Non-binary identities are valid

[caveman1917]

Rather than responding directly to anybody in particular at this point (which I feel would be a fruitless endeavour), I would simply ask you: why do you care? What is it to you how or why someone identifies as nonbinary? Just use the damn pronouns and let people be who they want to be. That's it. It's that simple.

I've no problem whatsoever with using they/them pronouns. It's a fairly small concession—requiring a tiny amount of mental effort—and it flows naturally from typical English usage in cases where we don't know the sex or gender of the persons of whom we speak.

Especially note the inversion here.

Person A demands that person B goes out of their way to utter special words to validate person A's identity. Person B does not care so does not comply with this demand.

arthwollipot here then puts to person B: "Why do you care how person A identifies?" Even though, obviously, person B does not comply with the demand because person B does not care. Person B caring about person A's identity means person B would comply with the demand.

My questions remain unanswered, though. I'm getting the sense that you think I should be (a)shamed for even asking...

You should only be ashamed for asking stupid questions. Your question wasn't stupid, ergo you should obviously not be ashamed.

 

[Minoosh]

I thought my hair guy was a trans woman, but now I wonder. He said years ago he might transition, he likes wigs and makeup that would earn him acceptance in the ladies' loo, but he's also sometimes just a guy. At around the time he was born, doctors knew he would need open-heart surgery as a young adult. Messing with his endocrine system was not an option.

I wonder if he's non-binary ... his pronouns are male because he has a guy's name. Does switching back between binary genders mean the person is non-binary, or just has guy days and woman days.

 

[HansMustermann]

Forget about how or why. What is it to me that someone identifies as non-binary? Does it affect the quality of their work? No. Does it affect their degree of education or experience? No. Does it affect the nature of my attraction to them (if any)? No. Does it affect whether they can use the ladies' bathroom if they want to? No.

I don't give a flip about what someone identifies as. I'm even ok with people saying they identify as an attack helicopter -- but then I expect them to actually be that, i.e., sleep in a hangar under armed guard, 'cause we don't want military hardware lying around in some civy's home

In fact, I'm pretty much like the Orks in WH40k. Unless I'm actually planning to hump someone, they're just one of DA BOYZ. Just some of da boys is funny shaped

No demands put on them from me.

If they demand any pronouns other than "he" from me, though, that's putting demands on me. And infringing on my identity as an Ork and an ass-hat. And infringing on other people's identity is bad, m'kay?

 

[HansMustermann]

I thought my hair guy was a trans woman, but now I wonder. He said years ago he might transition, he likes wigs and makeup that would earn him acceptance in the ladies' loo, but he's also sometimes just a guy. At around the time he was born, doctors knew he would need open-heart surgery as a young adult. Messing with his endocrine system was not an option.

I wonder if he's non-binary ... his pronouns are male because he has a guy's name. Does switching back between binary genders mean the person is non-binary, or just has guy days and woman days.

Not everyone who puts on a dress actually identifies as a woman, though. I should know, I've done it before. In fact I grew up being dressed up as one or the other, because basically mom wanted a boy, grandma wanted a girl, and it ended up one of those rare happy compromises, where both got their wish at my expense

 

[cullennz]

Not everyone who puts on a dress actually identifies as a woman, though. I should know, I've done it before. In fact I grew up being dressed up as one or the other, because basically mom wanted a boy, grandma wanted a girl, and it ended up one of those rare happy compromises, where both got their wish at my expense

Do you still do it now?, and if yes what pronoun do you demand to be called?

 

[Manger Douse]

In fact, I'm pretty much like the Orks in WH40k.

You reproduce, asexually, through fungal spoors?

 

[HansMustermann]

Do you still do it now?, and if yes what pronoun do you demand to be called?

Well, I did it on and off for lulz afterwards, but that was about it. Hence how I know that you can put on a dress without identifying as a woman even as an adult.

