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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Non Binary / Gender Neutral

952 replies

MissBax · 17/05/2017 08:21

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...)

OP posts:
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SylviaPoe · 19/05/2017 15:45

The generation gap is more to do with events and cultural mindsets you have grown up in. Generation Z (the generation the current teens are in) are mostly not yet of university age and have had different cultural experiences. They've not been alive during a period where we were not 'at war with terrorism' for example, they're much more likely to have experienced poverty during childhood due to the financial crash than millennials, they are much less likely to have experienced stress/anxiety and be far more socially cautious.

Datun · 19/05/2017 15:46

loop

There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence to suggest that feminism becomes more important the older you get.

Many people say that, particularly at university, they felt on a level playing field in their 20s. But it changes as they move into motherhood, or an older body (ie 30+ I'm not talking very old here).

As your role changes, the way you are treated changes also.

I will link to another thread on the feminist boards which is permeated by women saying I didn't notice it. But life kicked in and they did a 180 turnaround.

It's really worth a read.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2925938-Do-you-notice-male-privilege-more-as-you-get-older

CricketRuntAndRashers · 19/05/2017 15:46

loop

No, I think asexuality is valid. I just don't think of it as a sexual orientation.

How does this make me "one of the gate-keeping people"?

Walkingtowork · 19/05/2017 15:47

Problem with anything beyond LGB is that it requires you to believe in/agree with the concept of gender. Many feminists say gender is a system of social stereotypes that limit everyone and harm women in particular.

Loops don't you think the world would be a better place without gender norms or stereotypes?

Loopsdefruits · 19/05/2017 15:48

sylvia cool, fair, then yeh, pretty much all the uni people are gonna be millennials then, as are a lot (maybe not most) of the teaching staff. Very few are radical feminists, and the specific subset of radical feminists that do not view trans women as women are not viewed favourably. Although most of the people I have come across at uni do identify as feminist, so it isn't that people don't agree with feminism as a whole.

Walkingtowork · 19/05/2017 15:48

Sorry, I guess asexuality should be there too, I just don't know much about it

SylviaPoe · 19/05/2017 15:49

'sylvia sexual has never referred to what sex a person is, just their sexual attraction, and gay referring to women is recent, otherwise lesbian wouldn't be required, you'd have GBA which would cover all your bases (same, different, none).'

That is literally what homosexual means. It is greek and means a person who is attracted to a person of the same sex just as sexual dimorphism refers to differences between sexes.

Homosexual can refer to either sexual or romantic attraction. Given that you have said you are only in your twenties, I'm pretty sure I know better than you what the word gay has been used to refer to in the time when I was working on gay rights and you were not born, because I was actually there!

Datun · 19/05/2017 15:51

And that's the other thing I don't get. Transwomen constantly say why am I lesser than a woman? Why do you think I am inferior?

It's not about being a lesser anything. An inferior anything. They are not women. But I don't think they are lesser because of that.

I don't know why they cling to an inferiority complex that no one but themselves perceives.

SylviaPoe · 19/05/2017 15:51

Loops, I teach in a university and have university age kids. You don't have to explain it to me like I am from a different universe.

Very few teaching staff are millennials. They're mostly gen x or baby boomers.

Loopsdefruits · 19/05/2017 15:52

Cricket so how does it differ, in your opinion, to a sexual orientation? Or is it just the 'absence' of one?

walking maybe? I don't feel especially bound by them though, so not sure if I'd change much about myself if there weren't the stereotypes.

Datun thank you :) that is of course possible, but I haven't exactly done things the most traditional way, I have been in employment, and then gone back to education. I definitely view feminism as important, but I don't see trans women as a threat to womanhood or women's spaces

CricketRuntAndRashers · 19/05/2017 15:55

loops
Because asexual and especially demisexual people are not necessarily homo or bisexual.

And because asexuality IS the absence of a sexual orientation.

JigglyTuff · 19/05/2017 15:55

I have friends who are transwomen believe it or not. I like them very much and have great sympathy for the mental anguish they have gone through (and are still going through to a large extent) but they aren't women.

Have you got any evidence for there being a trans 'gene' loops or is that just a feeling you have?

BlueSunGreenMoon · 19/05/2017 15:56

Although most of the people I have come across at uni do identify as feminist, so it isn't that people don't agree with feminism as a whole.

There are probably more people saying they are feminists because feminism has been watered down to commercialised, 'Everyday Feminism' version that doesn't really tackle female oppression. I'm a millennial too.

Loopsdefruits · 19/05/2017 15:57

sylvia sorry, that's cool, what do you teach? I honestly have only had a handful of older tutors, we mostly get grad students running seminars, and they're not much older than me. It seems that most undergrads get grad students as tutors where I am, might not be the case everywhere though.

walking that's ok! Not many people do, although it's getting better.

Walkingtowork · 19/05/2017 15:58

Thanks for answering Loops I value your input to this thread.

Can you see though, that many - if not most - women do at some point feel bound by the gender expectations on us?

No offence to your generation Grin but there doesn't appear to be much desire to look at things on a group level, just an individual one. Do you encounter many people who talk about 'men' as a group, and 'women'? Eg. men commit the vast majority of violent acts?

Sorry for the questions, but do you also find most people your age believe women are oppressed?

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog · 19/05/2017 15:58

Loop you asked the following question, which I'd like to have a go at answering: "do you guys see being a Terf as a good thing to be? Like, in my social circle it would be akin to being called a racist and not something you'd want to be thought of as."

Let me list some of the things I believe which would get me labelled as a TERF in online discussion (note - labelled as, not identifying myself as).

