Unironically
So pathetic.
I think loads of people are intimidated by this new generation of people that are…somehow makin up these genders.
Oh no no no honey. Not intimidated. Bored and irritated.
People hear the words non-binary and they’re like “well that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing” – even in the LGBT community there are people who don’t think that we are real and there’s people who think that we are attention-seekers.
Well let’s tease this apart. Yes, I am like “that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing.” That’s because it doesn’t, and it isn’t. It’s just words. On the other hand I certainly don’t think that people who call themselves non-binary are not real – it’s the word they use to describe themselves that I think names a non-reality. People can call themselves angels, gods, flying horses; they go on being real people but what they say about themselves is fictional. And finally – yes, I think people who call themselves non-binary are attention-seekers. I think they’re declaring themselves more important than mere “binary” people.
But hey, you might grow out of it.
Hey, I’m non-binary; my pronouns are “it” and “that asshole”
There is a non-binary playable character in the game Borderlands 3, FL4K. Goes by they/them.
Of course, FL4K is a robot, which is the joke.
Personally, I would like to know why a non-binary identity requires plural pronouns. It is still just the one person, after all. Maybe we should insist on just the one pronoun for non-binary identified people, that pronoun being…..person.
“I identify as non-binary. Which basically means that I don’t feel like I fit into the restrictive boxes of man and woman.”
Wow, congratulations on being a normal human. Most people have some degree of non-conformance to the sex stereotypes. This says nothing about the person; we are not failing at being a man or woman because of that. Rather, it shows the limitations of stereotyping the sexes.
This is no different to any other form of stereotyping. We don’t say that a Mexican is failing to be a Mexican for not being a mariachi fan, we say that a person should not be expected to be a mariachi fan just for being Mexican. It is uncontroversial when talking about nationality, but it is the same logic. Yet here we have people saying that their non-conformance to stereotyped manliness / womanliness means they are not a man / woman.
I wonder if they realise how similar this view is to that of a certain brand of social conservative? To them, a man that is not brave, assertive, heterosexual, etc. etc. is not a ‘proper’ man, and a woman that is not submissive to men, quiet, and heterosexual is not a proper woman. The solution to this is the thing that feminism has been all about since its inception: break the expectations placed on people for their sex.
Quite right, Holms.
I was a non-conformist to my parents, but that was because I conformed to my friends. I had long hair, a flowing beard, wore a Kaftan, beads, sandals, smoked dope, and worked in live theatre. It was the 70’s after all.
A few people questioned my sexuality because of the way I dressed and spoke, but the girls could assure you that underneath that “dress”, it was all masculine.
Yes, we considered ourselves different, rebels, outliers, but we didn’t demand that people addressed us in a certain way or called us by the names we used for ourselves (hippies, heads) because we were secure in our identities and couldn’t have cared less about what others thought of us. We didn’t need people to constantly tell us we were special – we knew we were. Ah, the arrogance of youth. :-)
Are you suggesting I am not really an otter? That’s literal violence!
Roz, my husband was assumed gay because he was a librarian and he read books about art appreciation. Then we got married, and suddenly his neighbors would speak to him without shying away (gay cooties?). He didn’t change; they did (or actually, they didn’t. They just figured out that art-loving librarians might actually be heterosexual males.)
Fl4k’s pronouns make figuring out who the abilities in their talent trees actually target pretty difficult…
I, for one, think that some are attention seekers, but equally I think there are some number who think that gender stereotypes are the literal components of maleness and femaleness. When asked why they think they’re non-binary, the justification is usually some gendered nonsense. They actually believe that tea parties and princess dresses are constitutive of Female, and strength and sports are literally what little boys are made of. Or rather, they believe this at some fundamental level. Ask them if boys can [feminine thing] or if girls can [masculine thing], and they’ll likely say, “Of course.” (Gender norms are binary, so saying that boys can do or be some feminine thing entails not being masculine in that respect.)
But these two perspectives are in opposition. One says, “if p then q,” while the other says, “q and not p.”
I mean, I understand that knowledge isn’t closed under known entailment, but this is some pretty basic stuff.
‘My name is Legion, for we are many’ (Mark, 5: 1-20). And off we go, all galloping down the hill along those pronominal and definitional paths that fork for ever and lead…
Holms @4: Yeah, that’s been my gut feeling about ‘non-binary’ right from the start. To give the word any meaning at all, you end up with a definition that literally applies to the entire human race. Only a sentient Chuck Norris meme could actually achieve ‘maleness’ as defined by the full boat of supposedly masculine traits, and of course the inherent contradictions within the societal definition of ‘femininity’, it’s impossible to construct even a hypothetical model of what a ‘true woman’ would be like if the gender binary actually existed.
