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...)

I completely agree. And there is this insidious change where the word woman is not considered a biological description at all.

So you will hear quite regular people, who are not hard on one side or the other, say well of course they are not female, but they are women.

When the definition of woman is adult human female.

People are using the word woman to denote gender and female to denote sex. And the acceptance of this is quite common.

No, they don't. They are treated according to whether they are male or female..

I know it's moved on, what I meant was, people treat people according to their sex but they would treat a more 'feminine' woman differently to a more 'masculine' one. I wasn't clear.

Actually, not even sure it was me you were quoting. I think I said something about class. Sorry I can't find quoted post.

Everyone carry on....ignore me...

Datun I'm English living in Canada, and I don't think the changes are on anyone's radar really. Except for activists. Canadians are quite politically apathetic in my experience, and the federal/provincial system means that stuff happening in Ottawa (I'm in BC) can seem very far away.

I suspect that most feminists are more likely to be antigender than agender. I also think it's incorrect to say that gender has been decoupled from sex. Both are being willfully blurred and distorted, but for the majority of people gender is just another way to describe sex.

Thanks for clarifying nooka.

Because of the interest in C-16 amongst feminists and activists, one can easily imagine the whole world is abuzz. When in fact it really isn't.

And yes I agree, most people blur sex and gender. Gender is everywhere as another word for sex.

Yes, loads of people don't give these things a second thought and hardly ever meet anyone who is trans.

I certanily agree that you can be treated utterly different as a woman depending on what you are wearing and how you look - we will all have experienced that.

I'm astonished by how quickly and strongly the TRA ideology has spread and taken hold, and how much support women are giving to TIMs (Trans Identifying Men aka transwomen). A few years ago it wouldn't have been controversial for a woman to assert that women's spaces were exclusively for women. Last week I was expelled from a woman's society and blocked on Fb for saying that I don't believe that men can become women and referring to a man by 'he' - by a woman. That's what shocks me most, the support of this from women to the detriment of other women.

Indeed knitted.

I lost a couple of long time FB friends when I said that transwomen aren't women. I didn't say it "publically" either (as if I would be that stupid).

I didn't say it to be controversial either. I thought they would agree with me.

Right - sorry it's been such a late reply. Had dissertation to write and been a hectic gee weeks. I received an email from the uni to say they'd received mine, but yet to actually hear back about it and now it's quietened down for the summer don't know whether I will at all!
In other news, I went to watch a couple of choirs last night as part of a local arts festival. One of them was an all female youngish choir singing modern day song (they were very good). I really enjoyed watching them. When they finished one of them stepped up and said "if anyone identifies as female or gender queer (still don't know what this is) then feel free to join our choir."
Why bother being an all female choir then??? Either be all female, or for anyone!

MissBax

That's another odd one that is going to come smack up against biology. Men's voices are far deeper than women's. Is that not going to ruin the vibe?

Datun - weird right? I don't want to say the name of the choir but the name of them is all about being a female only choir! I went from clapping to just being sat there like

According to Buzzfeed, non-binary might become legally recognised in California.

"The proposed law would establish a third, nonbinary gender option on state-issued identity documents (driver’s licenses, ID cards, and birth certificates) for California’s 39 million residents. The whole state — not just a handful of its county courts — would recognize nonbinary citizens. And it would become easier for nonbinary people, bureaucratically, to obtain this recognition. It’s a fairly radical act — a state-sanctioned challenge of rigidly held beliefs about boys and girls and the space in between — and one expected to trickle down to other progressive states, and perhaps beyond."

www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/california-non-binary-gender-identity-recognition

Why would non-binary need to be on a drivers license, ID card or birth certificate. Given these 3 things simply make note of your sex. Are we now pretending that non-binary folk do not have a sex?

Goodness gracious so they're now proposing to replace sex on "state-issued identity documents" with gender?

If they include non-binary on the driving licence why not just remove the 'sex' altogether. I am guessing it was there to make it slightly harder to use another person's licence.

What does it mean to wake up feeling like a boy?

I wonder.

