BBC "top story": How I came out as non-binary to my parents

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASavings]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4zw5Wg0F6czNqqQqPFmQzft/how-i-came-out-as-non-binary-to-my-parents

*"I had to think about how I was going to talk to mum and dad about it. I thought about how much I would have to explain, how many questions I still had unanswered about myself, and how dumb I was going to sound.

As luck would have it, almost at that very moment I got a podcast about my gender identity called NB commissioned. So I made all my insecurities and all my questions into a series. "*

Uh huh.

I do hope Caitlin will have another podcast commissioned in 10 years time when they're too old to look cool in silly glasses. After they've had a few kids and suddenly become invisible to society, and all their free time is spent being the default parent while their uber-woke partner continues to insist they're too special to stay home and help with the baby, and everyone is endlessly asking how they balance career and motherhood, judging them for staying home or using childcare, judging how they feed their baby, dismissing their opinions as a "silly mum". Or maybe they won't have children and will face all the discrimination and prejudice that comes with choosing not to use their female reproductive organs. And I do hope they'll use that podcast to update us all on just how silly the whole concept of sexual dimorphism turned out to be.

I'm old now, aren't I? This is what it feels like to be old.

Having been around many people of different sexualities and 'gender presentations' for many years, NB still makes no sense whatsoever to me, as a graspable useful concept.

My feelings exactly.

I'm trying to point out that desire to alter your body in a non-binary kind of way (moving away from social norms) is a slightly different thing to wanting to be younger or thinner.

In what way is it different? What do you mean by 'moving away from social norms'? Is it a desire to stand out rather than fit in?

What a self-absorbed 1st World twat.

Oops realised this is on page 6 - a glitch made it look like it was only one.

Claiming that NB or 'gender issues' has nothing to do with sexuality or sexual attraction is nonsense. If you knew anything about lesbian and gay history, and looked, for example, at accounts by stone butches, you would soon see that bodily dysmorphia, identity, and sexual attraction was all linked for them.

I had not heard the specific term "stone butch" as part of lesbian culture before so looked it up. Second result was this book on amazon, but it is described as a book about transgenderism?:

"Published in 1993, this brave, original novel is considered to be the finest account ever written of the complexities of a transgendered existence. Woman or man? Thats the question that rages like a storm around Jess Goldberg, clouding her life and her identity. Growing up differently gendered in a blue--collar town in the 1950s, coming out as a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist 60s, deciding to pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a community in the early 70s. This powerful, provocative and deeply moving novel sees Jess coming full circle, she learns to accept the complexities of being a transgendered person in a world demanding simple explanations: a he-she emerging whole, weathering the turbulence."

www.amazon.com/Stone-Butch-Blues-Leslie-Feinberg/dp/1459608453?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

BBC had male pilot becomes female shocker yesterday.

I read daily they are the most oppressed EVER and yet no real news stories.

SomeDyke, thanks for that post - I was going to mention Stone Butches, but they aren't something I have much experience of. I recall Memoree Joelle writing on Facebook a few weeks ago about how breast binding was sometimes a thing for butch lesbians, and that this was being totally misunderstood and twisted by the Trans movement.

FloralBunting I watched one of the Ash Hardell YouTube videos. Ash says a lot but also not much specific and self consciously talks to a cat a lot

The video I watched was about assumptions and tried to explain the difference between not liking how you look and disphoria. Essentially the message was that things an individual doesn't recognise as being them are disphoria. This caused my mind to leap to anorexia, most obviously, but also to my own experience of dementia patients not recognising themselves in the mirror because in their heads they are a 30 year old mother of 4 panicking about their preschoolers who must be somewhere alone... Yet that's not dysphoria.

It's still quite wooly.
The surgical aspect is terrifying though.

"I had not heard the specific term "stone butch" as part of lesbian culture before so looked it up. Second result was this book on amazon, but it is described as a book about transgenderism?:"
In later life, I believe the late Leslie Feinberg identified as a lesbian.

From my reading about stone butches, part of the issue was lesbians who don't want to be touched, or whose sexuality was that they were supposed to give their partner pleasure, but not have that reciprocated. Some had bodily dysphoria issues, and bound their breasts, and felt shame over their periods and femaleness of their bodies. Some have later transitioned.

The point I was trying to make was that the way such women thought about themselves, their sexuality, their gender 'identity' and their gender presentation has changed over the years. Radclyffe Hall and the congenital inverts of Havelock Ellis is different to how people think today. Why should we be so arrogant to think that current gender ideology (in terms of some semi-hidden innate gender identity) is any more correct that previous ways of thinking about these issues? Lesbians have been dealing with such issues for many years, which is often forgotten nowadays, when even calling yourself a lesbian, or knowledge about previous ways lesbians dealt with gender and sexuality is not known by the new blue-haired woke generation.........

