If you're non-binary...

[danyellspanyell]

What does it mean? What does it mean to you?

I'm not looking for GC responses to this - the GC take is obvious. I genuinely want to understand what this means.

This came up on my Instagram and the comments were full of people saying they have the same struggle and I honestly can't get my head round what it actually means to be non-binary, particularly if you're happy 'presenting' as a woman (which you biologically are).

What material impact does this non-binary-ness have on your life?

You said that some people pupils need have special consideration. Yes, they do. But not for pronouns and the like.

The real issue is the growing occurence of people, and young people especially, unable to cope with life and who are suffering with their mental health. What lies at the root of this crisis and how do ee best go about finding solutions for it which enable people to develop emotional resillience and healthy self identities.

Encouraging and nurturing young people to believe in illusory states that require conntinual validation should they fall apart is not good practice.

https://post-trans.com

No, I suggested that consideration is hardly just for them.

All that aside I'm blaming you lot entirely as I just had an online meeting with several people and needed to direct my question to two ladies who didnt have their name on screen m, then worried myself about whether I could refer to them as ladies and ended up just vaguely pointing.

That being said, I'm taking that as a point because if I've had known their pronouns I wouldnt have had to do that 🤣

Everyone laughs and jokes when people they know come out with ridiculous propositions - even if not to their face. Even you, I'm sure. That is what irony and humour are based upon. The foibles of human nature and comedic situations.

This.

That you have to worry about such things is ample evidence of the craziness of gender identity and ideology, isn't it?

That you have to continually check your speech and your thought patterns, and to police your own instinctive responses

She says that after 20 years in Social Justice circles she now feels liberated and happy and relaxed. She can think what she thinks and doesn't have to run everything past the 'filters' of acceptable speech.

Worth a watch. She was a true believer for many years.

Why was it necessary to know their pronouns? Could you just ask everyone to be sure their names are on the screen (as is “best practice” for virtual meetings)? In which case you could just say “As Pat just said…” or “I agree with Sam…” — no need to worry about how anyone identifies, just focus on the subject of the meeting.

Yes .
I was more poking fun at myself that ive been banging my drum for pages and then tied myself in knots in a real life situation.

I currently have a teenage trans or non-binary houseguest (not really sure which of the two, and also clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum). After several days of being subjected to comments (by the youth) regarding various ways I need to adapt to show respect for the youth’s feelings, I finally asked (as politely as possible) whether it was just the youth’s feelings that mattered or whether my own feelings mattered as well. There was a moment of shocked silence but we now (at least for the last 24 hours) have a slightly better line of conversation and an acknowledgement that we both need to think about each other’s feelings — it isn’t a one-way street.
I suspect the youth’s parents and teachers have just given up and affirm whatever the youth believes. I feel like I have fallen down a rabbit hole and am struggling for ways to retain hold of reality while also taking care not to upset the very fragile youth (child of a close family friend).

😉

It's good that you can see that and be aware of having to be 'consistent' cuases you anxiety.

how having to be consistent causes you anxiety

Difficult!

So many young people on spectrum are attracted to gender identity theory - and because of their autistic nature they can become very fixated on the perceived certainties of it. They also have difficulty being aware that other peope have their own reality and feelings too.

Course it does. Believe it or not I care about peoples feelings and getting it right.
I can take it as much as hand it out when it's fair.

An interesting thread. I'm not the person who is asked to define being nonbinary here, but it does affect my life and my work so here's the basic framework which shows why it is problematic for me:

1. Most people, traditionally, have interpreted 'men, women, boys, and girls' to apply to biological sex. This definition left open the possibility that those labels could have nothing to do with how each group is expected to behave, what value they have, or what agency they have. In reality, of course, things have been quite different, but the possibility was there and feminists of the past took advantage of it when writing about women's rights.
2. Once those terms are re-purposed to refer to some innate, abstract feelings about gender and, by logic, the gender roles, rules and stereotypes which prevail in a certain culture, then that possibility is largely foreclosed. This is a problem for feminists. It's also a problem for all of us who are suddenly argued to be, say, women, because we feel feminine, when 'feminine' is defined in ways which include being submissive, passive, emotional, and nurturing, and when - more importantly - it is explicitly assumed to exclude all the adjectives associated with being masculine.
3. In this new, rather regressive definition, the only real way for girls and women to escape 'femininity' is to declare themselves as not women or not girls. Being nonbinary seems to offer that escape route without forcing medical interventions. But it also assigns all other female people to femininity if they have not transitioned. And we never had any public consultations about this fundamental change.
4. Being nonbinary is unlikely to work in terms of protecting a female person from sexism and misogyny, sexual violence and harassment etc. It just makes those things harder to define (as now they seem to apply to an undefined group of vulva-havers).