I don't care much about pronouns, and as I've said before I don't get the fuss over identity. Might be because of the ambiguous upbringing, I guess, but I learned pretty quickly that as far as I'm concerned, I'm just "me" in either case. I don't define myself by what I have between my legs, or what set of clothes I currently wear. I mean I know I have the equipment to pee standing, but I don't think it's THE defining feature of my identity, and I don't feel any need to do stupid stuff just to prove that I fit in either category. Anyway, if anyone prefers to call me "he" or "she", I don't really care.

 

[MisAndreG]

TBH, I don't see a problem. In fact, those would be more like examples of why it shouldn't be that hard to figure out that something might be non-binary.

For a start, race never was binary to start with, even in the good old racist days. You had black, white, hispanic, asian, etc, all along. That's a whole lot more than "binary".

Second, it was always defined ad hoc, with pretty much no scientific basis. E.g., we call whites "caucasian" because some dude thought that the women from the caucasus were the prettiest. And blacks were for him the bottom of the list because he found them ugly. Then he met a beautiful black woman and changed his mind.

Yep, it's always been THAT much just a case of thinking with the dick instead of it actually being clearly defined different states.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Are the celts (e.g., irish) white or a different race? Well, roll the clock back like a century or so, and you'd find people arguing that they're a different race. No, really, Lovecraft's horrific realization at one point was that he has a very distant celtic ancestor, as opposed to proper pure WASP, so OMG that makes him one of those inferior races.

Some would actually classify them as "coloured", while others ranked them even lower than blacks. In fact there were racist pseudo-scientists classifying them as, I kid you not, the missing link between apes and blacks. (Because, I guess, some paper-white ginger has got to come in between a black chimp and a black human)

Are Jews a different race? Well, Adolf sure thought so, even while acknowledging in a letter that there is absolutely no genetic base for that.

Etc.

And people being somewhere in between were always a problem for those trying to treat it as a small number of distinct races. That's why you end up with 'theories' like that even a drop of black blood in your ancestry makes you black, even though you might look paper-white to someone who doesn't know about it.

So, yeah, there you go, it was always known that some people are mixed ancestry and thus somewhere in between.


Ditto for ethnicity. How do you even define ethnicity anyway? What you actually have (if you actually study anthropology at all) is some culture, with a number of subcultures, or rather a fluid spectrum of subcultures.

If you go somewhere like, say, Transylvania, you'll find that there is exactly zero biological or other hard difference between an ethnic Romanian, an ethnic Hungarian, or ethnic German, or most of the ethnic 'gypsies' that the former 3 groups look down on. Even language isn't much help there, since a lot are bilingual. All that differs is whether you've grown up in a certain group and identify with them.

And then there's the fact that each of those are a fluid spectrum. You don't even need to move a lot over geography for each of those groups to start looking rather different in customs and whatnot.

You’ve missed the point and WENT OFF on a tangent that I can’t disagree with. What I’m taking about is someone who is clearly black deciding to identify as not black and not white, or white on some days and then black on other days — this would be seen as self-evidently insane, offensive, and no one would pay it any mind beyond that.

Setting aside the non-binary idiocy, alternatively you can literally make the trans argument with respect to race, but one wouldn’t because it *******. All of this stuff from non-binary to trans to two-spirit just looks like a cult stuff or socially sanctioned madness to me.

 

[MisAndreG]

Well, I did it on and off for lulz afterwards, but that was about it. Hence how I know that you can put on a dress without identifying as a woman even as an adult.

I don't care much about pronouns, and as I've said before I don't get the fuss over identity. Might be because of the ambiguous upbringing, I guess, but I learned pretty quickly that as far as I'm concerned, I'm just "me" in either case. I don't define myself by what I have between my legs, or what set of clothes I currently wear. I mean I know I have the equipment to pee standing, but I don't think it's THE defining feature of my identity, and I don't feel any need to do stupid stuff just to prove that I fit in either category. Anyway, if anyone prefers to call me "he" or "she", I don't really care.

