Non binary

[Nellodee]

I’ve been frustrated by non binary for a while. If non binary exists, then there wasn’t a binary to begin with.

Then I thought, this is because I was conflating gender and sex. It annoyed me that people were opting out of the binary, because I saw it as an assumption that everyone else opted in. However, if it relates to gender rather than sex, then I can’t really argue that gender is non binary. I agree with it.

More than that, I think women are non binary. Men are non binary. Transwomen are non binary. Transmen are non binary. Non binary is the only sensible description of gender.

Nobody is purely a female gender. Nobody is purely a male gender. The only sensible gender is non binary.

This means words like woman and man are useless to describe gender. You could be womanly or manly, but you could never fall entirely at either end of the spectrum. You can never be entirely a woman or a man on that spectrum, only somewhere in the non binary gender bread middle.

And if this is the case, and we are all, every one of us, gender non binary, and the words man and woman represent the extremes of this scale and don’t actually refer to any real people at all, then can we not just bloody use them to mean sex again?

I know this isn’t about logic, but have I made a logical flaw?

I don’t see any flaws. I would say that gender is essentially a sexist construct.

Nope no flaws there.
At the end of the day, if you opt into this non-binary business, you're either a female non-binary person or a male non-binary person.

I just think it’s a really good deflection of the whole twaw thing. If someone says twaw, then it’s perfectly reasonable to say, no, no one has a purely female gender, everyone is non binary. Twanb. So are women. So are men. So are transmen.

Of course, if you are referring to sex and not gender, then transwomen are men.

Yes, I agree, OP. Using the proper argument of genderism, as I understand it, everyone is non-binary.

I don’t know any binary people.

I get what you mean OP. I don't feel feminine. I am in a STEM field. I think that I would be agender if anything.

My big issue however is that with non-binary it seems to come with mastectomies and breast binding for young women/ "non-binary AFAB people". Why is a flat chest seen as the "neutral"?

Yep, DS told me his girlfriend was non binary and I said yes, so am I, if we're talking about gender. Sex, however, is binary.
I even did one of those 'which gender am I' quizzes and got something complicated I'd never heard of like gender fluid non binary or agender something. It was hard to answer the questions when you don't buy in to the gender idiology .

When I was studying psychology a level many years ago (I never finished it) we did something called the Androgeny Test (a quiz of 60 questions) which told us whether we had more feminine or masculine traits. I came out almost exactly androgynous. Some of the girls were more masculine and some of the boys more feminine but generally people matched their sex to a greater or lesser degree. Of course, those of us who got androgynous felt special lol.
I'll have to try to find it, I bet it would be quite controversial on here as it assigned traits to genders!

DS had never heard of androgynous when I used the term the other day. I had to explain it was a bit like non binary but it didn't make a fuss about it and require pronouns!

Rose of Dawn had an interesting discussion: Non-binary is meaningless

There are no logical inconsistencies in your reasoning. Trans and non binary concepts of gender can't logically coexist. It is entirely founded on circular reasoning and wishful thinking with pathetic guerilla attacks made on sex by misinterpreting genetics and developmental biology.

I have had some irl in depth conversations with several people now on opposite sides of the 'debate', not TRAs, just woke or wokish people close to me that I have known for years and so they can't just dismiss me as a hateful bigot. I have noticed some common themes. Non of them literally believe TWAW/TMAM beyond be kind, they all heartily agree with the statement 'gender is a social construct', but can't extrapolate that sentence to its logical conclusion. They all (when loosing the debate :) ) summarise by saying similar to 'but gendered expectations/sterotypes are so strong and ingrained that there is no hope of getting rid of them altogether, and being able to move between and opt out of solidified gender groups is a sort of compromise when getting rid of them is unrealistic.' It's so...short sighted.

It just exists so "cis" aka normal people who subscribe to the trans madness can be feel a little special too.

The only sensible gender is non binary.

Exactly.

I tend to use it when it's offered as a choice, although I'm not completely happy with it and would conceptualise it rather differently from you. For me it's not about being around the middle of a spectrum; it's about being skeptical of whether the spectrum itself, and the concept that it's supposed to be a spectrum OF, even exists in the first place.

A better option for me in questions about gender would be "none". Or even better, "I don't understand the question".

It dismays me though when I see people here being dismissive and patronising towards teenagers coming out as non binary. It seems to me a girl describing herself as non-binary is being far more philosophically honest and coherent, and more in line with feminist values, than if she describes herself as having a female "gender".

Everybody being non-binary seems to me the closest thing, within current terminology, to what feminists have always fought for.

Your difficulty here OP is that you're thinking about it logically.

How it works is.

