Comment by YourDadCallsMeKatja on 15/01/2025 at 12:17 UTC

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View submission: Do non-binary identities reenforce gender stereotypes?

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Your identity can be about your feelings. Defining it as such collectively is where it gets problematic and nonsensical. If your definition of yourself is predicated on making stuff up about how other people feel, it's obviously not respectful of others.

It's a bit like when people call themselves things like "demisexual" and define it as "unlike everyone else, who are sexually attracted to others on sight and can have sex immediately upon meeting, I only experience sexual desire for people I have gotten to know long enough to be attracted to their personality". Everyone else has the right, at that point, to reject being defined that way and to question who this person thinks they are to make such extreme statements about those who don't identify as demisexual. They don't suddenly have to aubmit to this random person and start calling themselves demisexual too.

You identify people not on "how they present" but what they tell you about their identity. Not what they may or may not feel inside. There's no world where it would be appropriate for you to hear someone say "I don't feel like my gender, I don't really understand what feeling like a man or a woman could possibly mean" and you get to respond with "according to the definition, that makes you non-binary" or where you can hear about a woman's wish for a penis and declare her to be a closeted trans man based on your definition. The only way to identify someone as non-binary is when they tell you that they are non-binary, at which point your questions should end. The only way to identify a trans man is when he tells you he is a trans man, at which point you stay out of asking invasive questions.

When it comes to non-binary identities in particular, they are very culture-specific and even community-specific, and definitely generation-specific. The meaning of it can be drastically different from one person to the other. There are also many ways men and women experience and express gender in non-binary ways without identifying with non-binary as a fixed identity separate from their gender. Their difference with you is one of social and political concepts, not of deep feelings about who they are.

In short, there's no room for people's intimate feelings in a definition of gender (or lackthereof) because no one has to share their feelings and no one gets to make assumptions about feelings. If you define things in a way that gives you permission to form beliefs about someone's inner feelings when they mention their gender or transness, you're disrespecting people. Your individual lived experience does not trump other people's when it comes to their own identity and human rights.

ETA : not every trans person thinks NB is part of some "trans umbrella"

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There's nothing here!