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?

Thanks, Helle, for the reminder.

It's not just pronouns, is it? It's buying into this mad ideology, which is at root harmful to women.

I think Camille’s story is not uncommon. Two of my friends who are the mother’s of trans identifying female teens both tell me that their daughters are identifying out of the sexism they have witnessed in our society.

Yes, that part of NB is reasonable. It just then seems to snowball so quickly into arcane, complex systems of frostgender and cakegender, and bizarrely into body modification, too.

Instead of working to make one's place in the flawed world as a flawed human, one has to sacrifice a healthy body to create an avatar to live in a constructed fantasy.

Yes. I agree Arabella. As a movement though, I have yet to see how non-binary works to positively change society to push back on the reasons given as impetus to transition. It seems completely counterintuitive and counted productive.

Wow the avatar thing really got me where I live, and rings true.

This is from the recent article from James Esses on Gallagher, the ‘yeet the teets’ surgeon.

“She even offers surgery for ‘non-binary’ individuals, telling them: “with masculinizing top surgeries patients may choose a size or position of nipple that is not typical for a binary male chest”. She even offers complete nipple removal. There is no medical textbook which tells us what a ‘non-binary’ body looks like. It appears, therefore, that Gallagher is simply making things up as she goes along”

*WARNING: photographs of double mastectomies in this article

https://www.jamesesses.com/p/the-butcher-of-louth

Sometimes I wear boxer shorts instead of knickers. I think they're comfortable. Does that make me non binary? Or gender fluid? Or....normal?

I’m a woman but I’m not super girly. I’ve never had my nails, eyelashes or eyebrows done. Some days I wear makeup, other times I can’t be bothered (apart from my eyebrows). I have long hair and wear skirts and dresses but also spend most weekends in jeans and a hoody. Am I womaning all wrong?

Life is exhausting enough without giving myself a label and changing my pronouns. I think I’ll just keep being me. 100% female just doing it my way. Isn’t that what most of us are doing anyway?

I'm Observed Male At Birth and don't like football, don't like cars, been known to cry at a sad bit in a film, my DIY and car-fixing skills are very low, and I don't even care if I have the tongs at a barbie. If there was a Blokey Test, I'd probably scrape the GCSE by rote-learning but my teacher would not recommend me for the A-level.

There isn't a blokey test. That's the point.

Male doesn't equal masculine.

Praise the lord! I'm free!

Nayeah, joking aside, I managed to get there already. I'm happy enough doing my thing. If I occasionally get homophobic abuse for wearing a pink hoodie or doing ballet, I just laugh it off because... really?

The question would be why does it matter to you?

if people want to label themselves non-binary, good on them.

Life would be so much easier if people just kept needing to judge others in this way and be passive-aggressive about ''genuinely wanting to understand''...Just accept them as they are. They don't need to justify themselves to you.

''Non-binary'' also probably means different things to different individuals.

Some people will use the term because they feel they don't conform to stereotypes/can't relate to what society associates with being a man or a woman.

Or they want to present as androgyne, or they feel they have both male and females qualities and can't quite fit in one ''category''.

Whatever it is, it has no impact on your life whatsoever and if that makes them happy and comfortable in themselves then so be it.

Why does it matter to me? Well there's a new thing around (everybody that is currently NB lived most of their life without knowing that NB is a thing, right?).
I've decided, no I've realised I'm NB too.
It's not like sea swimming, at least for me (how do you know someone swims in the sea? Oh they'll tell you soon enough), I don't go on about it in real life at all. Here on the interwebs, I found a thread about this very topic, and I feel it's a safe space for me to come out of the NB closet and discuss my feelings about that.

it has no impact on your life whatsoever

That's the thing, though, isn't it? If it actually has no impact on my life then (largely, see below) I don't care -people can of course dress how they like and call themselves anything they want. I'll probably roll my eyes, but I do that at a lot of people for all sorts of reasons. But they don't get to make demands on me because of it. If they want special treatment, special pronouns, special laws - these do affect me.

And regardless of the impact on me, I care if it harms children. Physical harm from the nonsense of medical and surgical 'treatments' to somehow 'align with' a non-binary identity. Psychological harm from damaging their understanding of the world, of reality, of their place in that. There's no reason why 'feeling non-binary should cause these harms, but increasingly it does seem to do so.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn

I feel quite similar. I'm apparently struggling for the words this morning, I think there's one word for my take pragmaticist? heuristic? oh god I'm having a bad brian week, I really am.
Insofar as having an NB (I will NOT be typing enby, ever, damn!) identity helps you feel ok about not fitting into sex stereotypes and all that, good.
Anyone proposing that surgery to align your body with your NB Identity, is insane, and should be kept away from children.
In short, if it helps your mental health, great! If it encourages bodily self-harm, TERRIBLE.

