuff is harmful to young people and I don't think we should feel forced into colluding with it.
And don't call us cis.

How do you, how does anyone, feel like a woman?

I didn't feel comfortable being a woman when I was in an abusive relationship where I couldn't physically stop my then boyfriend hitting me. I don't feel comfortable being a woman when I'm alone at night and in public. I don't feel comfortable being a woman when walking past building sites full of leering men. I certainly didn't feel comfortable as a woman when pregnant. I don't feel comfortable as a woman with PCOS - occasionally I don't feel quite female and very rarely feminine. I experience discomfort with being a woman on an almost daily basis.

I'm still a woman. Cos, y'know, vagina and that. I've never 'ID'd' as a woman, I just am one. I'm not and never will be cis because being a woman is not a position of privilege.

Women and trans women will do just fine. Men and women are equal but we don't need to call them the same word.

It's funny how often I hear "cis women" and how rarely I've ever heard "cis men".

They're not 'another kind of woman' Loops, they're transwomen. Women means adult human female. Transwomen are not adult human females.

Cricket - that youtube clip was truly awesome and makes it's point perfectly. I need to stash it for future use. Loved the 2 jerks, or the acting anyway. 😂

Today 14:04 JigglyTuff

"They're not 'another kind of woman' Loops, they're transwomen. Women means adult human female. Transwomen are not adult human females."

Why cant they just be another type of man?

Aargh!

The ONLY thing that makes me a woman is biology.

That is the ONLY thing I can't possibly share with someone male.

Sorry, but I CANNOT get my head round 'being as much of a woman as a woman even though not actually being a woman'.

I don't find someone a lesser human being for it, just less a woman.

I like words, and definitions, and science, and provability. I can prove I am a woman by dictionary definition, DNA, egg-bearing capacity and a whole raft of secondary characteristics. A male cannot.

"You can't want equality (or to work towards equality) if you also want to other a 'lesser' kind of woman. Cis was created so that all women (whether they are trans or not) are equal to each other, so that it's not just trans women who need the descriptor. Of course, women could just say they are women, and people could not assume that means that they were born biologically female, but that's probably not acceptable to you either."

I have a huge problem with your claims.