I think non-binary is actually reinforcing stereotypes and anti feminist?

[steppemum]

My dd has told us she is non-binary. This is not a surprise, we are very supportive of her, and I have another thread running on it, so not here to discuss her.

But as I have been talking to her and thinking about it over the last few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that it is really a way to stick women back in the box, and it makes me very sad.

We had a long chat in the car this weekend and the (very condensed) gist of it was this:

her: society sees women as being in THIS box. Society sees men as being in THIS box. I don't fit either. I want to be some things from the female box and some from the male. I reject some things from the female and some from the male.

me: but if you are biologically female, but you want to do/feel XX then that means that women can do/feel XX even if society is not used to them doing it.
Surely the problem is that society's box is too small, and the box needs opening up more, not that you don't fit it?

her: but society will always see women as being that box, so in order to not be put in that box, I need to say I am out of it, ie I am non-binary, I am not female.

me: but for the whole of history women have been fighting to get society to make the box big enough for all women, that is what feminism is, the battle to get society to open up the box. You as a biological woman are part of that, tell society to go stuff itself, I am a woman and I want to do/feel XX, therefore this is what women do.

her: no, because society still sees me through their box.

Is it just me, or does that mean that the whole non-binary thing is basically encouraging society to see female as one box and male as the other, instead of encouragign society to allow people to be anything they want. So this whole movement is actually making the boxes more rigid instead of breaking them down?

It makes me really sad actually

The drummer is an exceptionally cool lady, who is very butch, dresses in combats and DM and shaved head, and is gay.
Pretty cool role model, that she knows personally. It wasn't enough.

Maybe your daughter doesnt 'identify' as or with being a butch lesbian though?
Young people see nuances between different 'identities' as being much more significant than most of us who are older might appreciate.

I don’t want to sound dismissive as people say this about LGB and I’m gay, but maybe it is just a phase? Non-binary/gender fluid is a big trend at the moment, and is very prevalent on LGBT social media, I think she’s just trying to find herself and find her “people”, when she’s older she may realise she can be a butch gay woman and still be a woman like every one else, that her being more “stereotypically masculine” than the average woman does not stop her being a woman.

Looking at the speed at which things become cool/uncool among young people, I wonder how long a shelf life non-binary has. All it would take would be a few prominent non-binary influencers to declare themselves "butch lesbians" or some other new term and non-binary would instantly become passé.

@steppemum you're right. It's totally normal to experiment with your identity when you're young and she'll figure it out for herself. Given that she's not wanting to experiment with hormones or surgery then I think you should just let her be.

Ask her who she thinks “society” is. If she is categorising whole swathes of people as “cis” then she is part of the problem.

As someone else has said, it’s a very immature outlook. She obviously hasn’t met enough people to realise that people who don’t fit in the gender boxes are the majority.

her: but society will always see women as being that box, so in order to not be put in that box, I need to say I am out of it, ie I am non-binary, I am not female.

I think we need to ensure that all of the women who refuse/refused to be in that box are publicised better.

Jenni Murray wrote her book 'A History of Britain in 21 Women' (published 2016) because she saw how little women featured in GCSE/A'Level syllabus.

February 2020
'Not one woman's name included in GCSE science national curriculum, study finds
Only half of adults can name a female scientist'
www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/uk-news/gcse-science-no-women-gender-stem-curriculum-exam-a9319796.html

There's a phrase, 'if you can't see it, you can't be it'.

Sadly, unless she changes her appearance to the point that people no longer recognize her as female, she's still in that box...

Completely agree with you. That's one of my biggest sadnesses about all of this. A tiny minority of people are really dysphoric, and need help and support and medical care. Most people just don't like gender roles and the intense pressure to fit within them. And telling girls, "you're not like other girls..." has a long, and sexist, history.

Dr Katie Alcock (Chartered Psychologist, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Lancaster University.)