"breast binding was sometimes a thing for butch lesbians"
I have to say, I somewhat relished it when I was younger and got mistaken for a boy. When I was older and came out, I came close to binding, in that I could certainly feel the lure of it -- but practical considerations, plus lack of binders, plus a remaining stubborness that my body was my body and was fine and shouldn't be hidden or required to be restrained for me to be socially acceptable, stopped me. Not that I didn't very often wish I never had developed breasts and all that, I guess my response to those feelings was that hating my body was wrong and that women and lesbian hating society was to blame, rather than turning it back on myself and trying to restrain myself to address the issue. Alter the mind and society not my body, it deserved better!

SomeDyke So you want you being gay to mean something to me? Why? The way non-binary people feel evidently means nothing to you. Yes, society makes it an issue for you and I do care about that. What I said was purely in response to someone suggesting that non-binary doesn't matter. I was bullied at school for "being a boy" and even had rocks thrown at me even though I never spoke to anyone about how I felt.

I don't think I used the term "coming out" other than to say I can't see a problem with using it. If you do genuinely feel that it's a term with such special meaning to gay people that you're upset when people use it in another context then I will make an effort to not use it in the future.

Yes gender, sex and orientation are related and have a long history but a lot of people in this thread were saying non-binary people were just gay and wanting to use a different word. I'm pointing out that they don't always correlate. Perhaps "nothing to do with it" was too strong a phrase though.

do you think you'd have been better off/happier if you had instead been born female/male
Ask me that question one day and it'd be a definite "yes" others a definite "no" and sometimes "I'm not sure".

Except bodily norms aren't social, just biological!
I mean how society expects a female body to be. I feel pressure from society to be thin. However, I don't feel pressure from society to have a beard.

SomeDyke and VickyEadie: NB still makes no sense whatsoever to me, as a graspable useful concept. ... My feelings exactly.
It doesn't need to be a graspable useful concept to you for it to be one for other people.

OldCrone You're welcome. Yes, in my situation some form of counselling would be preferable and I have no intention of changing my body. Although it seems for other people surgery or hormones are what's needed.

In what way is it different? What do you mean by 'moving away from social norms'? Is it a desire to stand out rather than fit in?
I don't want to stand out, just that if I did make the changes that I often feel I need to a lot of people would likely think I'm weird. Rather than, for example, getting liposuction where lots of people would probably think I look better.

Yes, blueskies, it does remain quite opaque, even after watching a lot of Ash's careful explanations. I think that's probably because, consciously or unconsciously, they don't really want to dig into their identity and reasonings, and they don't want to make things clearer.

We aren't talking about anything which can be scientifically assessed, this is absolutely part and parcel of the emotional/religious response part of the Genderist stuff. Finding a label is designed to ease the sense of discomfort you may have about yourself - it's a sticking plaster to hold off any urgent need to investigate the causes of that discomfort.

I talk a lot here about cultic/religious behaviour, and sometimes I am quite searing in my criticism, particularly of people like Ash who are influential. But this aspect of it is something that really triggers a compassion response, because I recognize the power of these kinds of labels and ideas to provide comfort when you don't want to address the really painful stuff beneath.

It doesn't need to be a graspable useful concept to you for it to be one for other people.
If you want to create legislation that accommodates it or force non-sex based pronoun use or use it to claim sex based rights, it’d definitely be more helpful if it was a graspable concept.

"cool story bro" would be my reply

If you want to create legislation that accommodates it or force non-sex based pronoun use or use it to claim sex based rights, it’d definitely be more helpful if it was a graspable concept.
Good point there!

I want them better because of gendered expectations and wanting to appear "attractive". I want them gone for who knows why.

Maybe because you just want 'out' of the whole business around sex and sexuality and how that constrains & oppresses you as a person?
I know the feeling.

"So you want you being gay to mean something to me? Why? The way non-binary people feel evidently means nothing to you."

There are (still) solid, practical aspects to being out for gay people that you don't seem to want to acknowledge. Not feelings or hurts, but real, practical consequences. I don't give a tinkers if you don't care how I feel about that, but I would expect you to care about the fact that until very very recently, I might have lost my job, or was not able to marry, or if I went to certain countries for a holiday, not be able to decide what happens to the body of my partner if they tragically died overseas. These things happened.

Subjective versus the objective.

The way non-binary people feel evidently means nothing to you.

It makes no sense to me as a concept, I don't think it is a useful or healthy way in general to understand the relations between yourself and your body, or yourself and society. I understand you feel like that, and that the concept may be useful to you and others, but I still can't agree that it is a graspable concept that the rest of us need to deal with. Rather than the alternative view, which is perhaps the problem is having the concept of 'feel like X' in the first place. Or even just putting it in a broader concept of what lesbians have done over the years (since they were likely to have dealt with such issues in the past in various ways) -- rather than, as some have done, insultingly transing gender-non-conforming lesbians from history.

