opposition to the term non-binary

[Ettina]

On 10/31/2016 at 4:22 PM, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

we are born thinking, "wah" and are at the basic form of self-aware. then someone goes "hello there [boy]" and so then we think "I am a [boy]" 

but at some point a trans person in order to conceive of themselfs as trans, needs to question gender in some way. whether that is asking, "am I really a [boy]" or asking "what is the point of gender at all" or something else, there is necessarily going to be a prolonged period of introspection that falls into the [nonbinary] realm of self-identity. 

 

even if during that period of being [nonbinary] a transperson goes around talking about their identity as a [woman], part of them is still identifiable as [nonbinary]

 

Too tired to find links right now, but I've read research studies finding that kids have pretty strong implicit gender identity from an early age. Most babies instinctively show more interest in watching a baby of the same sex as them, and can recognize babies' sex much more easily than adults can. And binary transgender preschoolers react exactly the same as cisgender kids with the same gender identity on various implicit tests for gender identity.

 

I'm sure many binary trans people go through a phase of calling themselves nonbinary, but that doesn't mean they actually are. It's one thing to feel something implicitly and another to explicitly identify it.

 

I mean, I used to think I was straight. That doesn't mean that any part of me is actually straight. I was just mistaken about myself.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

the way the word nonbinary is actually being used, it means non-cis. whether or not that is its intended meaning, the true meaning, or what, nonbinary has strong cultural context to support its use when describing anyone who isn't cis. 

[Dodecahedron314]

4 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

the way the word nonbinary is actually being used, it means non-cis. whether or not that is its intended meaning, the true meaning, or what, nonbinary has strong cultural context to support its use when describing anyone who isn't cis. 

I disagree--far more people know about the existence of binary trans people than of nonbinary people, and generally those who know enough about gender to know of the existence of nonbinary people are also mindful that not all trans people are nonbinary and therefore don't use it as an umbrella term in that way. 

[Ettina]

6 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

the way the word nonbinary is actually being used, it means non-cis. whether or not that is its intended meaning, the true meaning, or what, nonbinary has strong cultural context to support its use when describing anyone who isn't cis. 

 

I have never heard anyone refer to an FtM or MtF who completely identifies as their gender as 'non-binary'.

 

Not saying it never happens (never underestimate the capacity for people to come up with strange misinterpretations), but it's certainly not a common mistake to make. Far more often people make the mistake of thinking a non-binary person is a binary trans person than vice versa.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

tbh I don't even understand how the word nonbinary works, the way it is used. between male and female, that is two, binary, and something composed of or excluding those two things is still binary. so the only way that it makes sense, to me, for nonbinary to mean anything regarding gender, is if there is a literal third gender involved, yet people include dual gender and agender as nonbinary. that doesn't actually work at all! 

 

I'm literally just saying what I've seen, and I've seen plenty of people say they are nonbinary because they are say, demigirl, or genderless, or something along that line, and anyone who is trans falls into those categories, just they say they are trans because that is the "most meaningful" word really. 

 

the word nonbinary is just inherently confusing. 

[Confidential_Con]

It doesn't seem that confusing to me; it's nonbinary, as in not part of the gender binary where you must be male or female; not both, not neither, just one or the other. Anything deviating from that is therefore nonbinary, as it doesn't fall into those neat two boxes of male or female.

 

Agender or genderless is nonbinary because it's in neither box. Demi-genders are nonbinary because they are partly in a box, partly out, and in the binary there can be no part that's out. Bigender (and other multigenders) are nonbinary because they're in more than one box instead of one.

 

I can't say I've heard anyone call all trans people nonbinary, but I'll trust you on it that you have. In my experience, its far more common for people to say that all nonbinary people are trans, even though some nonbinary people (sometimes because of past harassment from binary trans people, or simply personal choice) choose to identify just as nonbinary, not trans.

[Mark]

On 07/12/2016 at 6:17 PM, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

the way the word nonbinary is actually being used, it means non-cis. whether or not that is its intended meaning, the true meaning, or what, nonbinary has strong cultural context to support its use when describing anyone who isn't cis. 

Not withstanding that cis/trans is a binary classification system...

[Ettina]

5 hours ago, Mark said:

Not withstanding that cis/trans is a binary classification system...

 

True. There's actually a grey area of people who don't really have a problem identifying as their assigned gender but don't feel a strong sense that they are that gender. Sometimes called cis-genderless or cis-apathetic, but some might also identify as demigender (AFAB demigirl, AMAB demiboy).

