Sam Smith coming out as non-binary - help me understand!

[namechangeblah2019]

Name changed for this in case it gets messy.

I don't know if you've seen in the news but the singer Sam Smith came out as non-binary recently and has now asked that people use they/them pronouns with regard to them.

Absolutely not a problem with using those pronouns - I'm not a fan of theirs particularly so it's unlikely that they'll be cropping up that much in conversation anyway!

But - and I promise I am not being obtuse here, I am just old and slow but I am willing to learn - what exactly is non-binary? I just can't wrap my head around it. Surely the existence of non-binariness as a concept positions it as an alternative to an existing binary (i.e. men being macho and loving beer, women being all pink and girly and love wine) which I thought we all got over (or are meant to be getting over - sadly some people are very slow on the uptake!) anyway?

If I put on a pair of trousers or drink a pint or watch football I don't feel any less like a woman. I still feel like namechangeblah2019. How can you both refute the existence of a gender binary but also claim to be outside of it?

Please be kind to me - as I say I'm not implying they are wrong at all and if that is how they feel most comfortable being referred to then good on them and we should all respect that! I just want to learn as I currently feel like a right old fogey

Why is there more focus on gender now than there was 50 years ago? I thought we had moved past the males had to be males and females had to be females. Aren't we all just people?!

We are being forced into ever smaller boxes labelled masculine and feminine

Really? When you compare today with 50 or 100 years ago I’d say the exact opposite is true.

My only problem with the whole non-binery concept is that they/them/their is plural and feels very dismissive to me.

Maybe they like that, but it feels insulting to me. My sex is female, that's how I was born so my pronouns are she/her, but I don't fit the stereotypical gender mold of female, but I would hate to be called they.

Sorry that's more opinion than fact.

"He has written a whole heap of contradictory statements."

What I found the most telling was that he said he was on the gay scene in Vauxhall for a bit but he found it all a bit violent and seedy and aggressive.

For people who have never been, Vauxhall is pretty hardcore, lots of drugs, dark rooms where men have sex with random men they can't even see etc.

From speaking to a lot of my gay friends, they often spent their 20s and 30s in these kinds of places and just being able to do all the usual 'meet up, go on a few dates, get into a relationship' stuff wasn't really available to them. Many of them have said that gay clubs are all meat markets, rather than a place to find any kind of meaningful connection.

It could be that guys like Sam Smith are just not into the whole hump and dump scene and are looking for actual romance but that that seems closed off to them. So they try to identify out of it. 'Oh I like romance and flowers and intimacy so I'm not actually a gay man but some kind of semi-woman.'

Although it's obviously great that being gay has become much more acceptable in the past few decades, the gay scene is not without its own issues. I know I wouldn't want to spend every weekend having sex with randoms who I never see again. It's not surprising that some/many men also don't want that.

Really? When you compare today with 50 or 100 years ago I’d say the exact opposite is true

Have a look at the children's clothes/magazines/toys sections next time you're out shopping. Gender sterotypes are pushed as absolutely standard.

What LiveIn said. He's had a rough time of it as a young gay man and rather than looking at, say, the gay scene in Vauxhall and thinking maybe there's something wrong with that scene has decided that there must be something wrong with him that he wasn't happy in it. So he's decided that he must be something other than a gay man, though he isn't really sure what, but he seems to think he'll figure it out as he goes along.

All this because society frowns on men wanting pretty clothes and club scenes that tend towards the meat market end of the scale are no fun at all for people who're a bit more sensitive and relationship oriented. It's a case of misidentifying where the problems lie, imo.

@MrsToddsShortcut

Thirty years ago, loads of people messed around with gender norms, because it was allowed

Excellent point, when I was a teenager, no one batted an eyelid at the New Romantics.
But plenty of people (men) have carried on wearing makeup, feminine clothes well into Middle Age: Eddie Izzard / Boy George / Grayson Perry.
I think the UK has been pretty open minded about how people choose to dress etc. But I guess this is all about the «labels»

"Gender sterotypes are pushed as absolutely standard."

