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?

Nobody understands it because it doesn't mean anything to anybody, apart from the individual proclaiming it. And to be frank - that's their issue and their issue alone. Just leave everyone else out of it. The world does not revolve you.

revolve around you

Is that not just abother form of " check your privilege, and when someone speaks just shut up and listen to them".

I am definitely not gender critical.

So you believe that everyone's personality, interests, abilities, roles in society, and behaviours are primarily defined by and can be deduced from their sex?

Yes, what we wear and how we have our hair changes the way we view or feel about ourselves. So what? That is an entirely normal, and, private matter.

I've always gone back to short hair when i want to feel most myself ( if that is what you mean by 'masculine'?); most liberated to 'be myself'. Long hair feels, to me, like a dead weight of gendered expectation. That doesn't change my sex though, nor does it demand that others conspicuoulsy refer to me in artificial or specific ways, either.

Re: basing legislation on undefined concepts, I think Joyce Grenfell nailed that part of the debate.

Thanks, that's helpful.

I'm also thinking about context - titles are used in forms, not in speech.

My choice of title on a form really doesn't impact anyone or interactions.

Disrupting or controlling everyday speech is going a bit further.

Seems we are confusing the applied linguistic label (married/unmarried/feminine/masculine) with the actual fact (woman/woman/woman/woman) here. The former is a matter of choice, the latter is not.

I can see NB might be an appeal for others to not apply stereotypes or assumptions or prejudice to someone.

However we are going to observe a person as one sex or the other before we then temper that with the requested 'identity'.

There seems an increasing drive to solicit all these different 'identities' and labels out of people to classify and sort them, and often I just am not interested in even trying to work out which of a bewildering array of made up terms I 'identify' with.

I'm a Buddhist, ffs, we do our best to avoid identifying with anything.

(That's a joke; I'm not a Buddhist.)

Having watched a few NB Tik Toks I find it difficult to come to any other conclusion than it being about control. Control over ones self and control over the external.

It seems to overwhelming appeal to young women and girls. There's often a strong vibe of 'not like other girls' about it which I think a lot of us can probably recognise from our younger years.

So is being NB becoming a female stereotype?

😁

I think part of the problem for me is that people thinking they're entitled - or even able - to control how they're perceived based on their own feelings.

You might be very keen on football, spend every waking hour practicing, be doing quite well in your Sunday league and therefore consider 'footballer' as part of your identity. However, I consider a footballer to be someone who plays professionally and earns their money that way, so although I may politely agree that 'yes, yes of course, you're a footballer' I won't be privately perceiving you as such.

To a point yes probably.

Of course there are men who identify as NB and older women. When a word has no coherent definition you can project whatever meaning you want on it so the motivations of a male NB won't necessarily be the same as a female NB.

Taken as a whole though the appeal of adopting a NB identity seems to skew more towards young women and girls.

Being female/a woman does not define you as an individual; say anything about your political views; your tastes and preferences; your clothing choices; where you like to go on holiday; what sort of films you like; your musical tastes........It is not 'an identity'. It is just a fact of life on earth.

Your identity does not change your sex, nor does it change the instinctive way that people perceive you.

'Identity' has now come to mean something far more than it did before - which is the inner core around which someone builds a stable sense of self. Now it has come to mean some having to make sort of overt public pronouncement and/or performance song and dance. Identity has become performative - very consciously so. Pure Queer Theory.

Re: people dressing up in footie gear, while not actually being footballers

Urban Dictionary: full kit wanker

Full-Kit Wankers (@Full_KitWanker) / X (twitter.com)

full kit wanker
A grown man or Woman wearing a full football kit in a public place other than a football pitch. Football Shirt, shorts and socks. This may also apply to other full sports kit wearers in similar situations. You will naturally think/say ' What a wanker'. Therefore 'What a full kit wanker' is applicable.

sorry that's a massive digression, just how my branes work

But I think that deciding youre in charge of what someone else can think about themselves is entitled.

But you can't be in charge of what someone else thinks either. An impasse!

People can think whatever they like about themselves, but can't expect me to agree if whatbthey think isn’t backed up by reality. And thinking of themselves as a footballer doesn't entitle them to be on the pitch at Patc des Princes (or even Accrington Stanley) on Saturday.

The cult of individualism and of very publicly pursuing one's 'true self' is a very contemporary form of narcissism.

No, you cant, yet it appears to be the case that GC can decide whatever they like about what people think but nobody is allowed to be able to identify themselves unless they approve.

if that's what it appears like, try cleaning your glasses a bit?

Yes, I agree with all those other points, tooo. Especially about context. Titles are esseentially superfluous except in very rare situations.

Of course, gendered pronouns are also superfluous in a lot of instances, and I would have much more respect for the evolution towards they/them if the suggestion was that they should be used for everyone, not just people with a special identity.
That would be the actual parallel with the evolution towards using Ms. No suggestion of a third identity that was neither married nor unmarried, or that was neither male not female. Just a simple omission of any unnecessary categorisation by marital status or sex.

Theres a lovely passive aggressive mn comments thread running in trending . You might enjoy that.

Perhaps you could explain to me how even on this thread alone this isnt the case?

I think the word/concept here that is causing issues is 'identity'; although you're using 'identify'.

Everything isn't an 'identity'. Someone can call themselves Napoleon - they are free to do so, but it doesn't mean other people are obliged to agree that they are Napoleon Bonaparte.

I think most people's objection to this is when people try to apply a label to themselves that is counter to reality. We can't choose our sex. We can't identify out of it. We can't change it.

The whole point of NB is that they havent changed sex.

Might be a controversial view but I genuinely believe NB would be less common if there wasnt such a backlash against trans.

One of the deeper undelying themes, in a culture which gives arise to such need for identity labels, is that of openness/boundarylessness/limitlessness - which have been redefinied in essentially affirmative ways -as wholly positive values. Boundaries, discrimination, and limits on the other hand have become pejorative concepts.

The breakdown of the boundaries between the public sphere and the private sphere leads individuals to broadcast their most intimate and inner-most selves for public comsumption or display - and this is seen as a worthwhile end goal. People are being conditioned to expect continual public validation for their most private selves.