Really, most of the non-binaries just need some education on how what they are experiencing is literally the reason feminism exists in the first place, and that they’d stop feeling so out of place if we could actually achieve what radical feminism wants. Unfortunately, most self-ID’ed NBs are deep in trans country, at this point, and thus utterly unaware of how much trans ideology actually is reinforcing the NB’s social discomfort by shoring up traditional gender roles in the first place.
I know this is the least of anyone’s concerns, but why is it not deemed sufficient to just give the third person pronoun you would like people to use when talking about you and let them figure out the rest? Is there any chance that someone would demand to be referred to as “they”, but want you to talk to “him”, and talk about “her” pronouns? Would “they” struggle to keep track of all this “itself”?
What did I do? I’m in moderation!
‘I think there are some number who think that gender stereotypes are the literal components of maleness and femaleness’–yes but why do they think that, when there are so many examples of ‘nonbinary’ male and female people (i.e. all humans) all around them?
There’s that meme I saw a while back (I wish there were some way to tell whether these things are ‘ironic’ or not–I don’t think this one was, but who knows) of a person saying something like ‘sometimes I like to dress up in pretty clothes and wear makeup/and sometimes I like to wear a hoody and trainers/I guess I must be nonbinary!’ Like other people don’t change their clothes. Now that I’m writing this, I’m guessing it must, or at least may, have to do with some people’s primary contact with other humans or parahumans being through media, where people’s characters are generally fixed.
Sometimes I’m very accommodating. Which makes me a transwoman. Very often I’m mediating between AFAB family members who are fighting over something, and neglecting my own desires to placate theirs. (Which probably makes them transmen, because they’re acting so masculine.)
But other times I’m very selfish and go after what I want. So I guess that I’m non-binary. Hear me roar.
Which is a relief. Because I’ve heard that walking around in high heels is difficult and painful. (If I really wanted to wear high heels that would probably mean that I’m a genuine woman.)
This is a great insight. NBs wouldn’t exist without the trans cult, but it seems helpful to contemplate the exact relationship. Are NBs a product of the trans cult as a sub-variety of trans people, or are they (unknowingly) implicitly rejecting the trans cult – which, while proclaiming the erasure of binaries, is one of the most binary parts of society?
I feel for kids growing up these days. Gender stereotypes are pushed so much more heavily than they were when I was a kid. Growing up in the age of “free to be…” I would never have imagined things would get worse instead. And guest makes a good point as well: kids actually get out and see other people much, much less than they used to, so their visual contact with other humans is likely to be heavily mediated by television or video games, which present more fixed and stereotypical gender roles than actual humans do.
Look at the insanely exaggerated gender characteristics presented by video game characters. They go beyond what the comic books did; Superman and Wonder Woman are realistically proportioned humans in comparison. Video game men, unencumbered by the constraints of human anatomy, present as armored hulks bulging with anatomically implausible muscles and dripping with straps, bullets, and weapons, while video game women are proportioned like Barbie dolls, in skin-tight suits or miniskirts. Thank goodness for recoilless space rifles or they could never shoot with their knees knocking together.
What if NB really just means “neither of the above” to a kid deeply inculcated in this exaggerated gender binary? The trans cult tells kids they have to be in one of two exclusive boxes and can jump from one to the other, but the boxes are fixed. NB is the trans cult’s way of recouping the dissenters: if they don’t want to be in the boxes they can be categorized as NB, but still get to belong to the cult.
Maybe kids who want to break up the trans cult can hide themselves as a fifth column by identifying as NBs. If NB gets so big as a category that basically everybody is NB, then what happens? They can’t call NBs cis, right?
I used to go to a lot of fancy historical costume parties–not the least part of the fun was going out after, or going to brunch the next morning, in your sweatpants and faded band t-shirt with the holes in it, and seeing everyone else in the same state. Is that the elegant lady/refined gentleman I was flirting with last night? LOL.
Catwhisperer @ 12 – There was a stray “e” added to your email address!
[…] a comment by Papito on […]
#7 BKISA:
Interesting. I haven’t really looked closely at FL4K’s skill trees since I main Zane, but I can imagine that there would be some confusion between FL4K and FL4K’s pets.
Ophelia – I see. Come to think of it, a certain dog belly-flopped across my lap while I was typing, so that might have been the cause of the stray ‘e’.
Heh. WordPress apologizes for the confusion.
And then there’s this.
Transgender-Identifying Trans Activist Raped Woman to Impregnate Her with ‘Non-Binary’ Babies