3 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Do non-binary identities reenforce gender stereotypes?
Hi I’m non-binary and I can attempt to answer this. Gender identity is the internal and individual experience of one’s gender. I think what people haven’t been explaining, which may be where the confusion is coming from, is the difference between gender expression and gender identity.
Gender expression is the way you act, body language, talk, the clothes you wear, hairstyles, etc. This is what I think you’re referring to as far as the stereotypes go because gender expression typically lies on the spectrum between stereotypical feminine and masculine presentation.
However, gender expression does not necessarily equal gender identity. Someone may behave and dress in a way that is masculine but identify as a woman (e.g. a tomboy). When you take away gender expression and the way that society views femininity and masculinity your gender identity is still there. I think a lot of it goes into how you view your “soul” for a lack of a better term.
Personally my experience has been shaped by gender dysphoria around being perceived as a woman. I’m AFAB and I’ve never internally felt like a woman. When I started developing through puberty I started having a lot of gender dysphoria around how my body was changing. I have always disliked my name because it sounds too stereotypically a woman’s name (which is not how I feel on the inside) and extremely disliked how I was perceived as a girl. Not due to sexism but because I felt like I was not a girl.
Starting in late elementary school, before I even knew nonbinary was a term, I would tell people that I was not a boy or a girl. In high school, I often felt like I performing as a woman and that they ways I acted/presented myself was not how I felt in the inside. The discomfort wasn’t about stereotypes around being a woman, but how people perceived me as being a woman. I eventually came out as nonbinary in college and started using they/them pronouns. This makes me feel more like myself because it signifies that someone isn’t viewing me as a woman.
However despite not feeling like a woman, I also don’t feel like a man. I feel like neither and it has always been extremely distressing to be viewed as either. Internally it feels like something kind of in between. Idk if that makes sense but that’s the best way I can describe it.
Comment by thegimboid at 13/01/2025 at 04:37 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The thing is, all of what you felt exists within the culture that you grew up in.
When you were questioning yourself whilst younger, it sounds like the issue came from two things - dysphoria with your physical self (your sex), and dysphoria caused by stereotypes imposed by the culture around you.
If those stereotypes weren't a thing, you'd just be left with the physical.
Maybe I'm just confused because I've never considered myself to have any form of gender - I do the things I want to do, like the things I want, and feel relatively ambivalent about my sexual organs (I'd be pretty fine with either - all that would change is the definition of my sexuality because of who I'm attracted to). I don't care what labels other people give me (barring slurs, of course - then it's just rude), because all that could potentially do is reveal their own sexist attitudes and beliefs, and why should those impact how I live my life?
Doesn't everyone just feel like themselves and then those who actually believe their gender to be important simply define part of themselves based upon expected norms (either being like them or not like them)?
I would define myself as "agender", except I feel like even acknowledging the concept of gender feels like reinforcing the idea that certain attributes connect to people who want or have certain genitals, which just seems incredibly backwards and sexist.
To me, gender just sounds like a complicated way to describe one's personality, whilst trying to inexplicably define that by antiquated ideals of what society dictates defines "boys" vs "girls".
What makes anything "masculine" or "feminine" if not simply stereotypes perpetuated within each culture?