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.
I had for a long time labeled myself as a gender-non-conforming cis man, then as a binary trans woman, then as a non-binary trans woman, but I can’t exactly back up those labels “rationally”. There is really nothing that I do or want to do right now that I could not do as a cis man or as a binary trans woman, in fact it was the comfort of being able to do those things “as a cis man” or “as a binary person” that led me to eventually feel comfortable enough with myself to change my labels… So I honestly don’t think I ever really was that concerned about “stereotypical behaviors and expectations” or “gender roles”, because I always was able to transgress those regardless of how I identified. In fact non-binarity comes with its own stereotypical behaviors and expectations, so if people only identify as non-binary on the basis of wanting to avoid others’ expectations, then that doesn’t even work — I’ve had other non-binary people say or strongly imply that I’m not “valid”, because I don’t understand or perform non-binarity the “right way”, ridiculous as that might sound. And I’m sure that a lot of other enbies can attest to how cis people always seem to assume that non-binary is basically just “(Cis) Woman Lite”, and immediately disregard any enby whom they can clock as AMAB, or assume that all non-binary people want to be androgynous they/them chloveks.
I remember at the time when I first started labeling myself as non-binary, actually, that it legitimately sort of bothered me how little rational reason I apparently seemed to have to use that label, in a sense it almost felt like “betrayal” since I’d been presenting myself as an example of how a binary trans woman could disregard even very firmly established gender roles… There was just some sort of inner force compelling me towards non-binarity is the best way to describe it. I guess we could say that even labels are a form of compulsion that are subject to the same laws of entropy as anything else. But a thought that keeps coming back to me is that of history and community, that by declaring myself non-binary I was tying myself to those. So I guess that’s my best answer insofar as I can’t really think of anything else: non-binarity represents a specific group of people chosen by entropy to inherit a specific history.
This has happened to me so often as a bisexual lol, being doubted by gays for not being camp and being doubted by the straights for not being completely hetro.
I realized its how you know you’re talking to a liberal wrapped up in ID politics who thinks the only correct way to be is the one the capitalist told you how to; dont let it discourage you, oppression is learned.