'But HOW CAN YOU TELL'
(extract)
So, how do we tell whether someone is male or female? Well, we are very good at it and — like a lot of human cognitive skills — we base it on a number of cues (pieces of information). In fact, we’re very good at it from the time we are tiny babies.
One of the best ways to tell a male body from a female body is gait — how you walk. You don’t need a whole body in front of you, or even the outline of a body, to tell male from female bodies. A nice little point light display will do the trick. Adults and babies aged 4 months or older can tell male from female in this type of video (first image shows a still, second is a video like the ones used in this type of experiment).

Next up, we can tell the difference between male and female faces. Just as with gait, both infants and adults can do this.
For babies, we usually work out what they can distinguish by finding out what they prefer to look at and what they prefer to look at when we’ve bored them into submission which is technically known as “habituation”. If a baby sees something that looks the same to them, after a while, they will stop looking (I imagine them saying “OK, stop now, I’ve seen that, show me something NEW and EXCITING). This means if we switch in a new picture or sound and they now pay attention, we usually decide they can tell the difference between the old (BORED NOW MUMMY) picture or sound and the new (WOW THAT’S EXCITING) picture or sound. But babies also like to look at some things more than others. Babies who spend more time with Mum or a female caregiver can tell the difference between male and female, and prefer female. But babies who spend more time with Dad or a male caregiver can also tell the difference, but prefer male. (continues)

I’ll move on now to voices, though I could go on and on, this is a particularly helpful method for situations where you can’t see the whole of a person’s body and/or it’s dark and/or they are on the phone.
Again, babies can tell male from female voices. They may be able to tell the difference at birth (and they seem to prefer women’s voices — very likely because they have heard mainly a female voice before birth) but they are much better at categorisation (telling the difference between the broad categories of male and female rather than between individual speakers) by the time they are six months old. There is an interesting study suggesting they may even be able to tell male from female voices before they are born." (continues)

medium.com/@katieja/but-how-can-you-tell-7901324d0919

when she’s older she may realise she can be a butch gay woman and still be a woman like every one else, that her being more “stereotypically masculine” than the average woman does not stop her being a woman.

^^This. But also she might not be a lesbian. I know women who aren’t feminine at all who are straight and married with children and I know lesbians who are the opposite. This stupid trend (which goes beyond gender) of trying to put people in boxes while complaining that “society” is trying to put them in a box needs to fuck the fuck off.

@anonymouse99 Yep, I had massive issues accepting my sexuality when I was younger because I thought gay women couldn’t be feminine. I know that sounds ridiculous, but all my life I had been told gay women are butch, masculine or “tomboys” who prefer to have male friends as they have more in common etc. so I thought I couldn’t possibly be gay because I liked makeup, dresses, pink, hated sports and anything stereotypically masculine, didn’t really get on with boys and men etc. This is one of the reasons why I have an issue with reinforcing gender and gay stereotypes, it hurts people on both genders and people on both sides of the spectrum.

I am Analogue, not Binary

Agree with you absolutely OP.

OP, I think that what would make my children think (I think.. they're younger, but I know I've challenged the 'girls do X/boys do Y' with them using it, and I think it would only get more depth with older children) is (genuinely) say that I felt sad that she felt that way about me that she was so happy to push me into that gender box, that I wasn't happy to be in at all. And just leave it hanging.

Encourage a bit of empathy for a person she cares about - take it away from the me-me-me.

I dunno if it would work. And it might cause more pain for you, but I'd hope that my kids would be able to think of me if I told them I was hurt by something they were saying about me.

Seems most of us are on the same page here! "Non-binary" looks to me like the way we were going in the 70s, dumping the old sex-role stereotypes. If only today's teenagers can steer clear of drugs and surgery.

Science, so sorry to hear about your DD. Let's hope Keira Bell's case leads to a massive changes and reforms, stopping these idiots experimenting on children.

OP, I am so glad you're supporting your DD in expressing herself as a lesbian, taking pride in being a woman. There's no better protection against the trans cult.

An individual solution to a group problem. Good neocon capitalist thinking!

