Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

More celebrities coming out as non-binary

154 replies

NinaMimi · 19/05/2021 10:04

I saw this on bbc: www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57169541

I’m not familiar with Demi but notice every week the bbc is reporting on some young celeb and their special lgbtq status.

I suspect it’ll have an influence on young people and maybe it’ll peak and people will get bored of it.

I remember 10+ years ago it was really common and cool to come out as bisexual. Though now there’s a whole array of statuses you can choose from.

OP posts:
persistentwoman · 19/05/2021 11:31

@WinterTrees

Agree it will no doubt have an influence on young people. Some teenagers at DC's school called themselves a different this, that and the other every week to keep relevant

I'm not sure it's just to keep relevant, though that may be part of it. The they/them girls in my daughters' peer groups are notably those who have a troubled history in some way - one of them had nudes shared by an ex bf, one of them was very sexually precocious in her early teens and got "a reputation", one of them is totally infantilised by her parents and denied the freedom and autonomy her older brothers had (not allowed a door key of her own, not allowed to go to parties etc.) It seems to me to be a very obvious way of shrugging off all the negative, restrictive baggage of being female.

What a false promise they've been sold. What a lie this 'I'm so happy to announce that I wasn't actually female at all!' is. In a time when there are many, many things that make me baffled, speechless and incandescent with rage, the bullshit of 'non-binary' is actually right up there at the top of my list. That it's actually seen as cool and progressive is just mind boggling. We have never needed feminism more.

This pattern is seen repeatedly in girls identifying as NB. And as nobody appears to give a fuck about what is happening to them, of course they seek the peer group socially acceptable way of getting some bloody attention. These poor girls.
MondayYogurt · 19/05/2021 11:38

Demi Lovato is trying to distract from her recent froyo incident.

Demi Lovato Addresses Backlash to Her Comments About 'Triggering' Visit to Frozen Yogurt Shop

https://people.com/health/demi-lovato-addresses-backlash-about-triggering-visit-frozen-yogurt-shop/

brainfogmiddleage · 19/05/2021 11:54

I'm trying to get my head round all of this. My 19 yo dd has a few friends who are nonbinary. I respect their choices, obviously, but I look at them and can't help feeling a bit emperor's new clothesy, because they are just what I am, only younger: women dressed in jeans, hoodies and doc martens, not wanting to buy into the whole 'femininity' crap of make up, endless 'grooming', sexualised clothing, simpering, pouting, etc, not to mention the way this makes other people (mostly men) behave towards you.

I have tried, tentatively, to say that this has always been perfectly normal, maybe not always accepted, but it's not unusual to be a woman and not to be 'feminine'. DD & friends celebrate people like Demi Lovato 'being themselves'. I'd be celebrating a woman refusing to conform to stereotypes, but I don't see what pronouns have to do with it. @IvyTwines2 your explanation makes perfect sense, especially in an era where we're all about individuality and so many just don't want to know that their personal choices are always political.

I'm really struggling to explain why having a special identity is actually conveniently divisive. It is, isn't it? If we can't feel like a she because we're not into wearing skirts or nail varnish or whatever, isn't it giving the message that not all women meet the appearance and 'girliness' qualifications for being women, even if that's a choice, which then makes it easier to define 'woman' as something other than biology. And it makes being a woman the problem (which can be opted out of) rather than addressing the wider cultural issues that make so many people uncomfortable in their own skins.

FunnyWonder · 19/05/2021 12:33

The only pronoun relevant to most of these tedious people is 'me', as in me, me, me. MEGAPHONE ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm changing my pronouns so that everyone can tie themselves in knots trying to form sentences about me when I'm not even in their presence.

Sigh. I am old. Wake me up when this ridiculous fad is over.

WeeBisom · 19/05/2021 12:38

I've noticed that recently more and more conventionally feminine women are 'coming out' as non binary. I have a prediction. The more non binary becomes associated with femininity, and women, the more it will be openly scorned and rejected as an identity. Dave Chappell, or some other popular male comedian, will make a joke about 'crazy non binary chicks'. Women won't be able to escape sexism by identifying as non binary because the sexism will follow them. And then there will be think pieces like 'we need to talk about problematic non binary females in trans spaces', and the non binary women will be told off or castigated by taking up too much space, or talking or whatever.

ThePankhurstConnection · 19/05/2021 12:41

Of course they are - maximum ass patting and accolades, zero effort.

