Inside the mind of a non-binary woman

[RogueFemale]

This article popped up on Apple news this morning. A first person account of a woman's experience of feeling she is 'trans' / 'nonbinary'.

It starts off with her saying: "When my date used my correct pronouns, I felt a sudden surge of happiness. ... It was then that I realised how little my identity had been affirmed in my previous relationships with cis men, and how this simple act, which should be the bare minimum, felt monumental."

It was a startling insight into how these people depend so much on someone else's validation and others saying the right words (in this woman's case, "they/them") to support their fragile sense of self. (It's also unclear how pronouns would come up during a one-to-one date).

Anyway, just sharing because it's an honest and revealing account of this woman's mental state.

She's with a trans-identifying-woman now, and seems happy. Well, sort of. "Now, every intimate movement encompasses our transness, whether it’s a ‘no-chest’ day, or a day I feel most comfortable being intimate with a binder on."

It seems like a very roundabout way of being two lesbians.

metro.co.uk/2026/05/12/sex-a-fellow-trans-person-put-off-cis-men-life-3-28322552/

I'm beginning to suspect that TransParent gets more validation from identifying as a trans parent than her child gets from identifying as a trans man.

🎯

Thank you for your reply.

You haven't actually answered though.

You've said people are different, but not what the difference is between girls and boys that means we need, or can even apply, different words, nor what it is that is the same enough between girls and girls or boys and boys that it makes sense to share a word.

So I'll try again.

Genuinely, what does "boy" or "man" even mean to you?

Why in your view do these words even need to exist at all? What's the actual, meaningful difference between the people who are "boys and men" and the people who are "girls and women"?

What do you consider that your child has in common with male bodied people that makes the word "boy" or "man" appropriate for both the majority of those people and your child?

When you agree that your child is a "boy" what are you saying about all the other people in the world who are also "boys"?
When you agree that your child is not a "girl", what are you saying about all the other people in the world who are "girls"?

If "people are all different" why can some be grouped as "boys and men" while others are "girls and women"? Are there actually no differences between them? And if so, why does it matter so much to "come out" or "use the right pronouns" or "just get to pee (under exactly the right label?)"

If sex and gender are different (and I certainly do agree with that) why does gender take the names, and with it the resources and the history, of the sexes at all? Surely that sinple choice is saying that the people who name themselves "trans girl", "trans boy" see themselves as having something in common with the sex whose name they take?

What is the connection between the sex of a, to use the language of your faith, "cis" boy and the gender of a "trans" boy such that Genderists like yourself consider both to be types of "boy"?

Why does this connection somehow determine how the body should be treated in sports, privacy etc even though the body sex is different?

Because despite your prejudices about the people who question you, I do not dismiss trans and non binary people's experiences at all. What I dismiss the language they use to describe it.

I do not believe a trans "boy" is in reality any sort of a "boy" at all. I do not believe she is any more like a "boy" than any person of her sex. I believe she is describing a genuine feeling but has got the wrong end of the stick about what that feeling means, projecting her own ideas of "boyhood" onto herself and others as if they were an objective truth when the reality is they are just her own projections echoing back at her in her own head.

I believe trans people have unconsciously projected onto sex - yes, sex - a whole load of their own prejudices about who belongs in which body.

And while these prejudices are usually along sexist lines because that's the culture we all grow up in, they don't have to align with traditional sexism at all, because they are the personal prejudices of the individual based on their own experiences and triggers).

What links them is not the exact shape but the act of using the binary fact sex differences as a metaphor for the mind's self expression and calling it "gender".

That is why "gender" can mean anything and nothing, because it's as individual as the person projecting it. And that is why travs women are not women in any meaningful sense, nor trans boys boys. Certainly not in any sense that matters when it comes to our common language, rights, history or. political voice

So if you think it's more than that, if your assertion is that trans people are not just describing their genuine personal belief that they are a "boy" or "girl" but that there is an actual empirical quality that makes them so, a genuine attribute shared by most male people and also found in trans men and boys, then you need to name and describe it. Because until then, trans "son" notwithstanding, my hypothesis fits the facts better than yours

We may not agree exactly when blonde becomes brunette but we all know the difference between very blonde and very dark. We have stable meanings with fuzzy edges, not no meaning at all.

