Am I non binary?

[purplewolfie]

Hello everyone. My sister's just come out as nonbinary and I got upset tonight as I was trying to explain how I'm not a fan of gender expectations and stereotypes - now it seems to be that my (woke-ish) family think I'm a non binary in denial and that this is why I'm upset and feeling a sense of injustice and unfairness. I said that I felt taking on a non binary identity just removes me from the fight - just makes the issue about me and not society.
They swear blind that there are tonnes of people who wake very morning feeling their gender is right and proper and, if I'm not in this camp, then I must be non binary. Is this right? I want to hold up the concept of gender to a spotlight and maybe get rid of it - they say the politically active thing to do is to remove myself from the equation and come as non binary. My instinct is that this is a cop out and individualistic. I got upset. My head is screwed :(

I don't know....I think NB is a pile of nonsense, because none of us have an inmate hardwiring to the feminine or the masculine.

But if I had to label myself in the new language, sure, I'm an agender non-binary, femme presenting female.

I mean, if your fam believe 99% of women wake up every morning with some sort of giggly and pink womanly soul feeling, and you don't, but you also don't wake up with a gruff blue manly soul feeling, of course you must be NB!

I feel the same way I think. My (adult) DC think I am non binary or at least they tease me about it because I am so uptight about gender and because I am not especially conforming.
But every time a non conforming woman declares themselves non binary they reinforce the extremes of gender expectation and narrow the definition of woman. So you are right, and they are wrong. It's a society problem not a you problem.

My sister's just come out as nonbinary

How does this manifest itself?

My instinct is that this is a cop out and individualistic. I got upset. My head is screwed

...on the right way and theirs isn't.
The politically active thing to do is to try to dismantle restrictive gender stereotypes for everyone.

No one feels like their gender because there is nothing to feel. Experienced women understand the impact biology has on their lives, that doesn’t mean they embrace their gender, just that they understand being the part of the species with the potential to
Carry young has physical, social, and financial consequences.

If you have a vagina you are a woman. That’s it. You can call yourself whatever the flip you like but biologically you are a woman.
Honestly- this is all pretentious nonsense which is doing so much harm to young people. Wise up.

Thank you everyone. Just needed a reality check.in. I tried to explain that no one I know presents themselves as a gender- people are a collection of 'pink and blue' - but they insisted that they know loads of people who celebrate their gender daily 🤷🏻‍♀️ They told me that my beliefs are like racism - that's when I got drunkenly upset due to the batshitery-ness. I'm the step/half child and sometimes I feel the bad one.

Congratulations. You have a personality. You may now proceed to engage in activities which interest you; wear clothing appropriate to those activities, or just because you want to, and seek whatever sexual or romantic partners tickle your fancy.

Welcome to the world of people.

there are tonnes of people who wake very morning feeling their gender is right and proper

What? I've never even heard of this before. So weird.

I just don't understand it. How could you match any feeling you have to either gender or to neither? How would you even know what a female or male experience would be like? I'm a woman but I can't say what it's like to be a different woman or make claims about the whole category of women. I feel like I'm just missing something important about this whole discussion.

They are the ones who are trying to be “sex blind” in the way that the soft form of racism tries to be “color blind”. That is, by pretending they don’t know what sex a person is they make it impossible to address the problem head-on.

You and your whole family (and everyone else) know what sex your sister is (female) and gender roles are forced upon her by others no matter how she may “identify”.

At best NB is useless nonsense. At worst it’s actively supporting gender roles.

Celebrate their gender daily?

I think your family are fibbing to you. Not in 49 years have I ever met a human who gets up everyday of their lives and celebrates being assigned the masculine role or the feminine role.

I can confidently assert I've never done it.

No, stating scientific facts about chromosomes and biological sex is not 'akin to racism' . And a scientific fact is not a 'belief'. Ask your family whether they believe Rachel Dolezal is actually a black woman trapped in a Caucasian body?

i think non binary is meaningless concept.
it's artificial.

If gender is actually real then we are ALL non-binary. No one in the world 100% fits the Male or female gender stereotype.

But gender is a BS concept IMO, so people who claim they're "non binary" just don't conform to (sexist) gender norms imposed on their sex. Which is great but really why label it? It seems to me that actually 'gender' is just another way of saying 'personality'

I think we’re all non-binary.

The problem with the terms trans and cis is that they are too binary. They restrict us into either identifying with the gender assigned to our biological sex or not.

Whereas really very few people are like that. Most of us have a complex collection of personality traits.

Non binary could be the new gender critical. The trans-accepted way of gender-critical.

If I was asked if I was non binary, I’d need to know what the binaries were first, otherwise how would I know.

And I guess I’d also need to know if the binaries where universal, and fixed. If they are location or time dependant, I’d need to know all binary classes for any place I visited, and would need an ongoing, updated list as I aged to check if the label non binary was still applicable.

Or I could just say I’m a woman, where woman is female human regardless of age.

Your family are talking shit, you stick to your guns. You can be whatever you want to be, as a woman. No need to change any name or pronouns etc. They don't get to label you.

I wake up exhausted and drag myself out of bed (or procrastinate and check Mumsnet!).

Never have I ever woken up and celebrated my gender. I'm not sure I've even woken up and thought about it.

I have woken up and thought about my sex though when I realise my period has just started, catching me unawares, and I'm going to have to wash my sheets.

I also woke up in labour, so was extremely aware of my sex then.

But my gender identity?! That's just hilarious!

I‘m quite happy being a woman, and would probably be quite happy as a man if I had been born male. But I dislike the inequalities, eg the endless struggle for genuinely equal pay and equal job prospects.

And I hate the ridiculous sex-stereotype expectations that the ‘gender identity’ crowd are now trying to force on us.

Like most of my friends, I’ve always worn trousers and practical shoes, don’t bother with make-up, work with both women and men, do things men or women can do .... These days we could all bd called non-binary!

Everyone ever is/ was non binary. Non binary is everybody, yet it is nobody.

I think it is your family who is unusual. None binary is so normal it's a none event

Except when people start forcing stereotypes at me when none binary can be the easiest way to escape

In some African tribes the height of masculinity is long braided hair, lots of beads and feathers and painted faces. Meanwhile the feminine woman will shave her head and wear an animal pelt.

If non-binary means rejecting gender stereotypes then non-binary will have a different presentation in every single culture and period of time. What is non-binary in one culture will be entirely conformist in another.

If non-binary is shorthand for "being uncomfortable with current Western masculine and feminine depictions of gender" then yes I (and probably you) are non-binary. But it doesn't mean that. It's supposed to mean some kind of special inner essence which is narcissistic nonsense.

Your family should ask themselves how many African tribeswomen, especially those who have experienced forced marriage or FGM, wake up in the morning celebrating their gender. Are these women non-binary too?

Yes you probably are non binary. As much as we all are. I’d avoid getting into it with them as much as you can.

It's all a load of rubbish. You are you and you have a personality, that's it.

How exactly do you feel your gender anyway? I'm me and I happen to be female, no more no less.

All these grown adults coming out as non binary must have too much time on their hands and nothing better to do than gaze at their navel.