I had a discussion the other day with people about being non binary. Just for the record: none of us are actually non binary so I think that would explain the upcoming question.
The discussion was about gender norms and how they need to be abolished. We all agreed on that. The people I was talking to didn’t understand why then there would be a need to declare yourself non binary. Their reasoning was that if all gender norms were abolished, and ‘man’ or ‘woman’ would no longer carry stereotypical behaviors and expectations, why would there be a need for people to declare themselves non binary.
To make it more clear, their question was: What is difference between being non binary and between having no gender norms tied to being a man/woman? Where does abolshing gender norms end and being non binary start?
I couldn’t really answer this question because I am not non binary myself and therefore do not consider myself to be an expert on the topic. Now, I don’t ask of you to validate being non binary to me. That, of course, is unnecessary as non binary people are perfectly valid in their existence. I was just wondering how a non binary person would respond to a question like this.
Why call yourself anything?
It allows you to find other people who feel the same way as you, togther as a collective your voices are always much louder.
honestly, not much; non-binary is pretty much the rejection of gender norms being tied to a man/woman, and it is the outward projection through aesthetics that signal this to others; the aesthetics arent a requirement, but they do help identify with one another.
Think of non-binary as being the dialetic between male and female gender roles.
Where does building a house start? With the first brick.
It starts when you start trying to do it; housework is a good place to start, reading femininist socialist ideas on how housework and childcare should be conisdered labour too.
Last thought but it is a large part of it for me, is rejecting the notion fash put forward that only people who have the highest potential for things should engage with it; this usually manifests in sports; the idea that only tall men should play basketball for example, which is used to discourage women from participating, after all if you cant be the best why try?
I reject this notion, we dont all need to be micheal jordan; most people are average. This applies to labour.
To qualify all of this, i’ve read a lot of femminist socialist lit, but I also considered myself androgynous for most of my life, which would be a different conception of non-binary.