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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Could feminism and non binary be the same thing?

125 replies

cupofdecaf · 06/10/2023 11:57

I'd consider myself a feminist moderate GC.

I've recently met a non binary person. It got me thinking. Could I just simply reject all gender stereotypes and be non binary?

I believe that gender is a social construct. Sex is a biological fact.

I'm a woman and mother. I doubt anyone looks at me and thinks I could be or identify as a man. I do wear men's clothes a fair bit (husbands cloths mostly because they're very comfortable).

I like the idea of rejecting the social expectations of gender. My question is would that make me non binary and if not what label would be appropriate.

NB I don't feel like I need a label but we're in a culture of labels. Also I doubt it would change a single thing but I'm curious.

OP posts:
OneMorePlant · 06/10/2023 23:16

Non-binary and everything gender comes from queer theory.

Queer theory is one of the most women hating, homophobic, child endangering shite that i have witnessed in my decades being on this planet.

Anyone even toying with this I judge them and judge them harshly.

non-binary has absolutely NOTHING to do with feminism. Because feminism is about being a woman without it being held against you or having limitations or stereotypes placed on you from society.

Non-binary is about gender. And gender are sexist stereotypes we tossed in the bin decades ago. It's about men like cars and are emotionally stunted and women liking pink and skirts and being weak and fragile. And if you don't act or dress like a dainty little princess queer theory states that you are not a woman. Because god forbid a woman wears a plaid shirt or is a mechanic or has short hair, that is ridiculous because that is "queer".

It's like we're back in the 1940's and it pisses me the fuck off. And I don't understand how others are not fuming about this.

TooTiredToType77 · 06/10/2023 23:39

OlizraWiteomQua · 06/10/2023 14:51

The thing that today's nonbinary 20 year olds will gradually come to realise over the next 30 years is that there are male nonbinary people and female nonbinary people and somehow after 30 years the male nonbinary people have achieved the promotions and accolades and were given every opportunity to advance in their field of employment, and the female nonbinary people have generally lower outcomes, although still having some successes obviously but with more instances of having been passed over for promotion a few times by employers wondering if they might go off pregnant at any moment, or not promoting them because they have been off on maternity leave and aren't as up-to-date as other team members, and the little lags here and there are cumulative and you don't always spot them except in hindsight.

They may at that point invent a movement to liberate all female people from patriarchal discrimination and oppression. I wonder what they will call it?

Edited

This

Original poster
cupofdecaf · 07/10/2023 07:52

EveSix · 06/10/2023 23:08

Gender-free!

Why even go down the route of trying to see if some made-up nonsense shoe fits -it's a dumbass construct, as you acknowledged. You're a woman: sex is real. That's all there's to it.

Gender free. If I need a label, and I don't think I do but others are inclined to think everyone needs to be catorgrised, I'll go with gender free.

OP posts:
Thelnebriati · 07/10/2023 11:23

You are picking a label based on how you dress and what you look like. Its an identity label, and you've got all angsty about it because everyone else is doing it. So you think you should be too.Consciousness raising helps you to look more deeply into your motives, and build yourself a life with more substance to it.

ChaToilLeam · 07/10/2023 11:28

Rejecting or non-confirming gender roles and stereotypes is absolutely normal. I am sure nearly all of us do it to some extent.

The whole NB thing smacks of “I am so cool and special”. It absolutely depends on gender stereotypes being there just so they can be rejected. It’s juvenile, in my view, and not feminist in the slightest.

Whatever people define themselves as, they are still men and women and nothing will change that.

midgemadgemodge · 07/10/2023 11:34

I still
Maintain that rejecting gender or labelling oneself as none binary are just an externalisation / internalisation of the same feeling

The first where you see society is wrong and the second where you accept societies treatment of you as correct - that it's your fault

And I think saying things like "it's just them wanting to be special " is also wrong because ( if my experience is anything to go by) they will often have been relentlessly bullied and ostracised for being different - when you are told repeatedly you are different most people will believe that

IncomingTraffic · 07/10/2023 11:36

PencilsInSpace · 06/10/2023 12:03

Feminism: gender stereotypes are bad for all of us, solidarity with other women.

Non-binary: gender stereotypes are not for me, I'm not like the other girls.

i agree with this distinction.

It’s like the gender equivalent of being a ‘cool wife’.

