Non binary

[loveforautumn]

Hello!
Not sure if this is the right group but here goes..

My sons just come down to me and said his friend is non binary and he thinks he is. He's 12, his first year in secondary school so its a crazy year for him anyway and wonder if hes picked it up from others but I replied with that's fine you do you, also as your happy im happy

I have no idea what it really means so had to Google it & I still dont fully understand what it means?
He's changed over the last few months hes a very placid, lovely child and just floats around. Im so happy he felt he could come and tell me & he thanked me for being ok with it

Has anyone else had this? Did you do anything or just let them float through finding themselves?

When my son (daunted by genderism) said to me that my generation had not had 'non-binary' people to deal with, I said that we did but they just had a different label then. When he asked what we called them, I said 'Normal'. And the penny dropped for him.

I think it's very natural that young people (very young, in this case) who feel they don't necessarily fit into sex stereotypes should hear about "non-binary" and feel drawn to it as a rejection of those stereotypes.

Of course it doesn't change the sex you are, and hopefully most people come to realise you can challenge stereotypes without rejecting your maleness or femaleness.

Be cautious over his internet access. Try to make sure that ‘non-binary’ doesn’t become the only thing that he focuses on as he develops his identity - is he an athlete, a drama bod, a stem person, an environmentalist, an entrepreneur, a creative etc? It is very easy, especially with internet echo-chambers to become all consuming which limits development of other aspects and a founded personality. A key part of the ‘non-binary’ and ‘trans’ stuff is finding a group to belong to, and part of that is believing that everyone else is against you, that as a group you are struggling together in an unfair world.
Keep him busy, join some clubs. Don’t be negative but be questioning , ‘I don’t really understand, what is non-binary?’ ‘What makes you think that?’ . Be really clear that being gay is fine - non- binary can be a way of avoiding complicated feelings and changes.

Ha! As ever, someone says it better than me in far fewer words.

Wot Thatsrhesummeroverthen sez, above.

Exactly that, in fact - it was what led me to realise my feminist bent.

And pretty much everyone else.

This is why I usually read the whole thread before posting.

Was just so demoralised by the thought that kids are being encouraged to label and pathologise themselves as "different" in this way.

Op does he really understand what non binary means? When my dd was in year 6 a few years ago, she was friends with a girl who said she was all sorts of different gender and sexuality labels, then dd started saying she was pan and despite my attempts to explain what that actually meant, she just didn’t have the cognitive ability at 10-11 to understand it properly at that age. Pre and early puberty is such a confusing and unsettling time, all these big feelings and changes but they’re not mature enough yet to actually understand it all. I’d do a bit of research as pp have suggested and then chat to your ds about what his understanding of being non binary is and why he thinks he’s nb. Discuss labels and as others have already said, the fact that most of us are nb because we’re all different and don’t fit into these silly sexist stereotyped boxes of what it is to be a boy / girl / man woman. Ask him questions about his friend and why they think they’re nb - do you know this friend at all? I’d be concerned about any negative influence, what if the friend is persuading or pressuring your ds in any way to feel he’s nb too? Kids like to feel bonded, part of a group and have a sense of belonging, it’s what makes gender ideology so easy for them to get sucked into. He may feel it deepens the friendship to say he’s non binary too. I hope he hasn’t been persuaded to think this because he’s not a sport loving, competitive, alpha type of boy. Does he have hobbies and interests?

I’d also check what he’s looking at online, who he’s talking to etc, as with many other things out there now, it’s an absolute minefield what kids are coming across and being exposed to on social media, and in things like discord groups that often go undetected by parents. It can start with gender identity and not fitting silly stereotypes, and no wonder so many kids get sucked into the cult of trans through the online world.

I’d say he doesn’t need to put any kind of label on himself, he’s so young, he just needs to be himself, and will hopefully come to realise gender ideology is a harmful way of further enforcing gender stereotypes. My dd is 14 now and thankfully her and most of her friends came to realise this and now think it’s madness that there are 70 something different gender identities

There are some excellent recommendations upthread for resources and to do some research on this so I won’t repeat them (apart from the one suggesting the so called professional who says babies can tell you they’re trans 🙄)

I'd make as little fuss as possible, and quietly keep him away from internet resources and groups that would seek to draw him further into this nonsense. There are too many dodgy people out there enthusiastically offering to help and guide young people and their motives are not pure.

"Be really clear that being gay is fine - non-binary can be a way of avoiding complicated feelings and changes."

I think this is a really important point. While most of us sort-of-know what our sexual orientation is early on, not all of us are emotionally mature enough to know that the thing we're feeling is our sexual orientation because we're not mature enough to feel like sexual beings. Our childhood understanding of human categorisation as 'boys' and 'girls' is the framework through which we understand the world, so if we think we are experiencing things that don't fit the 'boy/man' stereotype because (e.g.) we are not attracted to girls, we may interpret this as meaning we're not really a boy/man when actually it means we are fully a boy/man but a (minority) gay one rather than a (majority) straight one.

In real life very few people fit neatly into one of the binary sex stereotypes. Do you, OP?

The difference between people who declare a non binary identity and most other people is that they tend to think they're different to others. They might look at, for example, a woman wearing makeup and caring for young children, and decide that she must fully "identify" with the regressive gender stereotypes associated with being female.