First thing people say to me when I say I'm not finding out the sex of my baby: but what kind of clothes are you going to know what to buy!?!?!

But plenty of people (men) have carried on wearing makeup, feminine clothes well into Middle Age: Eddie Izzard / Boy George / Grayson Perry.

Eddie Izzard claims now that liking makeup & feminine clothes is evidence of his ‘girl genes’ and makes him part woman.

I had a lot of respect for him when he was a self-proclaimed man in a dress. Then he was transgressing gender by resisting the stereotypes. I despise him now he’s decided to reinforce them instead.

I think it's funny that Sam Smith said "some days I feel more Male and some days I feel more female but most of the time I feel neither!" Is that to make sure that Sam Smith doesn't have to give back Sam Smith's Best Male Artist award and will still be up for gender specific awards in the future?! And in the future Sam Smith wants a shot at BOTH awards?!
Sam Smith isn't fucking stupid is Sam Smith?! Except to think that "they/their/them" pronouns doesn't sound ridiculous and totally nobbish!

My nursery picture is a sea of brown and yellow - but the equivalent today will have pink and blue and spiderman and lol tshirts defining gender. When I was a goth, the boys wore more make up than me, and when I wasn't, they still did. I so very rarely see university students breaking gender clothes rules that when I see a boy in fishnets I want to hug him.

I think gender is ridiculously present in young people's lives in a way it wasn't for oldies like me.

And I utterly sympathise with not wanting to play that game. But my initial reaction to Sam Smith's announcement was sadness that you can't be any sort of man you want to be. Why are male and female such small restrictive boxes, and what a shame he isn't powerful enough to fuck it all up a bit.

I feel I need to add - I don't actually dislike SS for this, I just find it sad that people are having to be one or the other (very masculine or very feminine) in a world where we are trying to equalise everything and if you aren't one or the other, then you HAVE to label yourself as something and, like MrsTodd said, fit in a box for the sake of safety. He should be able to wear lipstick and high heels whilst having a beard and hairy legs if he wants... I certainly do if I don't pluck/shave regularly!
My 4yo DS loves to put my lipstick on and copy me - he now has his own lipstick (a lip balm!) and regularly puts it on and smacks and pouts his lips, as well as stealing my high heels to wobble around in to make us laugh, all with a dinosaur or car in one hand! Doesn't make him less boy and more girl - just makes him a human child growing into an adult who hopefully will continue to be comfortable in his own skin. If he is gay or straight or bisexual (I am bisexual but settled with a man because I fell in love with him, not because he has a penis...) then as long as he is happy I couldn't care less. Non-binary sounds more like a category for the scared and confused than an actual LGBT category! Plus I genuinely don't like that they can pick and choose to feel more Male one day and more female the next... especially when we have fought for so long for women's equal rights; to have a man say one day "oh I feel more female today so I am going to run in your race/have your award" etc just doesn't sit right with me. I'm sure not everyone is like this who identifies as non-binary, but SS has contradicted a lot of his own statements and by doing that has made a bit of a mockery of it all.
I'm pregnant, with a boy, and it scares me how confusing it is for children growing up in this age.
My son wanted his own baby when we told him about the baby in mummy's tummy. He goes everywhere with this doll we bought him - and the only thing I want to change is the looks we get and comments. Either they are "shouldn't he be playing with trucks?" (He does!!!!) or "I think it's so refreshing to see you allowing him to explore his feminine side" - NO, I'm just encouraging him to explore his loving, caring side!

