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?

Why do we need to level ourselves to help you not make assumptions?

If you had a non-binary friend would you have to leave them out of the stag do AND the hen do?

I don’t know. Honestly, that’s a genuine response, not meant to sound like a snarky one. The only answer i have is that maybe gender stereotyping as a way of acting in the world is so deeply deeply ingrained that we rarely question it unprompted? But if what you are saying is that it should not be the responsibility of NB people to invoke democratic / humanist behaviours in others then I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Of course not - if the bride or groom to be wanted to invite their friend, then why wouldn’t they?

I think it could be mild dysphoria and not feeling comfortable in your own skin, not relating to people your own sex (because you don't fit into stereotypes or with your peers).
But how many young women have gone through this and felt a sense of failure in themselves, because they don’t meet societal imposed beauty/femininity standards?

It’s a long road of feeling “good enough” as a woman, when you’re confronted by images that you can’t match up to. The answer is not to carve a whole separate category for yourself but to recognise it’s all part of growing into yourself as a real person, not a stereotype.

I’m intrigued as to how non-binary women think other women feel about ourselves, how the variations in our personalities and interests contradict (or not?) what non-binary means.

This. Am an old gimmer, probably neurodiverse, studied physics, bit of a nerd. With that autistic sense of fairness I thought of my fellow human beings as "people" ; each was a "person," we were all equal. I also thought of myself as a woman.

And still do. Though of course over the years I have found that a large majority did not seem to share my egalitatian views. (Guess their chromosomes.)

I agree with others above who've commented that "NB" actually accentuates binary thinking.

I may not fit in 100% with the current "female/feminine" stereotype. But I would not call myself NB nor would I want to be called that. I'd far, far rather demonstrate, just by the way I live my life, that a woman can be a woman, and female, and feminine, without having to tick all those stereotypes.

On the point about women saying they’re non-binary to escape sexism, there was a non-binary category at the New York Marathon 2022 and surprise surprise all non-binary prizes were won by males. This led to complaints by some and the suggestion that there should be two categories for Female non-binary and male non binary and thus creating a binary 😅
The point I’m making is it’s futile to do so and doesn’t actually remove sexism.

"I think that while being female does by no means mean that you accept all the shit women get in this life, it is nonetheless an active alignment with the gender. NB is, I think, more like an active disalignment with the gender identity - making a space where there are options to be treated in new ways."

I find this infuriating. Being female is just a fact about my existence that cannot ever change. It just is. It is not a bloody "active alignment" with a gender identity. And what in goodness name does "making a space where there are options to be treated in new ways" mean?? Do you mean that it forces people who are entrenched in stereotypes to drop them, but only for female people who claim a non-binary identity?! Not for the rest of the stupid women who "actively align" with the shit thrown at them?

I don’t think NB always means saying you are not biologically female / male. It is about a different way of relating to the societal discourses about gender. I think you’re deliberately misinterpreting what I’m saying about aligning with the dominant binary gender identities - of course no woman is actively signing up to be treated like shit. By ‘making a space where there are options to be treated in new ways’, I mean that by presenting as NB, all concerned are given occasion to consider how they interact with a person - what they say, and how. What they don’t say, and why. It opens up for new patterns of communication, of behaviour. Of ways of being that challenge existing norms.

Claiming a NB identity is an attempt to send a signal to others that one doesn't wish to associate with sex stereotypes.

The tricky bit is to how much of a degree we are actually able to compel or control how others respond to us.

Polite people may respect our pronouns.

But we remain dichotomously sexed mammals.

Then NB is regressive in the suggestion that women who do 'align with a female gender' do want to be associated with all the female stereotypes.

Not necessarily I don’t think…. maybe some do, maybe some don’t, but equally don’t want to identify as NB, maybe some don’t give a shit at all, maybe some choose to react against negative treatment of women in other ways… I can’t believe there is one single essential way of understanding NB - it’s relative widespreadness today is something that everyone in society is learning to negotiate and engage with - just the same as happens with male and female gender identities all the time….but just now NB is foregrounded in the public domain so there are a lot of questions to be asked. But as I say, i find it highly unlikely, in fact impossible, that there is one sole ‘answer’ to be found.

