Confused on the concept of non binary

[ireallycantthinkofaname]

Please be nice, i am not the sharpest knife in the box under normal circumstances and I'm running on about 6 hrs sleep over the past week at the minute.....

But something I've been trying and failing to understand re. the concept of 'non binary' in the 'gender movement' (or whatever it is/ought to be called) is that on the one hand, people who subscribe to that philosophy are saying they reject the traditional idea of explicit male/femaleness (because if "trans women are women" then they have swapped for instance). But then if you have 'non binary' individuals isn't that pretty much saying oh yes, actually there is a binary - and some people don't subscribe to it?

I do acknowledge sex =/= gender but not all NB people are intersex/have DSD

<<thoroughly discombobulated>>

It’s not circular and makes sense to most people.

😂

Can you explain it then? If gender identity is defined as how you feel about your gender identity of woman/man/other, what defines the gender identity of woman/man/other?

So it's all about looks?

You said you thought most of the women on FWR were gender conforming. How do you know what we all look like?

The stereotypical gender nonconforming woman in my head has short hair, no makeup, wears men's clothes and has no jewellery. But they're still conforming to gender, just not the one that applies to their sex.

Genuine question. I have short hair and don't wear makeup, but I also have ear studs and am currently wearing a skirt. Am I gender nonconforming because I have short hair and no makeup? Am I conforming because of my jewellery and clothes? Am I somewhere in the middle?

Plenty of feminists have long hair and makeup but practical clothes. Plenty don't have their ears pierced or wear lipstick, but love their collection of 1950s skater dresses. Plenty have short hair in a feminine style but don't make any other effort to be girly.

Are they conforming or not?

Is it someone who doesn’t wear dresses and make-up, and doesn’t like the colour pink?

Why do you think I don't have a single thought in my head? What do you think I'm doing when I'm typing on here?

The Wikipedia definition of gender identity is of course a miserable tautology.

What we can ascertain is that:

Gender is a construct
It is imposed upon us by society from birth
It corresponds with the existing social codes for either of the two biological sexes.

What it is not:

It is not a garment we can remove and change
We do not acquire it through the process of reasoning or experience
It is not a form of self-realization

So, how do we go about setting the record straight?

OK so in your scenario, we use "they" for everyone. The English language adapts. Sex-based... sorry, gender-based pronouns cease to exist.

So why did gender-based pronouns ever come into being in the first place, if they were useless?

The definition is the definition. I have nothing to add.
There is a link to the definition of gender in my post.
You can look up the definitions of correlate, congruent and so on if you wish to learn more. I will say that “can correlate” has a very different meaning from “does correlate” so I can’t really answer that ways question of yours because it’s got off on the wrong premise.

Sexism.

Sexism, the belief that one biological sex is superior to the other, is the reason we refer to people by their hidden gender identities, which are determined by the individual, and not the biological sex that marks them as either superior or inferior.

How does this work?

Do read the posts before interjecting.
I was asked- what does a gender noncomformimg woman look like.
So perhaps you should direct your questions to the person who made it about looks?

You asked for the origin, not the modern usage.

I don’t, I am trying to explain to you that you cannot know you are a woman, a human, without thought and without identity. Being a woman requires self consciousness.

So all languages of human existence have evolved over time to differentiate between the two sexes because of sexism?

I love it when a thread like this throws up novel batshittery. Beats the old batshittery.

No. Your mistake was to extrapolate to the illogical extreme.

That’s what you did. You explained the origins of sex (or gender🙄) based pronouns as coming into existence because of sexism. If that’s not an illogical extreme extrapolation, I don’t know what is.

TTFN must dash

Please do.

This is a summary of what you've said so far:

• We don't "sex" people because it's dehumanising.
• Third person singular pronouns refer to gender identity and not sex for the above reason.
• But this is only a modern usage. Third person singular pronouns arose because of sexism, not gender-ism.

Can you please clarify whether third person singular pronouns used to refer to sex, or whether they have always referred to gender identity.

If they used to refer to sex, why is it suddenly dehumanising?

If they used to refer to gender identity, how did sexism ever come into it?

And no definition of “gender identity of woman/man/other” before you go. Such a shame. It’s almost as if it can’t be done…

Or at least not without serious disagreement among the TRAs. 😁

One last post.
You asked me about the origin of gender based pronouns in the English language- he and she. I think we can agree that English is not “all languages of human existence”. In addition, an origin is not something a language evolves to but a starting point that language evolves from.

He and she originated in English because of sexism but are not sex based as a unique pronoun for the sex of human beings. I’ll tell you why. He comes from a neutral third person pronoun for a human being: hi. She comes from a pronoun that refers to a female thing: seo. Literally, he is a human, but she is a female thing. Less than human because we were owned female things. Sexism. Misogyny. Slavery.

Language evolved and hi and seo became phonetically closer, becoming he and she in Old English. But women were still property and things, the pronouns still showed that into Middle English.

Modern English and he/she are now gendered pronouns because women are finally considered to be human beings, not things.

The word she comes from dehumanising us to a female thing. I have no idea why anyone would want to stop the English language from evolving further so that we can finally all have pronouns where the root, the origin is a human being, and not a thing.

"I don’t, I am trying to explain to you that you cannot know you are a woman, a human, without thought and without identity. Being a woman requires self consciousness"

A female is a female whether conscious or unconscious of this. Sex is determined at conception and is immutable.

Gender identity requires thought and self determination. It is subjective and fluid.

When 'woman' means adult human female, people are women whether or not they think of themselves as women.

If 'woman' means something that is not determined by natal sex, then this does require thought. Firstly, to understand what is being referred to by the term 'woman' and then to deduce whether the term applies to oneself.