It has a massive impact on everyone's life not least because when people feel the need to declare themselves as effectively ordinary, it gives young and otherwise vulnerable people the impression that it's actually normal to be hugely aligned with culturally specific old fashioned stereotypes. It leads to surgery for some people. It leads to an increase in female oppression because it entrenches the stereotypes actually feminists have been trying to dismantle for more than a century.

I am trying to think of where it would not have an impact on anyone else. Can you please explain how this will not impact any person interacting with that non-binary person throughout the day? For instance, if they are expected to use preferred pronouns, indeed if their job role or their membership of a group is dependent on them using those pronouns that has significant impact on their life.

And if that non-binary person who is of one sex wishes to use the single sex spaces of the opposite sex, that also has significant impact.

Could you clarify why, in your view, someone who has to make changes to accommodate the demands of a non-binary person is not being impacted? Or do you believe that everyone should just accept the demands of every other person and accommodate them as being the norm?

Just feeling the need to label/re-label oneself is indicative of the fact that we are social creatures. If we lived in isolation, and our behaviour had no impact upon anyone else, than there would be no need for identity labels.

Identitry labels are there to tell other people how you see yourself, and have the implicit intention that other people alter their behaviour and/or attitude on account of your self proclaimed identity.

Gender markers are implicity social because gender is a social construct.

For starters.........

Furthermore, we all make judgements all of the time. Acts of judgement or discrimination are not inherently negative. We quite naturally discriminate and judge on all matter of issues every single hour of the day. Functionality, organisation and ordering are all dependent upon being able to tell the difference between one thing and another.

And as you suggest 'non binary' is utterly meaningless. Things only have meaning if their meaning is commonly understood.

There are a lot of neologisms about that make me feel like an out of touch old fogey. I've tried to get to the meaning of agender, non-gender, non-binary and there is no single widely-accepted definition for any of it. So I take your point that they are basically, meaningless.

I seem to have managed my entire life to very recently without needing or knowing any of this stuff. I think I'd probably have managed to see myself out without it too (is that just my blah privilege showing).

Almost helpful to have the full banal case for the relevance of 'non-binary' as a concept set out like this. You could have added '#bekind' at the end, just for completeness.

So to break it down bit by bit:

The question would be why does it matter to you?
The impact the categories of male and female have on society as a whole are well explained by others on this thread, not to mention years of feminism.

''Non-binary'' also probably means different things to different individuals."
Quite. Which is one of the main problems with it, when it's seeking special status in law and society.

Some people will use the term because they feel they don't conform to stereotypes/can't relate to what society associates with being a man or a woman.

Or they want to present as androgyne, or they feel they have both male and females qualities and can't quite fit in one ''category''.

And, do you not think, it would make more sense, for our collective, societal response to be to people who feel this way, to be, 'We need to get more comfortable with expanding what we understand to be "male and female qualities"' rather than, as you're advocating, 'oooh yeah you're right, you don't fit. Better make up a new category!'

Because that's the problem with your - I'm sure well-meaning and commonly-held - viewpoint. Amplifying the neoliberal battlecry of 'what I do is none of anyone else's business', we reduce the potential of us - as a collective, as a society - to evolve and develop in a way that makes it better for everyone.

if people want to label themselves non-binary, good on them.

Absolutely. You don't mind if I ignore their label and just go by their sex though, I guess? It doesn't have any effect on anyone else what I do!

And, do you not think, it would make more sense, for our collective, societal response to be to people who feel this way, to be, 'We need to get more comfortable with expanding what we understand to be "male and female qualities"' rather than, as you're advocating, 'oooh yeah you're right, you don't fit. Better make up a new category!'

And this is the absolute heart of it for me. Because when someone says they’re non-binary it usually means “I have different interests to others of my sex” which is surely an argument for degendering interests rather than people.

And a man with a non-binary identity has no more right to demand inclusion in Women only spaces (things that are to promote take up by women like sports/gym sessions but end up excluding women or places where you may be undressed eg changing rooms, hospital examinations etc) than any other man.

And a woman who feels a double mastectomy whilst healthy because of her NB status, doesn’t that need exploring a bit further? How is surgery accepted as the right thing so quickly? Without digging deeper into the reasons a woman may hate her breasts? (A not uncommon feeling for many women for many reasons- usually to do with sexism?)

Agree with all of that @ApocalipstickNow