It's International Non Binary Day

[Doyoumind]

So Twitter tells me.

I see posts from people I can vaguely understand are non binary but am totally confused by many posts of people presenting very much in line with the sterotypical gender related to their sex and saying they don't all use 'they' pronouns. So what the hell is non binary about them?

Genuine question and not intended to be goady. I don't get it. Well, I get that it might appeal to someone trying to be something other than ordinary.

I'm just utterly baffled. I haven't seen the new adaptation of Good Omens. I love the book, so I will watch it when it arrives on the BBC. I'm a bit puzzled, though, by tweets Neil Gaiman is getting about the relationship between Crawley and Aziraphale. It seems a lot of people have claimed it as some sort of queer relationship. Really? Not how I saw it, but there we go, each to his/her own.

Anyway, NG tweeted wishing everyone a happy International Non-Binary Day and along the way he responded to a tweet thread which to be perfectly honest I don't understand. Why does everything need a label? The relationship described seems to me to be much like many relationships between people who get on well but aren't having much or any sex. Unusual not to have any sexual attraction at all, but nobody else's business, so why tell the world? Does this person face discrimination for being in a relationship like this? If they walked down the street with their partner, not holding hands, would they be at risk of being beaten up?

I am an agender, asexual person who is dating someone who is also agender and asexual. Before we met each other, we also thought we were aromantic. We label ourselves as “queer romantic”, because our form of romance is atypical. We are not physically affectionate, in any way. We do not hold hands, we do not kiss, we do not show public displays of affection. Even in private, we rarely hold each other. Though we rarely say “I love you”, we love each other very deeply, and know that actions convey our love more than words do. We spend most our time talking to each other. Anytime something happens in our lives, the first person we talk to is each other. We go on dates, think about each other constantly, and want to spend our lives together. Someday we will live together, and sleep in separate rooms. We believe that love is just as much mental and emotional as it can be physical or sexual. We do not feel either of the latter two attractions, and instead share our love by sharing our thoughts and emotions with one another. Our love is no less valid just because it’s different.

Response from another person whose Twitter bio says nonbinary/pan: Yes!! I’m nonbinary/queer as well and while I’m not ace/aro, I am demi-sexual/romantic so I related to the approach with this relationship too.

Again, what's with all the labels?

Laughing my socks off at a relationship between a demon and an angel, be it romantic or platonic, described as 'non binary'.

Like, ffs, thems two opposite polarities by definition!!🤣

Does this person face discrimination for being in a relationship like this? If they walked down the street with their partner, not holding hands, would they be at risk of being beaten up?

It's narcissistic appropriation and Neil Gaiman is a bandwagon jumping fool. These people will destroy the LGB and even the T movement eventually.

We believe that love is just as much mental and emotional as it can be physical or sexual

Crikey, what it must be to be the very first people to have discovered that love is not solely sexual and physical, and that it can have other expressions, too. There should definitely be a prize.

See also

Is this what walking the dog means now? www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3637500-Is-this-what-walking-the-dog-means-now

That owl and fox give me the rage. They’re a fucking heterosexual couple!

Not nearly special enough. Not even being trans is apparently special enough.

I wear a big “I” on my chest and a cape of no colour.

I forget to put a bra on my saggy tits and that will have to do.

I saw a post here in the last week or so that said demisexual means wanting to get to know someone before having sex with them. WTAF? That needs a label and a campaigning organisation looking after their interests?

They've got an umbrella!

I follow a few autistic related groups/people on Twitter (I have autism) and I have noticed a pattern from others who interact with the tweets of having "she/her non-binary asexual demi-boy, autistic etc etc" on their Twitter profiles.

I wonder if with those on the spectrum particularly it could be a mixture of needing to categorise and maybe alongside that, I don't know the right words to use but when I was growing up and had never heard of autism I knew I was different and never fitted in but kind of wanted to...so maybe a sense of belonging and finding your tribe. Something like that. As well as wanting to sound edgy/different which I think is a big part of it.

I've also noticed in general, people don't say what they think as themselves anymore. I mean, where I might say "I like my cat", someone else might say "as a white, heterosexual cis-normative aromamtic with depressive, I find the concept of liking cats problematic blah blah reasons"

I recall the cult chant "Transwomen are women! Trans men are men! Non binary is valid!" in one of Fox and Owl's videos of a rally. The first sentence was enthusiastically repeated. The second only slightly less so. The Non Binary one was a confused mumble in response.

Thinking back, I was reminded of a JW meeting I attended where 'new light' was shared (which meant a change in teaching) and the initial response was lukewarm, but with a short time, it was like the new teaching had always existed and been central. I suspect a rally now would have a much more emphatic response to the non binary chant.

New hierarchies in the cult - as bespin explained, even the most oppressed transwomen™️ were higher up the ladder than the poor non binaries. Now the other trans people must atone for their oppression of non binaries. And anyone who wishes to claim the label of Non Binary will now be understood as the most oppressed™️.

Under Their Eye.

I wonder who the first person to come up with non-binary was (or whichever of those kind of terms came first).

We label ourselves as “queer romantic”, because our form of romance is atypical. We are not physically affectionate, in any way. We do not hold hands, we do not kiss, we do not show public displays of affection. Even in private, we rarely hold each other. Though we rarely say “I love you”, we love each other very deeply, and know that actions convey our love more than words do. We spend most our time talking to each other. Anytime something happens in our lives, the first person we talk to is each other. We go on dates, think about each other constantly, and want to spend our lives together.

Perhaps you’ve just been married for thirty years.

Isn’t that what normal people call ‘having a friend’?

I'm a bit puzzled, though, by tweets Neil Gaiman is getting about the relationship between Crawley and Aziraphale

I'm puzzled by tweets comparing Crawley and Aziraphale, favourably, to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern were sycophantic but ultimately false friends to Hamlet and spies for Claudius.

indeed. Self obsessed idiots.

Good Omens is a brilliant adaptation but Aziraphale was always gay - as much as a supernatural being without genitalia can be said to have an orientation: he’s described as a ‘Southern pansy’, he learns to dance in what is clearly a club for Victorian homosexuals, etc.

Crowley, not so much. His purpose is to tempt. He plays on other people’s desires.

If Terry Pratchett had been spared his awful, hideously unfair illness, I wonder what he'd have made of all this. I think he'd have been compassionate but he was so good at seeing through bullshit of all kinds. Neil Gaiman less so.

Stonewall has completely lost the plot. Watch the video
Check out @stonewalluk’s Tweet: twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1150329084695797760?s=09

I was looking at that earlier. The responses are not going Stonewall's way.

I suspect Neil Gaiman is trying to dodge accusations of transphobia for the bit in Sandman- A Game Of You where Wanda (a trans character) isn’t allowed into a magical realm with the others as she’s not actually a woman and is explicitly referred to as a man.

Perhaps you’ve just been married for thirty years.

I think they need to get a cat.