So while you do not have to answer me, wthout answers it is very hard to believe there is anything real here at all, simply the prejudices of trans people about others accepted too readily, then a lot of waffle to try and justify it retrospectively.

Some people think they are clever to say "just because you can't understand something doesn't mean it isn't real".

But really clever people can say "I know there's something here I can't see, something I don't understand, but I can still learn about it by observing what it effects and how. And I can still test whether the claims made about it are consistent and logical.

I do not need to know what something is to know what something is to know what it is not.

So far I see nothing in what you have said to support what you claim to be true.

Sigh. The point is if you really didn't buy into the stereotypes you'd have no concept of "raised as a cis girl" at all.

To name it, even to reject it, means you did build it into your framework for the world. You identify as gnc. That's still labelling yourself relative to gender norms.

Truly going beyond gender means not even noticing what a "cis girl" is supposed to be in the first place. She's just a girl, however she shows up.

Genuinely, there is a difference between sex and gender.
Yes, we all know that.
Sex is unarguable and binary.
Gender is a social construct and (currently, in a Western context) has us thinking (I'm being v broad here) that girls and women like pink and should have long hair and be interested in ballet, and boys and men like blue and should have short hair and be interested in men's football/diggers/beer.

Accepting difference is an option.
Indeed.
It is perfectly possible to accept that a boy can wear a dress and not want to be trans or NB. Or that a girl can be into engineering or fast cars and also still be a girl.

I'm entirely comfortable to accept their is a difference between "cis" girls and trans girls. This seems bloody obvious.

What I'm not so clear on is why this is apparently less different than the difference between "cis" girls and any other male child, nor indeed what the difference between a "cis" girl and any other female child is.

Accepting difference isn't the issue here. It's being forced to accept and accomodate the sameness of gender that apparently applies across sexes, is never explained or demonstrated but simply asserted and enforced, and that rejects so many women's own self knowledge that flies in the face of so many women's own life experiences, that is the problem!

Girls are female, transgirls are male. Girls, boys, women, men, do not require a prefix.

Yes, of course that's so.

That's my point.

Being trans has nothing to do with what clothes you prefer, how stereotypically masculine or feminine you present, or who you sleep with.

And neither does being cis.

It's more like:
Whatever clothes you prefer or however stereotypically masculine or feminine you present, you are either male or female. There's no need for words like trans, non-binary or, especially, 'cis', which is just pseudoscientific hooey.

You are a GNC cis-woman, I think?

What does gender non-conforming mean in that instance? Particularly what does the ‘gender’ part mean?

Edit: I’m not suggesting this from a ‘trans’ perspective but asking what gender non-conforming means to you. Is it stereotypes? Is it something else?

So all you leave is how male or female you "feel".

And since if you are female you cannot know what it feels like to be male, and if you are male you cannot know what it feels like to be female, your whole pack of cards falls into a very untidy heap.

Oh good grief.

From an early age, I was completely confused by the idea of 'how to be a woman'. Women just are. There is no right or wrong way to be female.

I. Assumed. He. Was. A. Girl. Based. On. His. Appearance.

Turned. Out. He. Was. Trans.

And I raised him to know that women can be who they want, that he should reject stereotypes and not listen to anyone else. Same with his brothers, who arguably don't have anything approaching a stereotypically male dad.

I 'm sorry you don't want to hear this, but nothing I did made him trans. He doesn't fit your theory; no trans person does. Trans people are not created, they are born.

I didn't want him to be trans. I knew it'd put him in danger - and I was right. Mostly from people who are angry that trans people dare exist, and live as themselves. Anti-trans violence is socially acceptable, after all. Their bodies are considered fair game for sexual assault. When they kill themselves or are murdered, people celebrate. Do you really think their parents don't see all that?

Anti-trans violence is socially acceptable, after all. Their bodies are considered fair game for sexual assault. When they kill themselves or are murdered, people celebrate.

Evidence, for the UK, please

On further reflection I don't think you can make this assertion attack up in real life.

I can show you a lot of women who rarely or never wear a dress. Can you show me one female identifying trans person who rarely or never wears feminine clothes? Likewise I think you'd have to search long and hard to show me a male identify trans person wearing a dress.

In my case (experiences obviously differ), I just don't think there's a set way to be a woman. I'm still baffled by the idea of masculine and feminine, or presenting as either.

