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>>

Belief in an innate gender identity and belief in a god are similar. They both require faith in something unprovable and intrinsic to the inner feelings and belief of a person. In fact you almost have to be quasi-religious to believe in a gender identity because it requires a belief in some sort of soul, or separation of body and spirit for someone to be “born in the wrong body”.

This.

Changing access to include those who would be included anyway but with a different label doesn’t impose on you. If you want to be rude, and not address a person the way they prefer, that is your right. Just like people can call you Mrs DH Surname all day long when you prefer Dr your surname.

Someone can think they are nonbinary, and conform to girly girl stereotypes.

🤣🤣 This flies in the face of everything people who claim to be NB say, and if this is true it renders it even more meaningless 🤣🤣.

You are describing a woman who is gender noncomformimg, not a NB person.

But aren’t you the one pointing out that Canada is making “misgendering” hate speech? How is that not imposing? Do you object to that?

How do you know she's not describing a "NB person"? It's from her perspective, not theirs.

So tell us the difference, other than one declaring it an identity and the other not.

What do I have to do to be gender conforming/non conforming? Pop on a frilly dress, mend a car? Does it matter what country or era I’m living in?

Or is it all sexist bollocks?

Are you saying all NB people are gender conforming, @BabaBarrio? Because that seems a bit odd.

No it doesn’t. I don’t understand how posters can be so confused. This isn’t a hard concept.

It’s no different from learning that in some cultures the future is behind you and the past in front of you. You need a bit of flexibility to understand that not everyone conceives of or experiences reality the same as everyone else.

OP I think you’re looking for logic where there isn’t any logic.

Some people, let’s call them NBs, think that everybody else has an innate sense inside their mind/soul of either being male or being female, and this innate sense leads those people to dress and act in certain ways (that are sexist stereotypes). But the NBs don’t “feel male” or “feel female” either. So they say “Aha! I am something different: I am non binary.”

What this ignores is that no one feels male or female, gender is a made up concept, you just have a body and that’s it.

I’ve noticed that most people who have gender distress had sexist parents who at some point told them “You can’t have/do that because that’s for the opposite sex.” If a boy likes pink and dancing, but is told that only girls like pink and dancing, the boy may conclude that he is really a girl. The obvious solution, of being a boy who wears pink and dances but is nontheless a boy, seems too complicated for some activists and so they get very worked up about inventing new lables instead.

I just don't see their identity label as meaningful in any way, because I don't believe in gender identity ideology 🤷‍♀️

No you’ve misunderstood re medicalisation. What I mean is: to buy into the non binary concept props up the entire TRA message, which brings with it the push to medicalise (by encouraging male and female people to attempt the impossible, ie try to change sex via drugs and surgery. Also there are cases of people identifying as NB feeling like they need hormones to ‘balance themselves out’).

Also ‘the internal sense of being’ which moves a woman, say, to claim she is not a woman, of course circles around to the notion that her sense of being is not female as proscribed by society. It always comes back to stereotypes, and reinforces the notion that they are what makes a woman, and what makes a man.

No
A woman who is not 'stereotypically fememine' is a gender nonconforming woman
A NB person thinks that because they are not 'stereotypically fememine' they are not a woman

No. How is it you are confusing gender conformity with gender identity?

Because you said a particular non conforming woman couldn't be non binary. Failing to see why.

I'm not the person you're asking, but I have a few thoughts.

The modern West, where the current concept of nonbinary is more prevalent, is marked by its individualism. Third gender labels are no longer imposed and are identities the individual can take for themselves.

I mentioned in a pp that people with nonbinary identities tend to have additional complicating factors that would make them feel out of place. In days gone by, communities were diverse. A village would be made up of you, your neighbour, little Polly with her skipping rope, that odd man in the pub, old Mrs Smith down the road, the lads at the coal mine. Everyone had different personalities, worldviews, jobs and hobbies.

Nowadays we have to choose our communities, and we largely do this by finding like-minded individuals. We gather around a certain idea or interest and sometimes, like some real-life Flanderization effect, it can become our defining feature.

As for sexism, I think sexist stereotypes have strengthened since the 80s or so. But life as a woman in the West is more favourable than in some of the aforementioned times and cultures. It is notable that women are more likely to identify as nonbinary, and I definitely think gender identity theory hinges on a desire to reject gender expectations, but to say it's only because of sexist culture would ignore all the sexist cultures that don't have this concept.

Personally I think the current Western concept of nonbinary arises from a culture that is both sexist and individualistic, and that's what makes it different from third genders in other places.

No. NB don’t identify exclusively as a woman or as a man. A NB woman will still identify as a woman to a certain degree or at certain times.

Perhaps it's all simply nonsense, and that's why you never get the same definition twice, and why no one can explain why it's not based on stereotypes yet people can have a "feeling" that they aren't a woman.

Thinking you are female doesn’t require a belief in an innate female essence. I don’t understand the inability of people to comprehend that.

Thinking you’re British doesn’t require a belief in an innate British essence.

Thinking you’re alive doesn’t require a belief in god, or faith in anything.

Identity simply doesn’t equal religion.

The way you’re talking is like a religious person who can’t understand that there’s such a thing as atheism.

Yeah but it’s a bit pretentious and I’m not like other girls isn’t it?

I do have a lot of NB friends and they are all lovely, but I do wonder what they think is going on in my brain compared to theirs!

Many feminists reject patriarchal standards of beauty.

How is that ‘gender conforming’?

No. NB don’t identify exclusively as a woman or as a man. A NB woman will still identify as a woman to a certain degree or at certain times.

Or as neither.

I didn’t say that. A poster wrote a description of a gender nonconforming woman and conflated that with having a NB gender identity.

I think that depends on how often they tell them! (And of course vice versa.)