Honestly, when dd was gender dsyphoric, what really pissed me off was that I saw her as choosing an solution to her problems that was anti-feminist, homophobic and anti-solidarity with other women. I felt it was a profoundly nihilistic way to manage the problem of sexism and homophobia than ran counter to every previously expressed value we'd shared.

Queer concepts are just another way to fuck with solidarity between marginalised groups of people, imo, and non-binary is no different.

I haven’t read all responses but what strikes me is that, actually, the box is growing for women because of the battles fought by women for women.
The male box is the one that now needs to grow so that males accept men who want dress/behave like women but don’t want to change sex. They should be fighting for their right to be ’feminine’ in male spaces.

Every word of this.

1980's children interview Boy George & Jon Moss (Culture Club)
Includes discussion about masculinity & feminity:

Steppemum it must be really hard for you because you love her unconditionally but she is saying something that crosses your own values. But you sound calm and also quite clear in your own values and boundaries about not being put in that gender box even for her - which is the most powerful role modelling. I wonder if you could keep expressing your thoughts about this to her in much the same way you are expressing it here? NB is such an oddly cerebral form of youth culture/rebellion (if that's what it is), she may well really want to talk with you about it. As a bright-sounding girl with varied interests maybe this is her kicking off an intellectual journey of exploration about gender pressures and stereotypes and she could end up somewhere with a much deeper and rounded perspective.

It's profoundly regressive.
Yes, I agree it is totally oolitically regressive and also inherently divisive. This politics has no solidarity with others, it’s about individuals finding a way to escape their own oppression for themselves- it’s not about together tackling the oppression at source for everyone’s sake.
And very sinisterly as others have said, the implication that others (who do not take the enby route) must want and deserve to live under the patriarchal gender binary and must really love the oppression of sexism, thus alienating the non-binary person from other people still further. It’s all a lie- no living person can ever fully fulfil all the gender stereotypes. All human beings ever are ‘non binary’ in that sense.

Thanks so much @R0wantrees for linking that video which I probably watched in the 80s. Culture Club, the New Romantics, Bowie, Annie Lennox,etc, all that experimenting and crossing previous boundaries - where’s that freedom gone? Why does it mean you’re suddenly not ‘properly’ female if you step away from pink and sparkly now? And it’s as oppressive to males as well. Why are we all being put back in our boxes? Do we need to be in boxes to be marketed to in the post-capitalist world?

The drummer is an exceptionally cool lady, who is very butch, dresses in combats and DM and shaved head, and is gay.
Pretty cool role model, that she knows personally. It wasn't enough

Maybe your daughter doesnt 'identify' as or with being a butch lesbian though?

Why is the drummer "pretty cool"? Sorry , I really don't get why any of those personal preferences about clothing and appearance deserve to be elevated as "cool". Maybe your daughter is reacting against your bias of what makes a woman "cool"

I think its very telling (and a great shame) that so many young people have little awareness of how many in previous generations disregarded gendered/sexist expectations of hair, clothing & roles.

Non-binary as a concept is dependent on the majority of people being "binary", which makes it an incredibly selfish way to "identify". It's "I'm alright, Jack" combined with "but the boxes are fine for the rest of you muggles".

I'd push her on whether she really thinks that other women fit the woman box. I'd bet she doesn't know many who do.

/so many good points on this thread.

I think its very telling (and a great shame) that so many young people have little awareness of how many in previous generations disregarded gendered/sexist expectations of hair, clothing & roles.

I think the loss of music based 'cultural tribes' has played a part. From the early 20th century up until early 2000's music culture was a defining part of most adolescent lives and a means to express themselves and find 'their people'.

Since the internet/youtube/social media took off in a big way we've lost much of that. I'm not suggesting young people don't listen to music or have favourite artists but it no longer seems a social cohesion type activity. More of a put Spotify on in the background whilst taking selfies kind of thing.

Of course older generations always complained about music fads and bad influences too but at least (to the best of my knowledge) punk or grunge didn't faff around with major law changes and the hair dye washed out.