I’m thinking of applying for an opportunity on the basis of being non-binary

[Somerville1234]

Don’t want to say too much about the reward on offer - a work thing, with real kudos, let’s leave it there.

But... it’s only open to people who self-identify as transgender or non-binary (or a lot of other words which, having Googled, are synonyms for the same).

Some people don't identify with any gender is one of the descriptors of what non-binary means. And that’s true of me. I don’t identify as female, I just happen to have a female body. I do “present in a feminine way” though. And I’m straight, married, still breastfeeding...

But, I can apply, right? I’m nervous, but fucked off with myself for cowering behind the parapet for this long.

I DO know someone who applied for the police saying he was gay as they were not recruiting straight white males at the time.

He got in.

He would make a great copper, but he isn't gay and was freely telling his mates what he was doing and how he was lying.

You wouldn't be lying under Stonewall's own definition.

Stonewall, have done everything they can to game the system against women, I can't see why saying you are non-binary if you meet the definition of non-binary is something they have a leg to complain about.

She is unlikely to be suited to the opportunity if she finds the concept of others being non-binary annoying or laughable.

Ah - so in your definition, non binary means 'entirely lacking the ability to laugh at oneself', does it?

I have several gay male pals who spend most of their time taking the piss out of each other with regard to being gay. is that not allowed, either?

And without helping you along too much as you struggle to come up with a definition, I will say that pretty much everybody is non-binary, including myself.

I don't find others being non-binary to be laughable. I do however find it laughable that people feel the need to label it and shout about how it makes them oh-so-special when in reality they are just like 99% of people on the planet. Just get on with it FFS like everyone else does. If people didn't prattle on about their non-binary identity then nobody would even know that's what they were nor would they care.

Hmm...perhaps that is the problem here? Perhaps in order to be non-binary you need to make sure everyone knows that's exactly what you are?

Only condescend to catch it when it's precisely six inches off the floor, remember.

These asides are making me so happy today!

She is unlikely to be suited to the opportunity if she finds the concept of others being non-binary annoying or laughable.

Sorry what? OP is non-binary, I am non-binary - from what I've read, OP happily acknowledges that a great many people are non-binary - how on earth is she not suited?

Is she the wrong kind of non-binary? Is that you're problem with her? You seem to be the one suggesting that other people aren't non-binary, not OP at all.

I do however find it laughable that people feel the need to label it and shout about how it makes them oh-so-special when in reality they are just like 99% of people on the planet. Just get on with it FFS like everyone else does

I feel like this too and therefore would not apply for the opportunity. It wouldn't feel fair or right.

Stonewall, have done everything they can to game the system against women, I can't see why saying you are non-binary if you meet the definition of non-binary is something they have a leg to complain about.

Should we be subject to Stonewall's transtopia, I fully intend to declare myself a saggy-titted (™ Manchester Pride) transman. And I will claim any and all initiatives intended for marginalised chaps such as myself.

Or smirking at the oh so witty piss taking of non binary people?

You know what, I'm not amused at all by the issue. I've smiled at some of the humour on this thread, for sure, but I do that at jokes about all sorts of serious and important issues.

Having thought about it all day, I believe the only reason the organisation are publicising this reward for someone from this group of people is an attempt at woke virtue signalling. Because there are people who are trans, or who like to be called they, at every level of the organisation, including extremely senior positions.

If they really wanted to take positive action to reward the efforts of an employee from a group who has a record of low participation across the organisation (as they claim) then they should be encompassing BME members. Those with disabilities. Lone parents or those who are full-time carers of disabled or elderly relatives. All those groups are hideously under-represented. Lesbians are, to a lesser extent, in this organisation, though gay men certainly aren't.

Whether to put in a complaint about the above, or to apply for the opportunity, is what I need to decide. Either way, teading all this advice has helped me to feel confident, whenever necessary, to confirm that I am, indeed, non-binary, as per Stonewall's own definition:
An umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely.

The OP is non binary, with the exception of Mary Berry and Barbie, pretty much all females are non binary. Wittering about 'piss taking' and the 'non binary experience' is bullshit for this very reason. No one identifies with restrictive female stereotypes, what sane person would want to? The 1950s were almost 70 years ago.

The rule of self identity? Check. The concept of non binary? Check.

The only difference I can see is a failure on the OP's part to sit around worrying about being erased and literally violenced and creating a whole lot of angst about it on Tumblr. Seriously.

