M Harrington: Can you really be non-binary?

[Abitofalark]

An article in UnHerd by Mary Harrington reviews two books on the subject:

"Lars Horn's 'Voice of the Fish' and Travis Alabanza's 'None of the Above' attempt to define the idea"

I can't actually read the full article as I'm not registered but I gather the concept is all a bit vague and hard to pin down. The comments though are interesting and well worth a read as they range from anecdotes to the blunt "why would anyone want to publish this tripe" (i.e. the books, not the article) to wrestling with trying to understand and account for how all this came about and pointing out various conceptual contradictions and that post-modernism itself doesn't believe in identity. One woman noted that her daughter has 'a change student' in her class. Interesting term, I thought. Haven't seen it used before.

unherd.com/2022/08/what-does-it-mean-to-be-non-binary/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=8b3aac03ec&mc_eid=31e133b3a4

Registration looks like it's free OP, and Mary Harrington is a terrific writer on these topics. But OMG performing your gender or non-binaryness to the world, like the writers of the books she is reviewing, sounds utterly exhausting and you will never be satisfied because the world will never be completely validating at all times. It's almost like the rest of us all have our own thoughts, identities and problems in our heads!

You can feel like you don’t fit with stereotypes attached to being male or female. Loads of us feel like that. Saying you are NB and therefore neither male or female is different, and nonsense.

Fenlandia, thanks for the suggestion. They send me the daily edition but they say I've had x number of free articles this month and although I can't see more than the first few lines of the article, I can read the comments - which is good and often a better read than some of the articles I do see. Agree Mary Harrington is an interesting writer.