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?

But they do.

We see time and time again on here when womens issues come up- words being changed, terms changing, the demand to use biological language.

If it is the case validation isnt needed, you cant have validation on one side but not the other.

I have my views on NB but that is by the by. To me, if someone wants to be called Katie instead of Katherine, that's the equivalent. Cool.

I dont find it selfish and boring. What I find selfish and boring is the insistence that 'I cant possibly them they because they means more than one.

I get the argument behind womens rights and the reason of women and all pf that. I might not agree with it all but I see it.

But I find refusal to use they just because someone wont change one word in a sentence entirely selfish. I'd take a Nb person who requests they over the faux confusion of but they means two anyday.

I would love a nonbinary person who doesn't conform to the 'female gender stereotype' to list what the features of that stereotype are, so I can work out whether or not I'm nonbinary too.

I can rattle off a whole bunch of sex-based characteristics and experiences that make me feel like a woman but am a bit hazy on the gender identity stuff.

I think if you wear gender neutral or masculine clothes and hair it can make you feel different inside

I don't think this is necessarily true. I wear clothes from the men's section sometimes because I'm tall and I like sleeves to be long enough.

I can be wearing a men's jumper, men's rain jacket and men's trackies and my identity is no different in my gender-nonspecific/men's stuff compared to wearing female clothes. I just have warmer arms.

It could have just been my mental state at the time. I cut my hair really short, wore all black tracksuits, black beanie and rugged boots for a while. I felt less like a woman and people did mistake me for a man. But I was having serious mental health issues.

Sorry to hear this Annsishere 😞

I can actually see the idea that wearing clothes from the men's section and wanting to make people stop and think about how they converse with you (e.g. they/them pronouns) would make you feel different inside. More empowered to be "you" and challenge stereotypes etc. I can sort of see how it feels like it's for the good of society too, rather than selfish.

For me it comes to the simplicity of a) whether or not you believe in gender (identity) and b) the difference between sex and gender. I don't have a gender or a gender identity. For a long time I assumed I did, because it kind of made sense that my gender "aligned" with my sex.

If I did believe in gender identity, or have a gender (to accept that gender is a "thing" I'd have to believe in gender identity), from what I can work out from it all I'm assuming I'd be non-binary trans femme. Which I think means "looks pretty averagely female because of long hair but doesn't do much make-up, sometimes wears dresses , sometimes wears trousers, does some typically 'girlie' things like spas but also some typically 'boy' things like really hating shopping for clothes". Having said that, my lack of much make-up may rule me out of trans femme and edge me more towards demi-boi. I assume I'd need to think long and hard about which felt like the right fit. I'm also assuming I'd go by the pronouns she/they to reflect all this.

But I don't have a gender identity and I don't believe in gender. So I'm "just" a woman. And not even a cis woman, because I would only describe myself as that if I believed that gender exists. Perhaps it'd be nice to have a gender identity that described my personality in a more modern way.. but... sadly I'm a non-believer. So that just leaves my sex, which people can see when they look at me - even when I'm wearing trousers.

Apologies to the OP for not answering your question but thought it'd be relevant to share Rebecca Reilly Cooper's excellent essay on nb identity, just in case anyone here hasn't yet come across it. A great exploration of many of the points made on this thread.

aeon.co/users/rebecca-reilly-cooper

I'd love to hear an nb response to it one day...

I'm sorry but your answers are very far from clear. You say its all indefinable and impossible to define and it prompts people to ask questions.

So far, so late night stoned student party post modernist musings good.

But people are proposing basing laws on this 'indefinable' stuff.

At some point vague questions are not enough, people will want answers or they will decide that the whole project is so much self indulgent waffle and move on.

This is the trouble with a lot of queer theory- it proposes disruption and dismantling of norms without any suggestion of what might replace them. And the vague idea that all change is a good thing, based on the idea of being 'progressive'.

It is a very short sighted project.

I don't think it's that hard to understand.

I'm female, so I am called she/her and that's fine. If people were to call me he/him, I wouldn't like it because I am not a he. Being called he would make me feel annoyed, uncomfortable and not represented.

Non binary people feel that way about being called she OR he. Neither fits. It makes them uncomfortable because it isn't right for them.

I have a friend who is afab non binary. She uses pronouns she and they - prefers they/them because they feel like a fraud when someone uses she, like they are pretending to be something they aren't. But they don't want to be male, they don't want surgery so is still female presenting physically and acknowledges sex/biology so will still use She as it is factually/ scientifically accurate.

It's not about her not wanting to wear dresses and bake cupcakes!

Right. Just pronouns.

So it's undefinable feelings related to being uncomfortable about pronoun use, whilst definitely not being anything about stereotyping and gendered societal roles.

I'm as comfortable about pronouns as I am about any of this other human social stuff ( that I have to run a parallel human simulator in one of my mental threads just to cope with )

Fair point - I hadn’t considered the aspect about law making, I am definitely looking at it from a more of a pragmatist perspective, and I agree that that isn’t a fruitful basis for making laws etc. I suppose on reflection there is a mismatch between the pace at which NB is developing as a societal concept and the pace at which calls are being made to legislate based upon it. Food for thought, thank you.

A family member is autistic and identifies as nonbinary and 'not a female.' She is a GNC woman

People saying what’s the big deal it’s just one word, would you respect other requests to modify your language? Perhaps drop indefinite articles or place the adjective behind the noun? Those are pretty basic things too. Hard to do just like getting rid of the established way of using he/she. Language is collective and she/he has been established as a short hand to refer to someone. It’s automatic just like how you don’t think about other language features if you’re a native speaker.

