27 upvotes, 0 direct replies (showing 0)
Another nonbinary here and these loneliness conversations really drive home for me how utterly fucked the gender binary is. My entire life I've tended to make close friends of all genders, and my life is richer because of it. I don't understand why huge sections of cishet society trap themselves in the assumption that men make friends with men and women make friends with women and the genders only interact in the context of a romantic relationship (and of course we nonbinaries don't exist).
I mean yes, if people just don't want to be friends with a particular gender, or if they have trauma connected to a certain gender, they should be free to structure their lives how they want and need--but I suspect that a lot of people live that way mainly because it's the societal expectation. And that leads to all this "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" crap where people believe the genders are alien species who can never understand each other.
My life is richer because of my female friends, because of my male friends, and because of my nonbinary friends. I wouldn't be as emotionally well-rounded as I am without all of these folks in my life. Again, not everyone has to be friends with everyone. But I think that breaking down some of these cultural silos would do a lot to alleviate many of the gender-related problems we have. It wouldn't solve everything, but it would help.
There's nothing here!