BahHumbygge · 19/05/2021 12:41

As I'm going out for a long walk with the dog soon, today I am wearing a "boyfriend" style check shirt, combat trousers and hiking trainers.

I never wear nail polish, haven't worn any make up for several months, don't do any "beauty" products besides soap, bicarb and toothpaste, just have my long hair tied up in a messy bun... So if DL calls, um, themself non-binary, yet wears a full face of immaculate stage style make up, what does this make me? I must be well beyond non-binary, pushing into boy territory 😒

Make it make sense. Please! 😱

HeadIsFucked · 19/05/2021 13:33

@WeeBisom

I've noticed that recently more and more conventionally feminine women are 'coming out' as non binary. I have a prediction. The more non binary becomes associated with femininity, and women, the more it will be openly scorned and rejected as an identity. Dave Chappell, or some other popular male comedian, will make a joke about 'crazy non binary chicks'. Women won't be able to escape sexism by identifying as non binary because the sexism will follow them. And then there will be think pieces like 'we need to talk about problematic non binary females in trans spaces', and the non binary women will be told off or castigated by taking up too much space, or talking or whatever.
Your prediction seems very likely to me tbh. Sadly.
CharlieParley · 19/05/2021 13:45

@WeeBisom

I've noticed that recently more and more conventionally feminine women are 'coming out' as non binary. I have a prediction. The more non binary becomes associated with femininity, and women, the more it will be openly scorned and rejected as an identity. Dave Chappell, or some other popular male comedian, will make a joke about 'crazy non binary chicks'. Women won't be able to escape sexism by identifying as non binary because the sexism will follow them. And then there will be think pieces like 'we need to talk about problematic non binary females in trans spaces', and the non binary women will be told off or castigated by taking up too much space, or talking or whatever.
It seems that the opposite is happening. If you watch non-binary (almost exclusively female) activists, they seem to be winning the argument whether one has to transition to be trans. This involves branding as transphobic, cis-normative and regressive everyone, including transsexuals, who believe that merely claiming a trans identity is not enough to be trans.

It is a bizarre experience to watch one of these videos when you share a large amounts of views on gender (as the norms, expectations and stereotypes associated with either sex) with the Youtuber in question but see them just falling short of grasping what radfem consider the most important points about this understanding of gender - that it is imposed based on sex and used as a tool of oppression against us in patriarchal societies. And that the female sex can neither escape nor remedy that oppression by cleaving to a masculine gender nor by conforming to the norms, expectations and stereotypes associated with the female sex nor by declaring oneself to be all of that/above all of that as non-binary.

And for the most part it seems to be open conflict between female transsexual individuals who are expressing their internalised misogyny by attacking and ridiculing non-binary female individuals for claiming to be non-binary while being very obviously female (and often quite feminine in appearance) who are in turn declaring the former to be regressive transmedicalists playing into the hands of transphobes by seeking to pass as the other sex.

This has been going on for at least the last five years, but now, at long last, it looks like the non-binary activists have won that fight.

And certainly if you read Material Girl, Kathleen Stock shows that after queer theorists had successfully unmoored gender identity from any and all physiological aspects of sex, this was the inevitable outcome.

What this will mean longterm for the vulnerable individuals for whom the GRA was written in the first place is unclear. But I doubt it will benefit them.

aweegc · 19/05/2021 14:29

I've just been reading comments on an Instagram post about Demi in another language. It doesn't have the plural "they" used for a singular ever, so big discussions on how to translate.

And then I remembered Arabic.

In written Arabic you have four options for "they" (in spoken, "just" the last two):

  • 2 people or more, both female
  • 2 people or more, one male
  • 3 people or more, all female
  • 3 people or more, one or more male

So not only would you be culturally a little "brave" to attempt to be non-binary in an Arabic speaking culture, pronoun changes are impossible! Also, "You" singular and plural are also defined by sex! 😂 It seems to be to be the solution to this nonsense!

ChattyLion · 19/05/2021 14:50

What Wintertrees said. I hope DL’s ok.

oldwhyno · 19/05/2021 15:01

I'm only a tiny bit non-binary. My pronouns are he/them.

VickyEadieofThigh · 19/05/2021 15:31

As someone who was a teenager in the 70s (when we were not only winning the war against the stereotypes of gender, we were celebrating gender non-conformity without suggesting for a second that it meant the person wasn't the sex they were), I went from being wryly amused about the whole promotion of 'non-gender', etc to being feckin' angry that I'm expected to care about these 'special' people.