Because it's often younger people with less life experience pushing this belief system, there's no analysis or deeper understanding of the insidious nature of gender/sex role stereotypes, of how much choice women truly have, or of the systemic disadvantages women still face in society.

12 year olds are by definition immature and self absorbed and that's fine! Adults pushing this belief system could be dangerous as unfortunately the loudest iteration of trans ideology is the one which doesn't believe in safeguarding.

I'd take this situation as a reminder to: check whether you're inadvertently pushing sex stereotypes yourself; check the settings on your internet and what he's looking at; check the staffing of any activities; get your kid out in the world - volunteering perhaps? - meeting less fortunate people, being physical, help him understand that other people are not mere regressive caricatures.

"I've looked it up online darling and I'm non binary too!" Then change the subject.

Agree with pp on the gay points. Working with teenagers, I have seen - admittedly in girls- that kids who think they're gay often seem to switch it to pansexual or non binary pretty quickly.

Some great responses here (with a couple of dodgy exceptions). Hope you feel a bit reassured OP and that your son navigates all this with your reassurance that he can be any kind of young man he wants to be.

I think we are all being naive about non-binary...

Firstly, as we've established, they say it's not conforming to gender stereotypes.
Which means to be a woman IS conforming to stereotypes. Hence men can be women. You can't bloody be a woman and not conform!

Secondly, there's talk of it being a teen counter-culture movement like punk or goth. Yet it can't be; those were all grass-roots music-led movements. But non-binary isn't one, as the BBC, the council, the police, John Lewis, the establishment are all pushing for it and we are being trained at work about it!

Thirdly, it encompasses so many people who are then automatically part of, and on the side of, the TRA movement, swelling the TRA ranks with confused kids who think they are doing the right and cool thing supporting "Trans rights".

Fourthly, I hear there are non-binary surgeries...

“Fourthly, I hear there are non-binary surgeries”

There are. I know at least one female person with a non-binary identity having a double mastectomy to conform to their NB identity.

And male people are now offered either nullification genital surgeries or to keep their penis and also have a cavity inserted into their body.

I think some people want to think that this is a mostly a harmless phase. I don’t consider it that way.

A recent court case involved a male with gender nullification surgery who identifies as “non binary” trying to get special treatment.

The thought of having to do work training on Punks and Goths 😂😅

I don’t think it’s harmless at all. I just think that sometimes it’s better not to directly challenge it in individual young people, because they are being told to reject people who disagree by bad actors, and they are vulnerable to social contagion/groupthink/fads.

I would not indulge this as at all. I work in education and the sheer volume of kids who are declaring themselves as NB or trans is off the scale. We often have small friendship groups who have all declared themselves NB or trans. The majority of them revert back over time It's nothing more than a social contagion.

Wasn't Diane Ehresaft wondering if chickens cried? or committed suicide?

You mean this clip?

https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/1532347722111516672?s=46

This is Michelle Forcier.

unherd.com/newsroom/detransitioner-files-lawsuit-against-gender-affirming-clinicians/

I LOVE that clip. Was feeling a bit fed up, so just re-watched. Thank you!

🐔

I agree with all this, apart from "another key difference between the male and female experiences of growing up" as my male experience is very similar (but of course expectations of boys and men are different). Obviously the details of my experience are quite different from a girl's, but I recognise all the general aspects of what you describe. I'm not sure if I have explained what I mean very clearly, but it's the best I can do.

Nobody knows what non binary is because it's utter bollox.
I've always been a tomboy and a biker, I'm still a woman. I just don't fit the modern regressive stereotype of what a woman should be i.e makeup and handbags.
It doesn't make me non binary.

I'm sorry to hear that. I can well imagine boys experiencing it, too, and don't intend to minimise that for a second. While I'm worried typing this may appear to do just that, though, I do wonder if there's a difference in the character and extent of the discomfort on average, & "overall"? Eg. a part of it for girls is becoming subject to the male gaze - that sense of suddenly becoming aware of yourself as... prey to that, in a awful way... My discomfort was very much tied up with how bodies are seen. I don't know - thought experiment! - to what extent it would have been alleviated if I was growing up on whatever that Marvel Universe(?) Amazonian island is called, but I am very sure that would have changed the experience to some degree.

ETA Like you, I worry about how I've explained that - and, again, I really hope it doesn't seem to disregard your own experience. There must be so much unpleasantness unique to the male side that I can't begin to understand, either. And it's impossible to describe anyway, isn't it?

Thanks for your reply. I'm old enough for a lot of my adolescent experiences to have blurred into a vague memory of confusion and embarrassment, unless I deliberately dwell on my memories. Please don't worry about my feelings! And I apologise (not that it will resolve anything) for the male gaze. I think it's partly innate (an evolutionary construct) and partly socialisation - page 3 of the Sun, magazines on the top shelf of newsagents, even fashion designed to draw attention. And these days the porn isn't hidden away on the top shelf.

Please don't apologise for a second! (You tempted me for one awful moment just then to thank you for being such a fantastic "ally", and I don't think I could ever forgive myself for using that ridiculous word in earnest - what a narrow escape! 😜)