LovelyMMOG · 07/10/2023 11:38

Feminism- gender stereotypes are reductive and oppressive for everyone.

Non-binary- gender stereotypes are reductive and oppressive for me but fine for the rest of you.

RebelliousCow · 07/10/2023 11:40

Just be yourself and dress and express in whatever way feels natural or interesting to you. You don't need to have a label just because other people do..

PermanentTemporary · 07/10/2023 11:43

I've just realised to i define myself as 'atheist' so perhaps agender is legitimate- I was thinking agender was like defining myself as 'non-Muslim' or 'non-Christian' as in only defining myself in terms of the thing I'm not. But maybe I should consider it. Theism is not really a thing any more so atheist doesn't have the same connotations though.

The nonbinary male i know best has literally said that they think they will have more chance of sex that way. And not in a cynical sense - they genuinely think that their nonbinary self is better and more appealing to others and therefore their nonbinary penis will get a lot more action.

RebelliousCow · 07/10/2023 11:45

Non binary is just a label that people use when they want to signal their unconventionality, non-conformity or their felt sense of specialness, in a society which is obsessed with 'signalling' and 'amplifying' stuff.

But in itself Non binary is anything but non conformist - because its very existence results from a desire to conform with the current norms in their social circle.

IncomingTraffic · 07/10/2023 11:57

I do wear men's clothes

the thing about non-binary is that it absolutely relies on stereotypical nonsense about ‘men’s clothes’ and ‘women’s clothes’.

They’re just clothes.

I’m wearing a hoody that came from the men’s department in h&m today. It’s not ‘men’s clothes’; it’s just a hoody that fits the way I want it to.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 07/10/2023 12:17

The concept of non-binary is completely at odds with feminism, although it looks feminist at first glance.
For someone to be non-binary, binary genders must exist. For non-binary to be real, gender stereotypes have to be real and natural for most people (aka cis) with the exception of the special few (non-binary)
All it does is re-inforce stereotypes. It's a deeply sexist concept.

This.

RavingStone · 07/10/2023 12:54

Almost every feminist would qualify for non binary, without feeling the need to compel others' speech and dismantle safeguarding for everyone. And without the pretty offensive motion that those who don't declare special identity must themselves identify with regressive stereotypes.

Ditch the stereotypes. The stereotypes that gender ideology and traditional conservatism share. We don't need them. They harm every one, maintain the patriarchy and women can never be free whilst conservatives are gender ideologists force them upon us.

IDontHateRainbows · 07/10/2023 13:13

IncomingTraffic · 07/10/2023 11:57

I do wear men's clothes

the thing about non-binary is that it absolutely relies on stereotypical nonsense about ‘men’s clothes’ and ‘women’s clothes’.

They’re just clothes.

I’m wearing a hoody that came from the men’s department in h&m today. It’s not ‘men’s clothes’; it’s just a hoody that fits the way I want it to.

Fairs, but men and women's clothes are usually cut differently to suit male and female bodies.

The hoodie you refer to is possibly an exception as a loose garment.

Before all this non binary bullshit we had a perfectly good word for this, unisex

BandicootCrash · 07/10/2023 13:15

To be non-binary is to believe so strongly in the veracity of socially constructed gender stereotypes that you need to create a whole separate category for those people who deviate ever so slightly from them.

BandicootCrash · 07/10/2023 13:18

People who identify as non-binary and people who hold GC views both agree that gender stereotypes are narrow and harmful to many people. But whereas as GCs simply reject the stereotypes and get on with their lives, NBs uphold the stereotypes as absolute, and create ever smaller pigeonholes to box themselves into.

MavisMcMinty · 07/10/2023 16:06

BandicootCrash · 07/10/2023 13:18

People who identify as non-binary and people who hold GC views both agree that gender stereotypes are narrow and harmful to many people. But whereas as GCs simply reject the stereotypes and get on with their lives, NBs uphold the stereotypes as absolute, and create ever smaller pigeonholes to box themselves into.

Exactly! The ideology just falls apart under the slightest scrutiny, which is why the subject has been #NoDebate for all these years - to protect itself. It’s backwards, upside down and inside out.