If we were offered nothing but this new definitional system of gender based on inner abstract feelings (which most of us might not even possess), then it would make sense for all feminist women to become nonbinary.

But then that would probably just be reinterpreted as nothing but another kind of group of females (already visible when sites write about 'nonbinary females', even though some men would also declare a nonbinary identity. And what I have observed is that male privilege also still works among the nonbinary category.

So none of this could stand in place of feminism. Feminism requires a name for people of the two biological sexes, and if that is lost it will be incredibly hard to explain sex-selective abortions, FGM, sexual trafficking (mostly about vulva people), why prostitutes are largely vulva-havers etc.

Because of this wider context, I am not terribly eager to view the nonbinary choice as purely individual.

If people are truly so fragile that they crumble or get upset at such things then aren't you simply enabling them by propping it up, though?

If someone cannot cope with reality of their actual sex, regardless of how they identify that is a mental health issue.

Two points on this:

1. it is OK NOW for women to wear trousers etc, but that's relatively recent. I think Amelia Bloomer had things thrown at her when she went out in her eponymous garment in the early 20th century, and I certainly know women, still of working age, who were not allowed to wear trousers to work in their earlier years. That state of affairs ended mostly because women were brave and just did it. Men seem to be less brave on this one.

2. I used to be absolutely fine with men in dresses, seeing it in relation to point 1 above and being fairly sure that they accepted they were in fact men and that they could be politely ejected from women's spaces if necessary. It was quite the thing in, what, the 90s? I'm less happy now because I am less confident that they will be so benign.

I would put £10 on the fact that said young person will be enormously grateful and reassured by someone clearly stating their boundaries.

In this new, rather regressive definition, the only real way for girls and women to escape 'femininity' is to declare themselves as not women or not girls. Being nonbinary seems to offer that escape route without forcing medical interventions. But it also assigns all other female people to femininity if they have not transitioned. And we never had any public consultations about this fundamental change.

Yes. I think the proposal is that by adjusting language, we can change attitudes.

Is there any evidence at all that changing the word used for someone/something will change the relationships other people have to it? Will becoming a NB person instead of a woman stop men from raping you? Will it stop accidental pregnancy, birth injury, discrimination while breastfeeding, the pay gap, domestic violence?

Or is it just fiddling with the semantics, while sexism trundles on unhindered?

Of anyone has concrete evidence they do do it for these reasons, its be interesting to see.

I just feel, and I do understand why in some areas, as older dare I say it women weve got hard.

My upbringing isnt for discussion here but it was tough. I remember being quite lost in my 20s and belittled by older colleagues and women I knew who 'said it like it was'. It certainly didnt empower me. It had the same effect as a parent telling a teenager not to do something.

We gave all turned on each other. If it is the case that nb isnt a thing, that its brought on by escaping the patriarchy or uncomfortable in their own bodies or autism or whatever it may be, can we not respect their choices but support them?

@Ereshkigalangcleg talked of positive discussions and she was right.
But I think the square root of fuck all is achieved by calling them attention seekers.

Surely as a generation up who have learned to love themselves as a woman (I have, but it's taken a long time) we could guide them?

I read threads on here ahout relationships and I am genuinely astounded by the posts given from women to women. Imagine the power that could have.

https://post-trans.com

I am just adding to links. I think this is one of huge implications of establishing non-binary as a category.

This is CAMILLE KIEFEL. She writes:

“Nobody showed me any research on the implications of doing the surgery. And the weird thing, too, about being nonbinary is what do you even transition to? There's no nonbinary sex to transition to.”

https://www.newsweek.com/nonbinary-surgery-breast-removal-detransitioning-1816309

Obviously removal of breast tissue is serious surgery. And medicalising NB identities can also include genital nullification. In the USA these operations are offered. To remove all external genitalia. Or even the opposite. Adding a surgical cavity simulating a vagina to a male body so that there is both a penis and a vagina.

Under the guise of non-binary health care.