 

In my case I feel like the only reason I'm cis female is a) because I'm really squicked out by male genitalia and if I had them I'd want to get rid of them because they're gross (apologies to anyone who has those bits), and b) I feel proud of being a feminist woman. Apart from that, I'm not sure I'd care that much if I suddenly transformed into a guy.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

if people are clasified as male, female, transmale, or transfemale, that is four classifications, and isn't binary. 

 

if on the otherhand you're saying that it's classification based on male or female is why it is binary, then the large majority of genders that are popularly classified as nonbinary are actually binary. 

 

the word is problematic. it's intuitively confusing. 

[Confidential_Con]

5 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

if people are clasified as male, female, transmale, or transfemale, that is four classifications, and isn't binary. 

 

No, they aren't. Trans men and trans women aren't some separate category, they're men and women. And those categories still exclude nonbinary people.

 

5 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

if on the otherhand you're saying that it's classification based on male or female is why it is binary, then the large majority of genders that are popularly classified as nonbinary are actually binary. 

 

How so? How are, say, agender or bigender actually binary? Agender is neither male nor female, while bigender is both male and female; both break the gender binary.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

a transwoman knows, painfully so, that she is not a women, and would die to be a woman. and she's loathe to hear you call her a man. 

 

 

agender is not non-binary because it does not deny the binary-ness of male or female by saying neither, 0 of one element plus 0 of a second element is not outside the capable mix of those two eleements. you just put nothing in your mix, easy to make using your two elements. bigender is composed of two elements. all these things are binary in that regard. I understand that nonbinary is SUPPPOSED to talk about people who aren't "in the traditional binary male or female genders" but that is literally every human who does not count themselves as cis. 

 

 

nonbinary, necessarily, either means only genders that involve a third gender outside of male, female, or any mix of male or female or lack thereof. or, it must mean all genders that aren't cis. it does not mean either, however - the way the word "nonbinary" is being used is to segregate bigots from transpeople from the implied "better" other genders. 

 

if it were some other word than nonbinary, I wouldn't have these complaints. but since the word is, specifically, nonbinary, it's problematic. 

[DannyFenton123]

5 minutes ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

a transwoman knows, painfully so, that she is not a women, and would die to be a woman. and she's loathe to hear you call her a man. 

 

Why do you think transwomen are different from women?

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

.... 

[Confidential_Con]

3 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

a transwoman knows, painfully so, that she is not a women, and would die to be a woman.

Trans women are women. I don't see how this is even up for debate.

 

I don't understand your other arguments; we seem to be using 'gender binary' in different ways. You seem to be saying that any gender that is not something 'other' than male or female is part of the gender binary, and seem to be saying the gender binary is just the presence and/or intensity of male or female.

 

But I'm talking about the gender binary as in the social construct of male or female being the only options. It's the construct that means in the gender binary while men can have feminine or netural traits and women can have masculine or neutral traits, no one can:

a) be both male and female (i.e., bigender, multigenders)

b) lack a gender (agender, genderless, neutrois)

c) be a gender other than male or female (many genderqueer and nonbinary identities)

or d) any combination of these (demigenders, genderfluid, genderflux)

 

Therefore, all those genders are nonbinary; they don't fit into the strict binary of "male or female: nothing else", and that's what I'm referring to.

 

3 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

or, it must mean all genders that aren't cis.

Cis isn't a gender, it's just a state of being. Cis male isn't a different gender from trans male, it's the same gender.

 

3 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

the way the word "nonbinary" is being used is to segregate bigots from transpeople from the implied "better" other genders. 

I really don't know what you mean by this. Are you saying that people are just calling themselves nonbinary to be arrogant or something? Because if so, that's... kind of really shitty.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

1. if a trans women is a woman, why are you calling her a trans women? 

 

2. some people are not attracted to trans people, and this is VERY VALID. it isn't transphobia, it's the mere matter that there are REAL traits that stick in a person who is trans, because of either growing up, social traits, or because of puberty, physical traits, and these things make trans people LOOK VERY DIFFERENT. this isn't a criticism, it's a reality of how trans people are different from cis people. 

 

3. a HUGE issue for trans people is gender dysphoria, trans people live a life whether they're lucky and they "get over it" early on or whether they fear it their whole life, they fear that they don't pass. this is a fundamental experience that a transperson has, that while a cis person does experience gender insecurities from time to time, the small details that greatly affect the power of these fears is different from a cis person to a trans person.

 

4. trans people do not experience the natural bodies of cis people, trans women do not have periods for example and without risky surgery do not get pregnant.

 

5. trans people typically grow up misgendered, this means that they miss a lot of fundamental cutural growth that cis people don't even notice and naturally do - and because our society is, no, because our brains naturally develop in a way to mark the difference between genders, a trans person if they wish to pass must literally work to do so, while a cis person can have a lazy ass day in their jammies all day and their natural state will pass with flying colors. 