"But when it comes to my gender, I feel like it shifts all the time. I don’t necessarily want to use the words boy or girl, but those are the words that we have in our toolbox, so sometimes I feel like a boy when I wake up."

bust.com/feminism/192932-amandla-stenberg-sometimes-i-feel-like-a-boy-when-i-wake-up-sneak-peek-at-bust-s-june-july-2017-issue.html

It can only mean stuff relating to stereotypes imo.

As someone who has been involved with Cathedral choirs for years (and had 3 sons win music scholarships as trebles) this has been a debate for 50 years in English cathedrals. Boy trebles make a particular sound that girls don't and I write that as a mother also of two women with very good voices too who both sang at school too. Mixed choirs do not sound the same so some cathedrals have gone for a girls' and a boys' choir.

There are some lovely male countertenor voices out there but the sound is definitely different from a female voice of that range. However there are vast differences in singing voices between different too. All part of life's rich pattern. If you are putting together a choir of 2 or 3 voices per part then you need to get the sound just right depending on what you are after.

Wiki has this on countertenor male voices:
"Terminology

Particularly in the British choral tradition, the terms male soprano and male alto serve to identify men who rely on falsetto vocal production, rather than the modal voice, to sing in the soprano or alto vocal range. Elsewhere, the terms have less universal currency. Some authorities do accept them as descriptive of male falsettists, although this view is subject to controversy;[16] they would reserve the term "countertenor" for men who, like Russell Oberlin, achieve a soprano range voice with little or no falsetto, equating it with haute-contre and the Italian tenor altino.[17] Adherents to this view maintain that a countertenor will have unusually short vocal cords[6] and consequently a higher speaking voice and lower range and tessitura than their falsettist counterparts, perhaps from D3 to D5. Operatic vocal classification, on the other hand, prefers the terms "countertenor" and "sopranist" to "male soprano" and "male alto," and some scholars consider the latter two terms inaccurate owing to physiological differences between male and female vocal production.[2] The only known man who can claim to be a true male soprano by that definition is Michael Maniaci, whose modal voice falls in the soprano range, akin to a woman's, because his larynx did not develop fully in puberty.[18]"

I hadn't understood what non binary was until I read this.

www.feministcurrent.com/2016/08/10/coming-non-binary-throws-women-bus/

I just keep thinking I was so lucky to grow up when I did - I was a school teen around 89- 95. It was perfectly acceptable for me as a girl to wear dms, checked shirt and ripped jeans just like all the boys. We all did. I personally hated putting pics of pop stars in my wall. I listened to r4. I identified with Jennie Murray from an early age. (Non teen?) There was a lot I did that would probably be labelled as non binary today. I also hated my rosy cheeks (wanted to be more goth) and tiny stature just like most teens hate something about them selves. But all my similarities and quirks that made me the same and then different were just me. Later, I could celebrate and see the value in the difference as just me.

My main point is though that gender didn't hugely come into every thing as we knew we were equal.

Not sure if my point is coming across quite right - I don't understand why non binary has to exist if you know you don't have to conform to a stereotype and that's ok.

Actually, university messed me up as suddenly everyone judged you on your clothes etc.

I was a 1970s (late 70s) feminist - we had a language & a clear radical vision of what needed to change, and we had analytical tools for understanding the patriarchy. Then along came "post-feminism" - and ironic pink/girlie stuff.

Now people take those things seriously, and young women have swallowed all the "choice" neo-liberal guff.

I wore what I felt like wearing, and although I am heterosexual, but I didn't have to play the feminine gender role - in fact, men I knew back in the 70s & 80s would have been quite scornful of it.

We have gone backwards it seems to me, under the guise of being "progressive" about "gender non-binary." I grew up around a lot of gay men doing drag - "non-binary" is nothing special ...

I would really like to know where non-binary comes from. It is so messed up, pseudo scientific, trendy trash. But for women it plays into their need not to conform to gender stereotypes. In that sense it is poaching on the feminist fiekd but playing by the game keepers rules! (If that works!)

Yes you're right. I feel like I was doing that anyway but didn't need to define it (better to define yourself as an individual?) and am still a woman. As sex is different to gender!!!!!

Somebody at work earlier in the week pointed out if Sam Smith does not wish to be referred to as 'he' or 'she' then they should be be referred to as 'it' as 'they' is usually used as plural.
Would you say this is bigoted or do they have a point?