Some people can choose their gender ID

And others get told

The binary is important for trans. From this to that. It's important that most people are 'binary' so that there are solid things to signal desired ID. Example. Piece by a trans goth bemoaning the fact that male goths wear makeup etc. Because it made it hard for them to express they were trans. So it's important that most people are 'binary' and don't mess up the rules.

Women over a certain age are cis. Especially if they are ??!! over the idea of people change sex on a feeling. And even if they are GNC etc. Doesn't matter. You're cis.

According to the logic. Most women on these boards are trans. But that fucks things up doesn't it. So no. Cis women...

Apparently the vast majority of people have a strongly held internal sense of gender.

I don't think this has ever been properly checked though.

I don't have one. Nor does DH.

Question about non-binary - why are they always lumped with women? Why can't they go off and do their own thing and start their own services, spaces etc? They seem to go to great lengths to say they aren't female or male and yet still insist on intruding into spaces and services for women. I've never understood this.

The British cycling transgender policy has some helpful definitions to clear this up...
Definitions:
Birth Gender the gender that a person is assumed to be when they are born. This is usually based on
the Sex they are assigned at birth.
Gender the social, and cultural construction of what it means to be a man or a woman, including roles,
expectations and behaviour.
Gender Identity a person’s internal, deeply felt sense of self, for example, a man, a woman, or a non-
Binary person. A person’s Gender Identity may or may not correspond with their Sex.
Non-Binary where an individual does not identify as being part of the binary gender (male or female).

Self-Identified Gender the gender that the person identifies as, opposed to that which is assigned at
birth, their ‘Birth Gender’.
Sex a person’s biological and physical characteristics, defined usually as either ‘male’ or ‘female’ and
including indeterminate Sex.

Please do let them know your thoughts! Recreational cyclists and cycling fans included.

www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20210325-about-bc-news-British-Cycling-launches-consultation-on-Transgender-participation-policy-0

Gender - the social, and cultural construction of what it means to be a man or a woman, including roles, expectations and behaviour

Do British Cycling have The List, then?

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper explores your non-binary question in some detail in this glorious essay:

aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

Reading this essay (via a link on this board a couple of years ago) was a major lightbulb moment for me. I can't see how anyone could logically argue against this. Sadly, as you say, gender identity ideology ain't big on logic

Toomie, thank you so much for that essay, it really clarified things for me and made me realise we’ve actually lost an important definition of gender. I’ll take a look at the YouTube videos later, but thanks in advance for those too.

Well, according to my daughter who's partner (not sure I can call them girlfriend anymore, though they're not actually partners) has just come out at non binary (they/them pronouns), they are trans because they're transitioning from binary to non-binary. Apparently my efforts to not misgender them were awful (and I did try because, see below) leading to a huge row.

I grew up feeling unsafe and being othered my entire life and trying desperately to fit in and created a home where there is tolerance and safety for me and my family. But now I'm being othered for failing to accept that this young person is facing challenges above and beyond my comprehension and requiring my complete capitulation, and this has triggered me massively. Now I'm trying to decide whether I'm actually willing to tolerate this in my home again. And that's without even acknowledging the overt challenge to society, speech and thinking for what is essentially a choice to challenge those things. Why do my feelings not count?

Nellodee You're welcome! I'm glad it clarified things for you.

This graphic popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday. The most brilliantly succinct explanation I've seen.



Darn it. I'll try again

I think Nicegerbil has it spot on. We are beung pished to accept gender in plave of sex as defining womanhood. But this whole house of cards only stands up if the majority of women, who have no idea of gender identity, are labelled as cis on the basis of biology. Of course, we are the old, boring types who have had children and aren't expected to contribute to the debate. No wonder we're being told to shut up. If we all come out as non-binary the whole thing falls apart.

It dismays me though when I see people here being dismissive and patronising towards teenagers coming out as non binary. It seems to me a girl describing herself as non-binary is being far more philosophically honest and coherent, and more in line with feminist values, than if she describes herself as having a female "gender".
But, in real life, most people use Gender to mean Sex, or at least outward signifiers of Sex.
So, girls "coming out" as "Non-Binary" and asking to be called Them irritates me because it's like saying that all other females (Binary people) are intrinsically happy with feminine stereotypes/thinking "like a girl" etc.
If being non-binary is not just about the way you dress etc, then can't you be non-binary and look very feminine? In which case, can't we just accept that females are not a collection of gender stereotypes and can't we just call all females girls and women and accept that that encompasses a huge range of styles and preferences?
I might be confused!?
I guess what I am saying is that humans of both sexes have never fit into these narrow stereoptypes fully, so why can't we keep the names that actually describe them and always have?

@NiceGerbil

How it works is

Some people can choose their gender ID

And others get told

This is so true!