 

6. trans people, assuming they're taking hormone treatment, have many extra health risks above cis people. additionally, in our now time period, trans people have a much higher rate of depression, suicide, homelessness, unemployment, and even when employed often live below the poverty line. 

 

 

 

ALL OF THESE THINGS are VERY REAL things that trans people have to deal with on a higher level, different level, or more often, than cis people, that fundamentally make their lives very different from a cis persons lives, and is plenty of reason to say that trans people are not, in fact, cis people. 

 

 

DON'T GET ME WRONG it's very flattering that you want to say that "trans people are real men and women" and to a certain extent YES they are CERTAINLY men and women, really really, validly so, yay positive thinking. but if you DENY the realities that make living as a trans person a LIVING HELL, then you are a worse kind of bigot than all the people who reject my gender. I'd rather deal with those assholes than someone who erases all the things I struggle with because they think somehow that'll make the problems go away. 

 

 

 

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

5 hours ago, Confidential_Con said:

part of the gender binary

I have discussed this already in this thread, multiple times. 

 

 

"the gender binary" as you are using it in this quoted sentence is a term that was born of bigotry (not that you intend to use it that way - the reason it is popular is due to bigotry) where nonbinary-idealists (not that anyone is or isn't associating nonbinary with idealism) coined the term out of hate for their opponents. 

 

what "binary" actually means, ignoring that awkward controvercy, it means one of two things - either that a subject is purposefully categorized into two, often in a way where there is more grey area than literal one or the other, but things are categorized in two anyway becuase for whichever reason that's the way the nomenclature works. 

 

or, it means "composed of two elements" which includes anything that has some of one and some of the other, in however many quantities. A binary nomenclature would include things that have no elements, if such things would be needed to be included in the nomenclature. 

 

 

so either 

 

a) nonbinary is literally an ideology

b) nonbinary means to not categorize everyone by their birth sex. AKA non-cis

c) nonbinary means more-than-two genders composing gender identity, meaning there exists a third gender such as maverick etc. 

 

 

 

 

I expect nonbinary to mean C. but instead, people are using it to mean B). except, for some reason, they some how think that Trans people should be grouped in with cis people or something, I don't know, it's rude. 

 

also, there are people who use nonbinary in the A) meaning, and that I find problematic in its own right... 

[m4rble]

3 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

4. trans people do not experience the natural bodies of cis people, trans women do not have periods for example and without risky surgery do not get pregnant.

Does that mean there are any risky surgeries where they can get pregnant? (genuine question)

[aussiekirkland]

@cute kitty Meow! Mewo! Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that while you're discussing the linguistic meaning of non binary, others are discussing the cultural meaning of it.

 

And if that's the case then both arguments would be true within their own contexts, and this conversation is kind of pointless. Or am I missing the point?

[Zema]

25 minutes ago, aussiekirkland said:

@cute kitty Meow! Mewo! Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that while you're discussing the linguistic meaning of non binary, others are discussing the cultural meaning of it.

 

And if that's the case then both arguments would be true within their own contexts, and this conversation is kind of pointless. Or am I missing the point?

That's what I gathered. That's why I stopped responding to this thread.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

I am talking about both the cultural and linguistic meaning. the cultural meaning does not match the linguistic meaning. this is why I don't like the term. its linguistic meaning, compared with its cultural meaning, forces it to only have negative connotations. either it's directly being used as an ideologistic term, or it implies that ideology anyway, in a way which categorically refuses to accept either cis people or trans people or both. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Zemaddog said:

That's what I gathered. That's why I stopped responding to this thread.

clearly you have not. the only reason for you to make this post is either to mock me, insult me, or both. 

7 hours ago, m4rble said:

Does that mean there are any risky surgeries where they can get pregnant? (genuine question)

I believe so?  If my vague memory of it is correct, it requires the transplant of a uterus, and it isn't guaranteed to succeed, and isn't sustainable long-term. 

[m4rble]

Well, you need some term for it and nonbinary is the most well known term. I don't think it's meant to be political, just descriptive. It's outside the binary of man and woman. The other definition of binary isn't what's being used here. If someone says they're non-straight that doesn't mean they're automatically opposed to, "straight" it just means it doesn't apply to them. Transmen and transwomen are binary. Transmen are also different from Cismen but they're still men. It's like the earth's hemispheres. You're still in the eastern hemisphere regardless of if you're in the northern or southern hemisphere because those are different dimensions. 