@HejLittleAppleBlossom I almost don't see the point of responding given that you think I'm deliberately misunderstanding you. Your comment is word salad. Your response is more of the same.

So, by explicitly telling people that you are non-binary, you somehow make it possible for people to consider how they usually treat women and to challenge existing norms? How? How does that that open up new patterns of communication and behaviour? Other than stumbling over how to use they/them so as not to offend the person demanding you defer to their special identity.

Oh, now of course it's undefinable. Of course it is. I shall learn to negotiate and engage with it by giving it as much consideration as it deserves, which is.... undefinable!

Can you - can anyone - give any real, concrete examples of how life, treatment, whatever, is actually affected by deciding that you're non-binary?

I can give two examples. One is someone I know who since identifying as non binary suffers from misgendering and this makes them both sad and angry.

The other is one of the marathons where they have a category for non binary runners and an AFAB non binary person suggested they split the non binary into male and female categories to make it more fair.

Calling my answer word salad is quite unkind. I think it’s an interesting discussion, but a discussion becomes a not very constructive argument when people start mud slinging. I think my answers are clear, if they aren’t clear to you then okay.

This thread is making me think of that Einstein(?) quote, along the lines of "if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough".

God love the people who are trying but the answers are absolute word salad.

That’s one of the points I’m trying to make - I don’t think anybody understands NB and the way it, as a concept, will find a place within current societal norms…. all we can do is posit ideas, share experiences and share the ways in which we currently understand it….there isn’t a definitive answer to be found, and nor is there, presently, a concensus understanding in society I don’t think.

Well, quite.

This is why I see declaring a non-binary identity (particularly when done by a woman) as cowardly, selfish and stupid

Cowardly because it is an attempt to opt out of a problem rather than confronting it.

Selfish because it recognises the adverse effects of gender and sterotypes on everyone (especially women), but attempts a personal escape rather than fighting to improve society as whole for the benefit of all.

And stupid because it doesn't work. As shown by the marathon fiasco. The physical and social barriers are still there, and pretending they don't apply to you doesn't make them go away.

”.. perhaps it's unreasonable of me to ask people to validate me as nonbinary”

Yes, yes it is. Nobody owes you validation.

I too don’t get non binary. I understand not signing up to gender stereotypes, I thought that’s what it was all about in the 90s? But how does that make anyone anything other than just uniquely themselves?

I find all this self identity stuff so bloody selfish and boring.

For these people as they see it gender identity doesn't come from anything, it can't be reduced to anything. They just are non-binary and any attempt to explain that in terms of anything else is ultimately meaningless.

This isn't very convincing if you think about it (even things which are axiomatically true have consequences for other things, so being non-binary ought to affect things in the world beyond superficial linguistic categories), but I genuinely think this is how a lot of them see it.

I think I might see what @HejLittleAppleBlossom may be getting at.

NB is a concept which is being co-constructed and re-constructed all the time. This gives a space in the discourse to talk about sex and sex stereotypes and gender and so on. This process may or may not lead to a general consensus as to what particulat words mean, and what such words imply.

If my interpretation is correct, then they are proposing a kind of non-judgmental dialogue. Which is fine by me.

I wonder if the difference being discussed here is partly generational? When I were a girl young woman, we had consciousness raising groups for women, and also workers' co-ops, which were basically vehicles for deciding how we could advance of women, and how work might be organised in a fairer way.

This was in the mid to late 1970's. Everyone involved was under 30, most with partners and young children (and in those days we all knew that "you can't trust anyone over 30")

*advance the rights of women

The question is whether you genuinely want to listen or want to (along with numerous other posters) pick apart each point. It's a question of listening not just hearing, even if you disagree