OP you are non binary, no one can argue that you're not, you're not piss taking and to suggest that these roles should be preserved in aspic for only the 'right kind' of non binary people is again about putting boring, ordinary women in a box and keeping them there so that there is something for the 'special' to define themselves against.

Fuck that.

It wouldn't feel fair or right.

To whom, FFS, to whom?

Pips Bunce getting an award meant for women - and accepting it.

Now that is taking the piss.

Just greedy. Maybe the Bunce didn't win any other awards.

Surprised they didn't pop on a school uniform and enter the school sports day Egg and spoon race.

Surprised they didn't pop on a school uniform and enter the school sports day Egg and spoon race.

Nah, that's more likely to be Stefonknee Wolscht.

Exactly Vicky.
Opportunities & protections that were fought for by women on a sex class basis are being either appropriate or eroded by anyone who says they feel like a woman.
So if people insist on protections being based on gender identity, then so be it.

Grrr... ‘appropriated’.

Pips Bunce getting an award meant for women - and accepting it

Or the other one in that awards list - Nikki take, was it? - who as far as I could gather from the interview in The Times 'transitioned' because it was good for business.

Are you rickety, grubby and rarely on time?

Oh god. All this time. I though I was a northern non binary bisexual non gender performing assigned female at birth grumpy middle aged demiboi.

Actually I’m just Transpennine .

Go for it, you are non binary according to all the available definitions, and if Pips Bunce, Nikki Take and Catlyn Jenner can win awards set aside for women then you certainly deserve a chance to win an award for your own particular flavour of non binary gender uniqueness.

I too am a fuck ton more non binary than that Molly person or any of those beardy twats on twitter currently laying claim to the term and lecturing cunty women on how to do feminism correctly. I feel very strongly that you would make a great representative for me and the majority of other non binary people who are like me.

I haven't shaved a body part since family pressure compelled me to mow the armpits for a wedding in 1983. All my (3 pairs) of shoes are flat and comfortable. I only wear make up around Christmas, when pantomime dame envy inspires me to smear putty over my eye brows and redecorate my face with neon eye make up and a set of long orange eye lashes complete with rhinestones and teensy feathers on the tips, rosy circles on my cheeks and a lipsticked cupids bow in order to wow my friends at parties and other festive occasions.

I own a full set of well used of power tools, now mostly gathering dust since I failed to identify out of my disability and lost the knack of balancing on stepladders or standing up again after a crouch. I completely lack the natural feminine penchant for cleaning cupboards, windows and toilets to sparkly glory, yet I regularly wear my tiara, wot I made myself from huge, purple, knobbly, baroque freshwater pearls threaded on silver wire and cunningly wrapped to fit the shape of my rather manly sized cranium.

Recently when faced with forms that demand my gender and fail to ask the sex I was assigned at birth, leaving me to choose betweeen either male or female, I always choose male. The least bad choice, considering that my gender, though non-binary, obviously leans more towards the masculine (what with the drag tendencies and blindness to toilet and window grime).

There's a couple of today's threads that are really interesting in the way they're exposing the obvious cracks in 'gender identity theory' in very basic ways.

This thread and the Sophie Walker one.

There seem to be some highly complex and 'policed' rules about who is allowed to throw off gender roles and stereotypes, and who isn't (aka women of a certain age probably aren't!)

There is someone replying to Sophie's tweets about non-binary who says just to clarify I am non-binary, but as someone assigned female at birth I am subject to the same oppressions. People only know I’m non-binary if I tell them, so I’m seen as a women 99% of the time. This is why intersectionality is vital

They then link to a Diva article that they believe defines non-binary well:
As with categories like lesbian or bisexual, non-binary covers a vast range of experiences, which may have little in common. Some people incorporate elements of masculinity and femininity (bigender). Others regard themselves as between genders, having a third gender, not having a gender at all, or shifting gender over time (gender fluid). Some recognise multiple genders (pangender) or explicitly want to challenge the binary (genderqueer or genderfuck). Of the people DIVA spoke to, one was androgynous, another genderqueer, and a third non-gendered.

Language is important here because so many of our words are gendered. Many non-binary people have embraced the – perfectly grammatical – pronoun they (rather than he/she), and some have developed alternative pronouns (like zie, per or hir)
(So basically. very similar to lots of women's experiences here, just we haven't chosen to adopt another label or different pronouns - and therefore we're not 'allowed' to be anything other than 'cis'!)

