To think “non-binary” is becoming a fashion statement for some people rather than a true identity?

[ByPoliteExpert]

Not saying it’s not real but the aestheticisation of it is creeping in.

“Money and language are socially constructed but they’re real in terms of impact”

Right. So what would happen if we had people “identifying as millionaires” or “identifying as a speaker of lpejurhrvfjrj”
and expecting the rest of the world to go along with it? Give them mansions? Translate all their materials into their made up language?

Yes I agree with that. A bit like when everyone starts saying they are a bit ocd or a bit autistic it takes away from the genuine experience of being those things. It trivialises it.

But I don’t think I have a gender identity - I am just me. I sometimes wear make up, sometimes don’t. I sometimes wear masculine clothes, sometimes feminine clothes. Am I non-binary?

I will always be biologically a women though- nothing I can do to change that.

So... How does how you "feel" affect whether you have ovaries or testes? Do we have a feeling ascribed to those organs that determine our sex ?

If you're male your male, if you're female you're female. Nobody said you had to prance around in a tutu with red lipstick on and a frilly brolly because your body has ovaries ? This is utter fucking madness. I wish it'd stop. I cannot describe how regressive it all is.

I think we can safely say this posters child is female 🙄

So can my internal feeling also be in conflict with my colour or race or my physical being

can I identify as black or disabled because I feel it?

There used to be people who genuinely believed they were Napoleon. Non-binary isn't even that interesting. It's taking an experience most of us have - not being 100 percent stereotypically male or female - and trying to turn it into something cool and exotic. It's tedious. It's also quite sad that some people are mutilating themselves in the name of non-binary.

Well. If you play by the gender identity rules... Surely we must be able to !? It's no different is it ?

Performative? Gender woo? Never!!

Two of the three non-binary people I know are men. Really, really overtly male men who earn more than me, wear dresses and ‘cute knitwear’ and have fathered children and demand open relationships from their female partners so they can explore their bisexuality. It’s a label for something to be sure and perhaps it saves us from a new round of the woman-hating novels/plays of the 50s and 60s like Revolution Road and Look Back in Anger and I Married a Communist and all the rest of it. But it’s the reason why I find the phrase ‘women and non-binary people’ as in ‘women and non-binary people experience exclusion from power structures’ laughable. If non-binary means anything, it shouldn’t be linked directly to one sex. It’s just that it probably will continue to be so, because it is largely meaningless.

Genuine question though, to whom do they tell this, and why? My SIL once told me that her daughter would mostly likely identify as non-binary, and all I could think of was "so what?", because it's not as if I was ever going to refer to her by anything other than her name. I would hate to think people think of me in terms of being exclusively homosexual, or because I drive a small black car which is covered in cuts & bruises, or by anything else that could be associated with me. I'm just me.

I don’t understand the mutilating thing if they are non-binary. It is gender expression but got nothing to do with their biology surely? It doesn’t matter whether they have male or female biological parts if they don’t identify with either so why would removing bodily parts make you more non-binary than if you didn’t?

It’s a load of nonsense. We have 2 genders, simple as that.

Exactly. It's so needless. I think, in a lot of cases, it's a form of self-harm.

Unfortunately non binary women and girls are being encouraged to have double mastectomies, both sexs are encouraged to have nullification "bottom surgeries" and then theres also the option of penis preserving vaginoplasties.
So no not really safe as best binding is also encouraged for girls

Good point. I'm nearly 40. I don't want to age any further. I suppose my cis-age is 39 and my trans-age is 21. Maybe we can all adopt this ?

Furthermore, I wish I was olive skinned, and do go to Spain a lot : so my cis-ethnicity is white, but my trans-ethnicity is... We'll go 'south American/latino' (today anyway ) although I could be ethno-fluid depending how I internally feel on any given day and it's your job to make sure you don't "mis-ethno" me.

Height. I'm short. Cis-stature: 5ft
Trans-stature: 5 ft 7
........

What does feeling like a man or woman actually feel like though? I know you'll say it's a hard to describe internal feeling, but like I said upthread, I don't feel like a woman, I just am a woman.
How many others on this thread 'feel' like the sex that they were born with?

5ft 1” I wish I could identify as 6ft just when I need to reach a top shelf

I can only speak about my DC and this shouldn't be considered anything other than that.

I think it's relevant that my DC was diagnosed ASD age 3.

Age 13ish they we're in a really bad depression, CAMHS etc and started on antidepressants. When they started coming out of the worst of the depressive fog, they announced (at school) they were trans. School immediately affirmed, names pronouns and told us after the fact. DC had an EHCP and various professionals involved. The OT was pushing for Tavistock referrals, the school made noises about reporting us to SS as "safeguarding" as we weren't affirming. We did buy some skirts and leggings but said it was too fast and too soon to be changing names and pronouns.

DCs psychiatrist noted the identity stuff occurred at a point in their medication that was known to be a peak with suicide attempts. The psychiatrist explained how the medication can make some feel invincible and overwhelmed with feelings they haven't experienced before.

We didn't make a huge deal about anything just restated to DC it wasn't something to decide upon until they were at least 18. They didn't want the Tavistock referral as they hate talking about themselves. I'm aware that appears contrary when they've made statements about their gender identity, but I'll let MN feel victorious on that one 😅

Anyway DC went to a different setting for post-16. Kept in touch with their school friends (all autistic).
Around 17 DC told college and us they had been identifying as NB to their friends and told us the new name. We decided to affirm and we tick along nicely now.

DC is a gentle soul and really isn't an attention-seeking narcissist. They're very introverted and live very quietly.

We're at peace with it all so I'm unfazed by the vitriol on threads like these.

But I'm not a woman because I identify that way. I'm a woman because I was born with female reproductive organs.

I don't know how any one else feels in their womanhood because I don't live in their heads. I don't even know how I feel about my own womanhood. How is it separate to my being?

I genuinely don't understand.

Exactly- how do I know if I actually feel like a man? What if it turns out I have been feeling like a man all my life and not known it? I don’t know how other people feel like women so maybe my experience of feeling like a women is actually that of a man? I am actually confusing myself now! Maybe my whole life has been a lie

I think they like wearing pretty clothes and high heels and doing high pitched giggles : apparently that is synonymous with being born with XX chromosomes. "Progress" apparently.... 🤷

Doesn't your first paragraph equally relate to gender if you swap the terms?

I'd rather describe myself as an atheist if someone asks rather than tell people that the framework of religion is fabricated nonsense.

Religion is fabricated nonsense, and gender is fabricated nonsense. But I also can accept that other people completely disagree and can be any religion they want to be or any gender they want to be.

You can change either of these as often as you change your socks.

It's the conflation of gender with sex that's the big problem because you can no more change sex than you can species.

Unfortunately not because saying that you are a gender means you believe in the religion of gender ideology but that you just don't have a gender yourself, gender critical is the term for gender atheists well that or biological realists both of which means that your a big mean TERF

MeDepresso · Today 12:36

My 20 year old identifies as non-binary. They aren't doing so for attention nor because they think they're super special. But MN never fails to know better(!)

Are they doing it because they haven't realised that a person who doesn't either tick all the feminine stereotype boxes or all the male ones isn't actually a new, separate category of human? They are just a regular man or woman who (like almost all people) has a variety of aesthetic and lifstyle preferences, some of which are not total stereotypes for their sex.

Non-binary seems to be either defined as 'neither male nor female' (which is impossible) or 'having some preferences which aren't stereotypical for their sex' (which is true for almost everyone).