Non binary didn’t exist that long ago and if these people hadn’t been in this mad culture wouldn’t be thinking like that. If a woman had said hearing the pronoun ‘she’ makes them feel like a fraud then they’d come across as having issues, and still do to lots.

they feel like a fraud when someone uses she, like they are pretending to be something they aren't.
I know that when I was younger, my inability to perform womanhood - to act, dress, think, prefer, want, etc, in accordance with gender stereotypes - made me feel like a fraud. It even made me act fraudulently to some extent since we all modify our behviour to fit in with a peer group.
The glimmer of hope was feminism, which asserted the possibility of being a woman free from the shackles of those performences.
Since the pronouns she/her in no way relate to those performances and instead simply designate sex, the noncept of non-binary is a rejection of feminism. It claims that you cannot reject the performance of female gender stereotypes without rejecting what you are - a woman.

I'm mature enough now to sit happily in my sex, but I still feel like a fraud in several other respects. For example, to the extent that Iam regarded as talented and successful at work I feel fraudulent. What do you think the proper response of my colleagues would be if they knew about this sense of being a fraud? Should they endorse it, and modify their descriptions of me accordingly? Or should they put it down to low self-esteem (etc) and hold on to reality?

(Of course, that's not to say that I wouldn't use a colleagues preferred 'they' pronouns. I would do it out of politeness whilst viewing it as damaging and wrong.)

Is changing your pronouns actually going to liberate you from anything, or is it likely to turn every encounter into a charged confrontation where everyone either acquiesces to your request or fails to do so?

Is using 'they' actually going to change how people respond to you? What unforeseen consequences might there be? Is it possible some people may resent being compelled and therefore avoid interaction?

The proposition depends on the rest of the world interacting in an idealised way, despite the original premise being based on a proposal that the way the world responds to sex being flawed.

I presume the idea is that people will be forced into some kind of revelation at their own sexism?

Perhaps it's more about in- group signalling.

Can you please explain them how this benefits people or society?

If each and every person who has claimed a non-binary identity has their very own definition, how is that any different from living life acknowledging your sex but happily ignoring stereotypes and other people’s attempts to label you?

Why then does a whole new category of human identity need to be recorded in law (as is now being attempted) because people can’t get over their own sexism and their own expectations of others dependent on those other’s sex category? If you (general you) have behavioural expectations relating to others due to their sex, that is your own sexist expectation. You (again general you) are sexist. It is not up to any other person to feel they have to change and declare an identity to have you change your own sexist behaviour.

If removing sex based pronouns is actually making someone consider and change their sexist behaviour, that says more about that person whose actions are influenced by pronouns than they probably know. Because it is simply creating a new stereotyped behaviour and response. One now based on reaction to non-binary people. They get to have no expectations while others still are under your other sexist expectations. Unless it takes something this to force an overall change, in which case why now? Why not all the amazing non-conforming people in the world who are not claiming non-binary identities?

Again, what does that say about that person needing such stimulus to change their sexist behaviour.

And it may or may not cause significant change in removing the sexist attitudes, in individual people or society, that added weight to this need for some non-binary identities that were provoked in response to sexism and stereotypes.

So again, who benefits?

And those claiming an identity that supposedly reject stereotypes then force everyone who doesn’t have that identity into a box of stereotype compliance in effect. Which is false. Because so few people actually ‘conform’ to those stereotypes.

And it is fucked up that in 2023 we are even having this conversation.

So, what is the benefit of forcing law to specifically include this identity, one that cannot be defined at all and is little understood, outside of the already in place laws about ‘freedom of belief’? Why are activists trying to force laws to specifically acknowledge ‘non-binary’?

To me non-binary is offensive. It means you don't subscribe to gender stereotypes. This implies that everyone else does subscribe to gender stereotypes and as we all know stereotypes are negative and regressive - thus insinuating that you are superior to them with your non-binary status.

It's like making up a name for someone who isn't sexist or isn't racist or isn't ableist and telling everyone to refer to you differently because of it. So to me being non-binary is just a way of feeling superior over others and is offensive.

I think it's hard for younger people to realise how hyper-gendered society has become in just the last few decades, in lockstep with hyper-consumerism. Businesses flogging products have exploited gender tropes to double-up their product lines (girl/boy t-shirts, etc), invent new products (make-up, cosmetic procedures, etc appearance modification) and to build marketing campaigns.

More than ever, 'gender' is a consumer concept. There might well be a place for 'non-binary' in the dropdown menu of an online fashion retailer. But the fundamental error that marketers have taught young people is that the concept describes individual psychological/material reality rather than marketing demographics.

I think the problem with this ideology is that there are so many arbitrary rules, many of which are unclear, that nobody can actually discuss it properly. Ideas need to be tested, debated, pushed and prodded at if they're going to be any use.

We can't do that if we're all too terrified of misperceiving someone.

Agree, Arabella, and those arbitrary rules are fine (even valuable) if it is simply a matter of in-group signalling. (You don't really want people out of the group to understand the nuances of what it takes to be a goth or any other youth-cultural entity. The shared knowledge of insiders is part of their bonding.)
The problem is that, in the current distorted climate of thought, an expectation has been created that group-outsiders must perform an endorsement of the concept - and even enshrine it in law). They must perform the endorsement even though it is poorly defined, arbitrary, etc. This requirement is achieved by massively overvaluing the subjective, the incorrigibility of that mystical internal perspective of the non-binary or trans person (whilst similarly denigrating the parallel interiority of non- trans, non-nonbinary people.)

I wish, wish, WISh people with better knowledge than I have of Wittgenstein would introduce him to this debate. He does so much to reveal the illusory nature of this mystical interiority.

As a kid I had very few choices in life.
The thought of being able to choose my "identity" would have felt very empowering and appealing to me.
It would have been an act of rebellion... an act that could have cost me my health and fertility.

I shudder to imagine the regret I would have felt when I realised I'd been conned and been left with fewer choices in adulthood.