Justhadathought That's a possible cause but is it something you would even be aware of at the start of puberty (assuming your puberty happended before you had internet access)? Your name is great by the way

I was 12 years old in 1977, and had my hair cut short for my birthday. It felt liberating. And since then I returned to short hair at many times during my life when i wanted to break free of certain conditions in my life. I now have short hair all of the time, and feel most myself with it short.

Around the time I'd just had my hair cut short, I was on holiday with my parents in Wales . It was my practice, and still is, to roam around on my own, observing and exploring my environment and my neighbourhood. I was over near a small children's fun fair on the promenade when someone referred to me as " that boy over there"....

Initially, for about half a second I was offended and embarrassed, until i then realises that i actually liked this confusion about my sex, and slipped into what it felt like to be perceived and treated, even subliminally, by others as a boy. Ever since then, I've always liked that ambiguity. I'm heterosexual and 'full bodied' but quite like the feeling that people might think I'm a lesbian. I don't want to conform in certain ways. I just want to be myself and to express myself in ways that feel comfortable or right for me.

Sometimes I consciously withdraw my identity and feelings of self from my body altogether. It's tiring to have to be in role or 'in gender' all of the time. We do it without even realising we are.

I'm heterosexual and 'full bodied' but quite like the feeling that people might think I'm a lesbian. I don't want to conform in certain ways. I just want to be myself....

To me, personally I feel slightly as if 'being (mistaken for) a lesbian' is being slightly fetishised. Just wanting to 'be yourself' isn't quite the case if others are mistaking you to be something you are not, and that feels nice to you. I'm trying to draw distinction here between butch lesbians such as myself who, because they don't 'do' femininity, frequently get mistaken for men. But being mistaken for men isn't the point, or isn't that 'nice', it's at best amusing, and you then have to decide if being mistaken is worse that wearing something else to try and not be.

and slipped into what it felt like to be perceived and treated, even subliminally, by others as a boy. Whereas I would object to 'being treated as a boy' as being so different from 'being treated as a girl' in the first place. You might like that ambiguity, but doesn't change the fact that the reality isn't. And you can mess with people's heads as regards their perceptions of you and their assumptions about your sex, without claiming that you are somehow not that sex. This view of social gender and presentation is just that, social and presentation, it the trying to link it somehow to who you 'really' are which is the bit that is broken as far as I'm concerned (or should be broken). It's the difference between saying 'I'm female, but my role model is John Wayne (so I like tall horses)', or 'my role model is John Wayne, so I must not exactly be a woman..........'.

Or perhaps I should go for Monique Wittig and her claim that lesbians weren't women (but then I never quite understood french feminist theory in the first place!).

Have you seen 10 years younger? Those people get carved up and sewn back together again and end up crying with gratitude

A shame really as it’s usually the changes to hair style and the repairs to neglected teeth which have the most effect overall ... things which don’t require major surgery.

To me, personally I feel slightly as if 'being (mistaken for) a lesbian' is being slightly fetishised.

I do see what you mean...I guess, for me, it has been about exploring and playing around with gendered expectations - and it always was.
So very much with how I might be perceived or received by others. So, yes, a kind of performance of gender in a way.

Whereas I would object to 'being treated as a boy' as being so different from 'being treated as a girl' in the first place. You might like that ambiguity

Well, at 12 years of age it was certainly interesting to realise and feel how I was being perceived and responded to differently as a 'boy'. Not saying it is right for people to respond differently, but they do tend to.

Justhadathought: I was 12 years old...
That's interesting and I can identify with a lot of it. Have you (or SomeDyke or anyone else) ever seen a bloke and thought "that's how I want to look physically" then remembered that you're a woman and felt sad that you'll never be able to be who you really are? Then on another day felt like you actually have a male body and everyone can tell but you wish they thought you were female?

Yes, I've felt all those conflicted feelings. Its extremely complicated psychologically, because we are talking about the far reaching effects of a misogynistic culture, and burgeoning sexuality (I know for me, liking girls was very confusing in a world that was very heterosexual, and I did think for a time that I might be some kind of internal boy because only boys wanted to kiss girls. We hardly ever properly examine this stuff, and I think one of the unhelpful things about the NB/Trans thinking is that it does stop that honest, deep enquiry into what's going on and just stalls everyone at the "I feel bad, I want to feel better" stage.

stalls everyone at the "I feel bad, I want to feel better" stage.
That's a stage I seem to get stalled at whatever the problem is! Although I don't like anyone having to feel bad it is nice to know that other people feel similar . That's why I like the term non-binary, it helps me feel like I belong somewhere.

For me it was puzzling that people fancied anyone so I just pretended to fancy the same boys as my friends. By the time I did start being attracted to men and women I was already "straight" so I just went with it. Since I've never been asked out by a woman (and am too cowardly to do any asking myself) it seemed pointless to make some big announcement about being bisexual.