The idea that you can 'opt out' of your sex - especially if you're a woman - by 'declaring' yourself neither male nor female is RIDICULOUS.

SpindleWhorl · 19/05/2021 15:57

[quote MondayYogurt]Demi Lovato is trying to distract from her recent froyo incident.

Demi Lovato Addresses Backlash to Her Comments About 'Triggering' Visit to Frozen Yogurt Shop

[[https://people.com/health/demi-lovato-addresses-backlash-about-triggering-visit-frozen-yogurt-shop/]][/quote]
Jesus, this froyo story Shock

transdimensional · 19/05/2021 16:31

The English language seems to be widely misunderstood. When people say "I use they/them pronouns", they actually mean "I ask others to use they/them pronouns [when referring to me]".
Everyone uses they/them pronouns (and he/him and she/her). It all depends who we're talking about. And if we're talking about ourselves, we use I/me pronouns.

According to the Guardian: "The pop singer will use the pronouns they and them to describe themselves".

Surely, they'll continue to use I/me to describe themselves, unless they're accustomed to speaking about themselves in the third person? I guess one cannot rule that out.

And "refer to" would be more correct than "describe". Pronouns refer to people or things. Pronouns do not describe. Adjectives describe.

transdimensional · 19/05/2021 16:34

One minor mystery is why the convention is always to refer to they/them (rather than just "they") - or are there people who pair the subject pronoun up with a different object pronoun than its usual one? Nothing would surprise me these days - maybe there are people requesting he/her or she/him. It clearly isn't a matter of listing forms exhaustively, or the reflexive "themselves" would need to be included along with the possessive determiner "their".

Letsgetreadytocrumble · 19/05/2021 17:06

I immediately thought of the the fact that Demi Lovato has a long history of eating disorders, drug addiction and has also spoken about suffering from sexual abuse - this seems like 'opting out' to me, as others have said.

Also, I find this whole 'coming out' thing kind of offensive. Like, not that long ago, it was a really big thing for a famous person (or anyone) to come out as gay, and certainly in Hollywood, it is still pretty unacceptable. 'Coming out as non-binary' doesn't actually really mean anything, and I feel like it trivialises something genuinely very difficult for gay and lesbian people.

And.... That froyo story - WTAF?! Not feeling 'safe' because there are sugar free options?

quiteathome · 19/05/2021 17:16

I don't understand. I don't think I have ever woken up and thought about my gender really.

Unless I have raging PMT/ hideous period I feel quite angry with my woman body then.

But i just don't understand this non binary. Are we supposed to feel some mystical thing.

SaltyColin · 19/05/2021 17:16

Evan Davis will be examining this on PM (Radio 4) in a bit (the programme is on now).
I'm hoping ED looks objectively at the issues involved

stonecat · 19/05/2021 17:35

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

SaltyColin · 19/05/2021 18:07

@SaltyColin

Evan Davis will be examining this on PM (Radio 4) in a bit (the programme is on now). I'm hoping ED looks objectively at the issues involved
Well that was a wasted 8 minutes of airtime! It's at 51 minutes in if anyone wants to listen, i.e. in the 'light hearted' end-of-programme slot. Waffle, lack of clarity and didn't really explain anything...oh, but apparently it's not the end of the world to get pronouns wrong
MondayYogurt · 19/05/2021 18:07

Yah the froyo thing could be on The Onion, it's that ridiculous.

I think Lovato is trying to leverage Lovato's eating disorder as a sort of crusade/hashtag warrior calling card. But it doesn't work when you use your massive public platform to try to shame a froyo shop. It would be better directed at the massive US junk food lobby IMO. Except that would require actual work.

brainfogmiddleage · 19/05/2021 18:26

I heard the PM interview and am still no clearer about how ‘they’ people are different from anyone else. Surely many (most) people aren’t 100% comfortable with the gender stereotypes that match their sex?

daringdoris · 19/05/2021 18:28

And the 3rd to last section on the R4 6 o'clock news (before the sections on cafes in Paris, and Roald Dahl's letters). I don't get why it's so newsworthy?

HecatesCatsInFancyHats · 19/05/2021 19:02

@brainfogmiddleage

I heard the PM interview and am still no clearer about how ‘they’ people are different from anyone else. Surely many (most) people aren’t 100% comfortable with the gender stereotypes that match their sex?
They are not