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...)

But by choosing not to identify as a gender you are rejecting gender.

But if you choose to identify with something that you don't believe exists, where does that end?

Do we have to have words for not identifying as a unicorn, dragon, fairy?

Gender roles exist. But gender as an internal essence, doesn't.

It can't.

Because not everyone feels it. In which case it cannot be inborn or innate.

People think what would happen if I woke up tomorrow as a man. I would be devastated. But if your life up until then had been eradicated, and replaced with the life of a man, you would just feel like you.

Excellent posts, by the way from everyone especially pencils and Tabasco.

But if you choose to identify with something that you don't believe exists, where does that end?

Do we have to have words for not identifying as a unicorn, dragon, fairy?

This! And if we are forced to frame the debate in these terms, nothing sensible can be said.

*But if you choose to identify with something that you don't believe exists, where does that end?

Do we have to have words for not identifying as a unicorn, dragon, fairy? *

How is it identifying with something you don't believe exists?
Agender is the opposite to identifying as a gender, it's opting out of gender, refusing to be labelled with a gender. It's more like refusing to be labelled as a mythical creature at all.

Choosing not to identify as a gender' is interesting wording. Do you think people choose to identify (or not) as a gender?

I don't think choice comes into it in this case. I don't have a gender identity. Agender means (literally) no gender. So agender is more of a description than a choice.

Anyway, gender critical feminists are not allowed to say they are agender.

I think that if you base your doctrine on feelings you can't then say that only your feelings are allowed.

But again, it comes down to your definition of gender. If you think it is an 'internal essence', then you can dispense with the concept. You don't have to identify out of the concept. For you, the concept doesn't exist. You can't refuse to identify with something you don't think exists.

If you think it is roles that are ascribed to a sex, or imposed on a sex then, and only then do you have something to reject. So by rejecting it you are acknowledging its existence.

Personally, I think gender roles exist, and I reject them. I do not think that a gender is an internal sense of something. So I do not accept that I'm rejecting an internal sense of something.

You can't refuse to identify with something you don't think exists.

I see it as similar to class. I can refuse to identify as a certain class.

I don't agree with the concept but other people have strong class identities.

You can't pick a class identity though - we would all (possibly) identify as members of the aristocracy in the case.

The main thing is, for me, the way the way the word gender has shifted.

Initially it was all about the way someone presented. Until feminists objected to an image being equated with womanhood.

So then it began to mean an inner essence.

Despite realising they are trans when they are 45.

Then it came to mean an inner essence they are born with and had to ignore.

Now it's on inner essence that they were aware of since birth, and were therefore socialised as female.

Which led to the fact that biology is meaningless and only the inner essence determines whether you are a man or a woman.

Which erases women.

And erases male entitlement.

Which of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with erasing women, right?

Youmayverywell

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/23/fluid-gender-policeman/

"“Abi is a part of me that exists and I want that part to be recognised and validated. “But I’m still me. I’m still the same person whether I’m presenting as Callum or Abi. It’s the same dice. You’re just looking at a different number.”

Maybe Callum's colleagues don't want to validate his fantasy.

Callum should know that masculinity and Femininity are in no way the same as male and female. They should really teach the distinction in schools.

Would anyone be interested in setting up a new political party with genuinely feminist ideas? We could start with two campaigns: to highlight and educate people about the difference between gender and sex, and to bring about the nordic model of prostitution in the UK (thereby encouraging a cultural shift away from misogyny)

user1487175389

Have you seen this thread?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2907672-the-gender-critical-manifesto

Callum, who had been a male male police officer for 13 years, told the Sun: “The first time I walked into a Met building as Abi, I was hyperventilating so much I almost passed out. “I’ve done it a handful of times since and felt so happy that I got to be me at work.

Gender fluidity? Or autogynephilia?

You can't pick a class identity though - we would all (possibly) identify as members of the aristocracy in the case.

You can pick a class identity, that doesn't mean you will be perceived as that class but nothing to stop you identifying as such, because class isn't a tangible thing.

Aristocracy may be the exception because there is something tangible behind it - bloodline.

The main thing is, for me, the way the way the word gender has shifted.

Yes! And continues to shift. And yet continues to be conflated with biological sex at the same time.

You can pick a class identity, that doesn't mean you will be perceived as that class but nothing to stop you identifying as such

Then it's completely meaningless isn't it? Nobody gives a shit how you identify in the privacy of your own head, whether class, race, sex or gender, otherkin, plantkin or alien from the planet Zog. Identifying as something doesn't mean you are that thing.

Today I identify as a lovely big weeping willow tree. I won't be perceived as a willow tree but there's nothing to stop me identifying as one. I'm so happy.

We are creating laws around this shit! Does that not alarm you?

Then it's completely meaningless isn't it?

Yes in reality. But you can't police how people identify, it's a personal feeling. It's clearly not meaningless to them.
You can identify as a feminist but it won't necessarily change how you are treated compared to a man. Does that make it meaningless?

We are creating laws around this shit! Does that not alarm you?

Of course. I don't believe laws should be made on feelings.

We are creating laws around this shit! Does that not alarm you?

Well exactly. You can empathise, sympathise, include and even enjoy someone's personal identity. You can't legislate around it. You can't afford it special rights.