[Dodecahedron314]

9 hours ago, cute kitty Meow! Mewo! said:

I am talking about both the cultural and linguistic meaning. the cultural meaning does not match the linguistic meaning. this is why I don't like the term. its linguistic meaning, compared with its cultural meaning, forces it to only have negative connotations. either it's directly being used as an ideologistic term, or it implies that ideology anyway, in a way which categorically refuses to accept either cis people or trans people or both.

As an agender person who literally identifies as nonbinary, there is no "nonbinary ideology". People who identify as nonbinary, as in neither strictly male (either cis or trans) nor strictly female (either cis or trans), do not identify as such because they don't believe in the existence of cis people, or deny the existence of binary trans people, or refuse to accept that cis people and binary trans people have different experiences due to their different initial physical circumstances, or don't understand dysphoria (because I can personally confirm that dysphoria in nonbinary people is definitely a thing). It's because we don't fit within the structure known as the gender binary that only recognizes people who are strictly male OR (not "and", not "neither-nor") strictly female, hence the term "binary", implying only two mutually exclusive possibilities, and so what else are we supposed to call ourselves other than a word that literally means at its linguistic core "not within the binary"? That's the only thing that's broad enough yet precise enough to encompass everyone who's neither exclusively male nor exclusively female. And I still really don't see what you're talking about with the differences between cultural and linguistic meaning, because I still have yet to encounter anyone who uses nonbinary to refer to anyone who's not cis or in order to demean people who identify solely with one binary gender or the other or anything like that. This is not anyone's attempt to be political about anything. This is a group of people's efforts to establish new terminology with which they can refer to themselves because nothing that currently exists works for them, because nothing that currently exists even recognizes their existence in the first place and so they have no other choice if they want to be clear about what and who they are. 

[Philbo Wiseroot]

I'd just like to issue a general reminder to keep it civil. And remember that we're talking about others identities here, so please be mindful of that and respectful of those identities. Thanks  

---

 

To turn to the topic, I see no issue with the term "nonbinary". If male and female constitute a binary, then using the term for people outside of that binary makes the most logical sense. Of course, the ideal is to use the specific identities, but that becomes unwieldy given the number of identities that fall into the category. 

 

The other alternative is to use "other", which makes me feel not nice every time I have to check the box for sexuality. 

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

18 hours ago, m4rble said:

I don't think it's meant to be political, just descriptive.

I understand what it is meant to be when most reasonable people use it, and because I see it as something that incites anger in those who oppose it, I want it to be recognized for the huge risk the word carries, and to encourage people to use substitutes rather than support a term which is harmful. 

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

15 hours ago, Dodecahedron314 said:

It's because we don't fit within the structure known as the gender binary

 

 

let me quote wikipedia:

 

The gender binary, also referred to as gender binarism (sometimes shortened to just binarism), is the classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine. It is one general type of a gender system. As one of the core principles of genderism, it can describe a social boundary that discourages people from crossing or mixing gender roles, or from identifying with three or more forms of gender expression altogether. Sometimes in this binary model, "sex", "gender" and "sexuality" are assumed by default to align; for example, a male at birth would be assumed masculine in appearance, character traits and behavior, including a heterosexual attraction to females at birth, however this is not always the case. Some groups agree that sex and gender can differ in individuals, while still disagreeing with the idea that gender is non-binary.

 

trans people are literally a cross of gender roles. trans people live a life where either they allow themselves to be perceived as a strange mix between masculinity and femininity, despite the fact that cis people are the same kind of mix in their personality anyway and don't get the same judgment, or a trans person must hide all of the signs of their born sex and purposefully embellish their identifies gender in order to fit in with the gender binary. Transgender people inherently do not fit in The Gender Binary, they are people whos self identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male and female gender. Even a non-transgender transsexual does not fit in The Gender Binary, because as a person who feels as if they belong to the opposite sex, they are crossing gender roles. The Gender Binary expects men to be masculine and women to be feminine. 

 

as long as the meaning of nonbinary means not a part of the gender binary, then it is inherently an ideologistic term because it is a classification of all people who are outside of The Gender Binary. this is a description of what it means to say that a word describes people who don't fit with the structure known as the gender binary. that statement declares that it is an ideologic classification. if people agreed with the ideology of the gender ginary, then they would try to be masculine if they are men and try to be feminine if they are women. but since they do not, and classify themselves as nonbinary, they are inherently stating that they do not conform to an historic paradigm, and are therefore by nature making an ideologic declaration. 

 

and, trans people are part of this, if this is what nonbinary means, then even people who name themselves "cis" are nonbinary, because they are using classification words that are not part of the archaic paradigm we've titled The Gender Binary.