And another reply on Sophie's tweet thread:
Rejection of gender role &/ stereotypes does not necessitate the rejection of people's actual gender, nor does it make you non-binary in a trans-inclusive model or world view. It just means you reject those things. Please consider this, because that is the way of thinking

I suspect, from the last tweeter's point of view given they're presenting as a transwoman, it's challenging if women are rejecting gender roles/stereotypes because we're jumping out of an imposed box that they're trying to jump into.

Break the box of gender stereotypes and you can't inhabit the box named 'stereotypical woman'.

It seems we've time-travelled back to the '70s, just with more label-hurdles to jump over to get out of the stereotype maze.

OP you have always seemed a good egg. I’m GC and get where you are coming from and why this is very tempting. I would also though just also weigh up any negative career consequences for you. I suspect if I did this in my organisation and particularly if I got it, there would be some senior management who would be seething with me and feel that I had made them look the fool. I don’t know what sort of organisation you work in but in mine progression from my level (quite senior but below top exec level) requires both active sponsorship but also nobody blackballing you. Now that might not be the case with you or you may feel it is worth the risk but I would just bear it in mind in the calculation so you go in eyes open b

Private Eye

This seems like a good time to mention this case, brought by a non-binary person who wanted the option of X in their passport instead of male/female:

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2018/1530.html

There are some interesting passages, for example paragraphs 69-70 from Kate O'Neil, the Deputy Director of the Social Policy and Equality Division in the Government Equalities Office:

Kate O'Neil explains that the GEO is responsible for delivering the Government's equality strategy and legislation, which now includes dealing with issues connected with sexual and gender identities. She states that the GEO recognises that sex and gender are two different characteristics, the former being biologically determined, whilst the latter is a social construct, such that
"One's gender identity is one's innate sense of gender – which could be male, female, both, neither or fluid."
However, she recognises that the approach adopted by the GEO is not reflected in legislation, which does not define the terms sex and gender, and often uses the terms interchangeably. Moreover, no UK legislation currently contemplates a gender other than being either male or female.".

The judge himself says this at paragraph 99:

The most common and certainly well-known form of this latter type of incongruency has become known as transsexuality or transgenderism, where the individual's physical sexual characteristics oppose that of their psychological ones; for which medical assistance has been available for some time, and in respect of which there is now the ability to obtain full legal recognition under the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Although this has largely resolved the legal difficulties faced by this group, it is still based upon the binary concept of gender, with the individual becoming recognised as being either male or female, usually in accordance with their psychological gender identity.
However, what has not been resolved are the legal and social difficulties faced by another group or groups of individuals, namely those who, whatever their physical characteristics may be, psychologically consider themselves either both male and female, (either at one and the same time or fluctuating at different times), or, like the claimant, do not consider themselves either male or female. The former group may be considered to be "bi-gendered", whereas the latter group, and certainly the claimant, considers themselves to be "non-gendered".

The claimant lost that case; the court decided that the actual claim, which was limited to passports, should not be granted, partly because it would require such enormous changes, but also because the Government was in the process of reviewing the issue of non-binary people anyway, and should be left to get on with its review.

The judge then went on to say this at paragraph 151:
I have no doubt that the Government will have well in mind the range of factors which will be required to be considered in the course of that review, which one trusts are now better understood than they may have been at an earlier point in the history of the Government's consideration of them. In particular, a full understanding by all governmental departments, not just the GEO, will be required as to the clear distinction between the concepts of sex and gender. It will be necessary for the Government to consider to what extent if any, in an age of increasing social and legal awareness and acceptance of the importance of issues relating to diversity and equality, the recording of an individual's sex and/or gender in official and other documentation is justified. The range and nature of the documentation which may be affected will be required to be understood, including whether its purpose is to record historical or current information. It will also be necessary to consider the extent to which other identities both within and beyond the binary concept of gender are to be recognised, and if so, whether they are to be self-determined or are to be objectively evidenced. Undoubtedly this will also require a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the full extent of legislation in which individuals' rights and responsibilities are affected by and may be dependent upon sex and/or gender.

Were you originally equipped with a willy or vagina? = man or woman (relevant)

Do you like pink/frills/sparkles/dollies or action man/blue/soldiers? = girly or boyish (irrelevant)

Do you fancy the same, opposite or both sex as a sexual partner? = straight, homosexual, bisexual (only relevant if I chatting you up)

with the exception of Mary Berry and Barbie
Mary Berry wears y-fronts. She's neutrois.