Because it's entirely subjective!

Take Callum, the police officer in the link above.

I don't know whether he is an autogynephile or not. But let's take someone who is, who is in his position.

Paying special attention to gender identity and forming any kind of legislation around it, will mean he has a state sanctioned free pass to practice a fetish at work. Including using the women's toilets to enhance it.

Transgender now includes transvestites and fetishist cross dresses. Any official definition will include these.

And they are becoming embedded as a right within the law.

And people are saying, well what's the harm? What does it matter?

Sorry, posted too soon.

I don't want to think there is a possibility that someone is getting an erection purely by presenting as a woman, and having me accept him as such.

But what I really, really don't want is for him to have a legal right to do that.

I know, that the right to present as a woman does not specifically say, one with a fetish. But as no one can tell, it may as well.

You can identify as a feminist but it won't necessarily change how you are treated compared to a man. Does that make it meaningless?

'Feminist' doesn't mean 'a woman who is treated comparably to a man' (if only!)

'Feminist' (radical version) means 'someone who seeks to end the sex-based oppression of women' or (liberal version) 'someone who seeks women's equality with men'. You don't need to 'identify' as a feminist to fall into either of those categories, you just are one if you do.

OTOH there are loads of people who 'identify' as feminist, seemingly without giving much of a shit about women at all, and yes, that is meaningless. It's annoying too, because they're the type of people who tell us we are 'giving feminism a bad name' for saying things men might not like and that it's our fault nobody wants to 'identify' as a feminist.

You don't need to 'identify' as a feminist to fall into either of those categories, you just are one if you do.

Which is what I am saying about agender. You don't need to identify as agender, you just are agender if you don't have a gender identity.

Gender is different though. Because it has no definition.

'Gender identity' are the two words that are always used.

You are identifying with a different gender. An inner sense. But gender itself can't be defined.

The question asked is, when you say your gender, what do you mean? When you have that inner monologue with yourself and you identify the thing that you think you are, what is that thing.

So, say the answer is 'a woman'.

What, exactly, is it about a woman that you think you are?

There is no answer. There can't be. Because a woman is not a walking set of stereotypes. The only thing that makes a woman different to a man is her genitalia/biology. A man can't identify with a woman's genitalia/biology. He can't say that is what I am.

He can't say I am a male person with a female set of genitals.

So saying gender is an inner sense of something, completely falls apart when you asked what that inner sense is.

Except that is exactly What transwomen do say.

I am a man with a female set of genitals that look exactly like, and function in exactly the same way, as a man's does.

And not only have people accepted this, they are creating laws around it.

And guess what, the word gender is never defined in those laws. Only gender identity.

Haha this is tying my brain in knots!

The difference as I see it is that feminism is a real thing. Even people who don't agree with it would recognise there was a political or social movement called Feminism and could point to evidence like meetings, demos, texts, campaigns, grass roots orgs etc.

Gender (in the identity sense) is not a real thing, it's a feeling some people have that is totally subjective and is indistinguishable from personality. I don't think it's possible to say you are agender without implying that gender identity is a real thing. Maybe that was possible in the past - you could maybe say you were agender to mean you rejected gender roles and stereotypes - but that's simply not how the word is used these days. You might mean that, but what people would think you meant is that you just so happened, personally, to not have a gender identity, with the implication that it's totally fine and reasonable that other people would have one.

As Datun says, gender itself is never defined in 'gender identity', so we're just left with a load of empty, circular definitions and have lost the language we need to critique gender (in the roles and stereotypes sense).

And, because gender is no longer thought of as something out there in society which is done to us, but as a core part of a person's identity, it becomes a very fraught discussion if we try to critique it. I can absolutely see why, if a person believes they have a gender identity and it's an essential aspect of their self, they would get defensive, angry and lash out when gender is examined critically. They would take such criticism personally.

The trouble is, gender still needs dismantling. So here we are. I'm coming round to Sheila Jeffreys' idea that we should stop talking about gender altogether and talk about sex roles instead.

I've really enjoyed this discussion, I can't think of another AIBU that has made me think so much.

Me too, pencils.

More knot tying...

This is from Gendertrender's analysis of the Canadian bill.

“Gender” itself is not defined by Bill C-16. Therefore “Gender Identity” is each person’s internal and individual experience of a legally undefined quality*.

“Gender Identity” is legally recognized on the basis that an individual proclaims that they have the feelings of having such an identity.

“Gender Identity” would override legal recognition of, and protections based on, “Sex”.

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/testimony-on-canadian-bill-c-16-gender-identity/#comments

I can't get my head around how so many people, including legislators who are usually shit hot on precision and having the exact wording of laws nailed down tight, cannot see the GLARING FLAW in this. It's tying our brains in knots because it is fucking insane.

C-16 is very similar to Miller's failed bill isn't it?

I was reading a book on metaethics today and it was discussing the meaning of "good". It got me thinking about definitions (of words) and what makes something a true definition and I was thinking about gender identity having a circular definition. That's what got me searching online. This is only a wikipedia link but have a look at the Fallacies of Definition section. 'Gender identity' ticks more than one box.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition

(Sorry for all the repetition of the word 'definition'!)