I had to fight against what other women expected me to be. But I've never had a plan, I'm just like this. I got called a man, obviously - but never wanted to be male, felt male or did steretypically male stuff.

Absolute irony is that I used to think rejecting the Pink Princess stereotype made me more of a feminist. My son, as a small child, made me realise how narrow that thinking was - of course a girl can embrace whatever they want, and be no less of a feminist. And then, after I learned this lesson, it turns out he's trans. Brilliant, honestly.

Oh, get lost. I donated towards the funeral costs of a trans boy who killed himself partly because transphobia had ruined his life. He wrote about it in his suicide note. When his grief-stricken mum shared it, she was monstered online and her tormentors threatened to show up at the service.

My son was put through hell at school by people who treated him as subhuman. I know how incredibly lucky I am that he survived. Also what it took out of me to ensure it.

The evidence is online. Take a look at the comments under posts about The trans teen stabbed to death (in The US, yes). And about Brianna Ghey.

My son attended a vigil for her. Trans kid after trans kid were given microphones and all.asked the same thing: leave us alone.

People who are trans now are expressing something that exists in every society. There are always people who want to live as the opposite sex. From everything I read the size of that group in each society, the split between men annd women, and the cultural forces they are expressing fluctuate.

Yes, people who live outside sexual and gender boundaries are vulnerable. They are targets. Brianna Ghey, that poor person who was stabbed on their own doorstep by someone from a dating app, that lesbian couple who were attacked on a bus, all these things exist in the uk. But the most dangerous thing a woman can do is attempt to leave a relationship, isn’t it? However she is living, whoever she is living with.

I can’t, I won’t pretend that men and women aren’t who they are. I don’t wish any harm to anyone. I just wish that women could live the lives they want to live and be honest. If they really have to call it living as a transman, I wish that wasn’t the case but I see that it does satisfy something that they need.

"And if someone won't use my correct pronouns, or try to, in dont want them in my life"

Sounds like a handy get-out clause!

Every time I hear someone explain how NB they are it just seems to reinforce all the stereotypes that previous generations have literally spent decades trying to break. It seems quite regressive to me.
Wearing a dress with timberland boots? How does that prove or explain anything? Didn't we all do that in the 1990s?

Anecdata, however tragic, is still anecdata. People can be foul to other people for all sorts of reasons. Kids can be foul to other kids.
You made a sweeping generalisation that you are unable to evidence.

That's honestly a failure of imagination on your part. Gnc trans people exist, and are online. Trans women often go out without make-up and in trousers.

There are two separate issues here:

1. Dysphoria is eased when trans people are accepted for who they are, regardless of appearance. But in order to be accepted, they often feel forced to look more stereotypically masculine or feminine.

If they dress stereotypically they get accused of nonsense like 'womanface'.

If they don't, they aren't accepted as their gender.

1. Some trans people are gnc and sometimes dress to reflect that.

I'm sorry you don't think the kid 'stacks up' but he definitely exists.

Read more.

If being a boy rather than a girl isn't defined by the kind of body you've got ( it can't be, if people claim to "be" rather than just "wish they were", when they have the other kind of body) -

If it isn't liking and doing boyish rather than girlish things ( it can't be, because people gender-nonconform without repudiating their sex) -

What is left? What is the difference between a boy and a girl if it isn't either of those things?

This is where I always get stuck.

That's a great post Flirts.

The enormity and tragedy of what genderists have done to the young is off the scale. Their assault on safeguarding, their open messing with the minds of the young by pretending that a sex change is both possible and desirable is shameful.
I rarely criticise parents (walk a mile in our shoes and all that) but when someone repeatedly posts bad faith arguments, darvoes their way through threads, accuses posters desperate to protect children and young people of all manner of crimes, I reserve the right to call out all the bad faith arguments.

Apologies for the numeration 😁 Was born daft. And I'm pretty tired.

ahh life of a carer. Sometimes awake, often half-asleep, always pushing on.

You are managing to back up the impression given by the subject of this thread, that 'trans' is all about mentally unstable egotistical bores using the latest buzz term to bully the world abound them.

Of course you are baffled by gender enthusiasts trying to apply the grammatical terms 'masculine' and feminine' to people. They are a way of classifying words, not living beings. Corrupting and distorting language leads to confusion, that is what it is meant to do. Sometimes with sinister intent, see Sigusch and 'cis'.