It's simple - many non-binary people I know DO believe that gender is not binary, that most people exist on a spectrum of 'gender' the vast majority of which is socially constructed. However, when speaking and describing people, most of society still needs that binary in order to categorise people. The non-binary people that I know have therefore 'come out' as such not because they believe in binaries, but because they feel strongly enough about their own identity on that spectrum to want to avoid being incorrectly labelled as one binary or another. Again, this is just people I know, but their hope is that as this becomes more common and accepted, it will help stereotypes break down. I can't say whether that will happen.

Excellent post at 3.59 @MrsToddsShortcut. I've screen shotted that for future reading as I think it's a really clear way of describing it.

And to pp talking about how the new romantics just wore their lippy, so true and also girls/women generally had an awful lot more in the way of short hair styles when I was younger, now women seem to have to have long flowing locks with extensions everywhere because that's 'feminine'. Ditto the pillow lips.

There's a book that came out years ago called why men don't listen and women can't read maps (hated the title as I damn well can read maps) but it was a really interesting take on the way men and women's brains have evolved and in the middle of the book there was a test which scored you on the male female spectrum (I came up just on the side of female 😂). I don't think that book would be allowed now.

What a load of bollocks. The world has happily been full of men and women so why now does this generation want to be it/their/they/x/attracted to auras....,sorry but I really don’t get it.

It is simple - biologically you're either a man or a woman. Dress and present yourself how you like, but please move on from this attention seeking pronoun bs.

It's postmodernist bollocks, that's what it is.

How does one feel more female one day than on the previous day? All I can think of that's in any way relevant to my life as an actual female human is that when I have cramps I'm definitely aware of being female...pretty sure that's not what's happening on the days Sam thinks he feels more female though. I suspect that he means that he feels weepy or something equally sexist.

" The non-binary people that I know have therefore 'come out' as such not because they believe in binaries, but because they feel strongly enough about their own identity on that spectrum to want to avoid being incorrectly labelled as one binary or another"

How the fuck can you identify as being on a scale that you don't believe in?

What total self-serving bollocks.

If you don't believe in it, you're gender critical, but of course, we all know that that is horrible and terfy so they can't possibly be that.

And to pp talking about how the new romantics just wore their lippy, so true and also girls/women generally had an awful lot more in the way of short hair styles when I was younger, now women seem to have to have long flowing locks with extensions everywhere because that's 'feminine'.

This is particularly striking when it's little girls. When I was a kid half the girls I knew had short hair as toddlers or in primary school because it's practical and easy to manage and lots of kids hate having their hair brushed. Fast forward to 2019 and I can't even remember the last time I saw a little girl with short hair.

Theprodigal you are so right!

I don’t remember the last time I saw a short haired girl. In my kids’ current school? None. All the way up to age 18.

its the ravings of a self-absorbed, not v bright and troubled young man who's surrounded himself by the same.

impossible to take seriously- only we should take it seriously because these idiots are reinforcing damaging stereotypes every time they open their self absorbed, not v bright and troubled mouths.

cant call him 'he'? -my arse.

Well it got column inches, so it worked.

I believe gender encompasses the 'rules' and societal norms that are expected of individuals due to their sex.

I don't believe that any of us fully fit in to these so-called boxes of 'feminine' and 'masculine' even when people really want to.

Girls are allowed to be tomboys but but boys are not allowed to be in any way feminine. This leads us to age-old insults aimed at boys telling them not to run/throw/be like a girl. I'm sure most of us can think of others aimed at boys who are deemed to not be 'manly' enough.

I can totally understand not 'identifying' with the gendered expectations put on you due to your sex. I have never felt girly and I do not understand what it means to 'identify as a woman'.

However, this does not mean that therefore I must identify as a man or that I am not a woman. I've been female since before I was born and no matter what my personality is like, I can't change that.

I too feel very strongly that gendered expectations are bullshit. But I can't change my own reality, I can only learn to live with it.

I can't understand in any way how gender ideology is progressive, particularly for women. We've spent fucking years trying to get rid of the idea that our lady-brains mean that we can't handle the stuff that the men can. Why do we want to go back to this?