It’s like saying “the men’s loos are far too dangerous for us trans women so we must use the women’s!” without making the logical progression to “Oh! I suppose that’s why women don’t want men in their loos!”

orangeblosssom · 08/10/2023 06:49

nepeta · 06/10/2023 17:43

If we lived in a world where gender identity ideology ruled everything and was legally forced on everyone I would certainly identify as nonbinary, given that all the other alternatives would mean "I accept retrogressive and sexist beliefs about how women and men are supposed to behave and promise to follow them in my own life."

Also, even though becoming a trans man in that dystopian future would be the only way an AFAB (ha!) could seek equal treatment, to get there would require lifelong medical treatment and surgeries, and that is too high a cost, so nonbinary it would have to be.

But I very much doubt declaring nonbinariness in that world would reduce sexism and misogyny which would still be aimed at those who are AFAB, however they identify.

As we still have some choice, I choose not to belong to this new secular religion, but regard being a woman as meaning that I am an adult human being who inhabits a female body and who is treated as female by others.

That treatment includes being discriminated against, being sexually attacked and harassed, being judged lesser in all sorts of ways, and it is important that we can name those things clearly.

At the present time, a woman who chooses the nonbinary label reveals several things she perhaps is not intending to reveal:

First, that she defines 'woman' as a set of sexist stereotypes about femininity and a bundle of regressive gender roles for women.

Second, that she believes she can identify out of those, while women who don't make that effort obviously like being treated as Stepford Wives or Barbie dolls or pornified views of womanhood/femaleness.

Third, and assuming she participates in the new demands for inclusive language and the erasure of the female sex, that she is not only abandoning other women to being treated with sexism but further strengthens this by weakening any connection between being female and being a woman.

This comes about when 'inclusive language' is demanded (though not about the male sex) so that nonbinary female people don't feel excluded:

When the group of people previously called 'women' are now renamed as ovary-havers, wombcarriers, menstruators, or simply people-who-do-a-thing-only-female-people-can-do, the rest of us who don't believe in abstract gender identities are getting our definitions of our own womanhood invalidated and replaced by dehumanising synecdoches.

This

CorruptedCauldron · 08/10/2023 09:52

Non-binary people, particular females, make me feel like I must identify as belonging to a gender binary - but I don’t! I resent that assumption. Why would I want to identify into an oppressed sex class that has been used and abused by men for centuries? I accept my sex as it can’t be changed. I have no gender identity because I don’t believe in gender stereotypes. Sex is biological and everything else is personality, clothing and presentation. I’m free to look and act however I please. I resent labels like cishet, because I am not cis. Gender identity and belief in gendered roles is a game I’m not playing. Anyone who does want to play, well that’s up to you, but don’t drag me into it please!

RedToothBrush · 08/10/2023 09:57

Rejecting gender stereotypes yes.

But you still need to see sex to see sexism and therein lies the problem

Default human is male. Therefore if we go non binary all we are doing is deferring to that which hides significant issues relating to women's bodies.

A fair amount of this is covered in Invisible Women.

For example I'm writing this on my phone. I chose my phone on the basis of my hand size. It was the only phone on the market small enough for me. The default size relates to the size of a male hand.

Then there's stuff about safety equipment and drug effectiveness etc etc.

MagpiePi · 08/10/2023 09:59

I think that saying you are agender is equivalent to saying you are agnostic rather than an atheist, and indicates you are still buying into the gender woo.

BreatheAndFocus · 08/10/2023 19:57

You’d have no label, OP. If you believe gender stereotypes area load of regressive crap, then you wouldnt be non-binary as someone saying they’re non-binary is someone who’s still in thrall to gender stereotypes. They’re still consulting them and giving them credence and importance in order to measure how much they fit or don’t fit them.

Personally, I find non-binary one of the more annoying gender identities. Every time someone says they’re NB, my eyes roll involuntarily. I once asked a NB person why they were NB and the rubbish I got back would have made you weep. Think about the most traditional 1950s woman you can - this was the girl I was talking to. It was more laughable than depressing.

Another male NB I spoke to was clearly just liking the ‘cool’ label. He/they told me he/they was NB because they were wearing a skirt and how this was all very modern and cool. I told him/them that what would really be modern and cool was to wear a skirt as a man and not make a big deal out of it. I also told him the 1980s were way cooler than now because we tried to destroy the silly gender stereotypes not turn them into some kind of holy text.

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