Believing biological sex to be to do with the real world (pace the usual issues in the philosophy of science to do with theory-laden observations, interpretation of models, awkward borderline cases and so forth) and believing gender to be a social construct (again, pace considerations such as accepting that social constructs can and often do have massive real-world implications, and that socially constructed is not the same as imaginary or unreal by any stretch of the imagination: money is a social construct and is arguably one of the most important features of everyday life).

Believing that biology matters in naming and explaining women's oppression. For example, some TRAs say that using the phrase "female genital mutilation" is wrong, because some of those girls might actually have come to identify as boys later on in life, and it should therefore be called "child genital mutilation". I am not prepared to back down from calling it female genital mutilation, because it is done to biological females because they are female, as a mechanism to control and co-opt their sexuality and reproductive potential within deeply patriarchal societies. There is no way I'm going to airbrush women out of the picture and remove all means to name and politicise and oppose sex-based oppression.

Ditto abortion - it's a women's rights issue, even if some transmen choose to have abortions. It's a women's rights issue because when you dig into the reasons the political right oppose abortion in the US, for example, and look into the views it goes hand-in-hand with (restricting women's access to family planning, abstinence only sex so-called education, leaving poor women who've had unplanned pregnancies to rot in poverty once the baby is born, despite all the rhetoric about how precious life is) again, you see it as sex-based (that is biological sex based) oppression driven by a desire to control women's sexuality and fertility and restrict their life chances.

Expressing these views in a lot of circles (typically the sort which unthinkingly equate being gender-critical and being racist) will get you labelled a TERF.

So I tend to view TERF not alongside "racist" or "homophobe", but alongside words like "shrill", "hysterical", "bitchy", "feisty", "ball-breaking", as yet another word in the lexicon of sex-specific insults intended to silence women and devalue their arguments without actually doing them the courtesy of engaging with them.

To that end, if someone calls me a TERF, on the basis of my having expressed views like those above, I'd say they were either (a) misogynists (which a lot of trans-rights activists are, going by their own words online), or (b) that neo-liberal, choicy-choice type of feminist-lite who carries around a huge amount of internalised misogyny or (c) valued being seen as liberal over actually engaging their brain.

SylviaPoe · 19/05/2017 15:59

I'm not going to say what I teach, because it might make it possible for people to work out who I am. Sorry.

Datun · 19/05/2017 16:02

loop

I definitely view feminism as important, but I don't see trans women as a threat to womanhood or women's spaces

No I can tell that you don't. Grin

I would suggest that was probably more to do with your personal experience of the transwomen you interact with, rather than looking at the ideology as a whole.

There is no doubt there is a dark underbelly to the ideology. And it is twofold.

Firstly a gynephilic transwoman will almost always have AGP. That is a direct threat to women as part of the fetish is all about violating boundaries.

Secondly, if you are including men in the class of women, the word woman is indefinable. If you can't define what a woman is, you can't identify the oppression she suffers.

I have seen transwomen completely bewildered by feminism, saying well just identify as a man! Job done. They truly don't get it.

It's really, really not about pronouns, drinking pints instead of glasses of wine, or baking.

It's about biology. All of it.

CricketRuntAndRashers · 19/05/2017 16:06

I think there are (often older) trans women who sexualize and fetishize being female in ways I find disturbing and hope they grow out of. I've had a couple unpleasant experiences myself with pretransition and early transition women who scared me with how sex-obsessed they were and how much they eroticized situations that should be normal, including subjecting me to eroticization I wasn't prepared for and didn't want. But I don't think the agp framework is useful in discussing them. I see them as women hopped up on testosterone with some very bad habits probably learned through a combination of repression and male socialization, and I hope that transition will help them get that out of their systems.

www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/3qssmh/why_are_some_trans_people_so_obsessed_with_agp/

Yes... Out of their systems... Whilst insisting on being in all female spaces. Hopped uo on testosterone and with bad habbits. How lovely.

Loopsdefruits · 19/05/2017 16:07

jiggly it's a fairly reasoned theory from my knowledge of how genes work, as well as assessing the (albeit insufficient) evidence from twin studies and how trans people have described their feelings. I am very aware that I may be wrong, and might be proved wrong in future as more research is done and we begin to understand more about the human genome. But it's much better as a theory than anything else I have come across.

Cricket Have you considered that it's important to acknowledge asexuality as an orientation in itself, as otherwise there's a lot of people who view it as a disorder, or a choice?

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog · 19/05/2017 16:13

Re. asexuality - again, I'd come back to the political consequences. Gay people had to fight for rights because without them, having sexual relationships (if male) was illegal, they were denied the right to marry, etc. Asexuality doesn't have those political implications. When I was young (many decades ago) it was accepted that some people simply weren't interested in having relationships, and that was fine. Why does it suddenly matter? In what ways are asexual people being oppressed simply in virtue of their being asexual? What would an asexual liberation movement be fighting against, and what would it be fighting for?

SylviaPoe · 19/05/2017 16:13

How can it be an orientation when you are not orientated towards anything?

CricketRuntAndRashers · 19/05/2017 16:19

loop

Yes, I have considered that.

But there are hardly any/no political consequences for asexuality. Neither for demisexuality, btw!

And for a long time the social consequences weren't compatible either.

And even nowadays... I can't think of a single country that hangs people for asexuality. Or throws them in jail.

Or a religion that actively preaches against asexuality.

CricketRuntAndRashers · 19/05/2017 16:19

*comparable. Not compatible

PencilsInSpace · 19/05/2017 16:20

Excellent post about TERF, M0stly.