One fuss over identity comes from when men want to say theyre women, be treated like women — meaning having unfettered access to women’s spaces — and then force people or gaslight them into playing along. If X male wants to be a man who wears make up, calls himself Sally, and rocks dresses that’s fine. If X male wants to force people and society to think he’s actually a women that’s a problem.

Another source of the fuss is with “transing” or “theybie” children.

 

[shuttlt]

One fuss over identity comes from when men want to say theyre women, be treated like women — meaning having unfettered access to women’s spaces — and then force people or gaslight them into playing along. If X male wants to be a man who wears make up, calls himself Sally, and rocks dresses that’s fine. If X male wants to force people and society to think he’s actually a women that’s a problem.

Another source of the fuss is with “transing” or “theybie” children.

Wasn't there a case a while ago of a trans-woman suing a beauty parlour for refusing to wax their balls? If we insist that trans-women are women in all cases, and try to enforce it like we have with refusing service to somebody based on race, there are going to be some rough old edge cases.

 

[Olmstead]

In my opinion, there are two separate discussions that are happening. One is the discussion on the rights of transgendered people. The other is the discussion on whether a transgendered person's gender objectively differs from their sex. And many people on both sides seem to think that one issue somehow depends on the other. Why?

Even the most contentious issues, like sports and bathrooms or whatever, can be considered in practical terms, completely separate from questions about gender.

If someone developed a procedure that could switch a person's chromosomes around and, I don't know, make their bodies produce the right hormones, would anything actually change? Why? And if nothing would change, why does it matter whether a transgendered person was objectively born in the wrong body?

 

[HansMustermann]

You’ve missed the point and WENT OFF on a tangent that I can’t disagree with. What I’m taking about is someone who is clearly black deciding to identify as not black and not white, or white on some days and then black on other days — this would be seen as self-evidently insane, offensive, and no one would pay it any mind beyond that.

And my point is that race is a bad example if you want to make the case that things are binary. Because even with what you wrote above,

1. it's not as simple as whether someone is black or non-black, nor a historical precedent for it being that clearly divided into black or non-black. AGAIN, the fact that some people are somewhere in between, and could look like either or really in between, was known all along. In fact it is the whole POINT of miscegenation laws back in the day, under which you could be classified as black even if you look paper-white.

Or even nowadays, just ask Trevor Noah, who was born to mixed parents in South Africa. For the whites he was black, for the black he wasn't black enough, so he got considered something else by both. How's that for non-binary?

But even more importantly...

2. for about 99% of the population, exactly when would it matter to you whether someone is black or white? Exactly when would it even come up in conversation? Do you actually use different pronouns for blacks and for whites? Segregated bathrooms? Or what? Exactly when would it even come up, much less matter, whether that dude identifies as white, black, hispanic, Eskimo, or even Romulan?

So if the point was whether it's somehow right to make a fuss over whether someone male identifies as female or as neither, then your analogy fails right there. It's not an analogy because the relevant attribute isn't shared. In fact, it's outright negated: you SHOULDN'T care about whether someone is black or white.

 

[d4m10n]

Does it affect whether they can use the ladies' bathroom if they want to? No.

Why not?

 

[shuttlt]

In my opinion, there are two separate discussions that are happening. One is the discussion on the rights of transgendered people. The other is the discussion on whether a transgendered person's gender objectively differs from their sex. And many people on both sides seem to think that one issue somehow depends on the other. Why?

I think that if one is going to claim that "trans-women are women", and on that basis have all the rights that go with being a non-trans woman then the existence of this ineffable woman essence that you possess is the justification for the rights. I might be wrong, but I think most people on the anti-side see the two issues as less connected. I certainly do. Even if there was such an essence of woman, I don't think a trans-woman shot-putter should be competing as a woman in the Olympics.

 

[Minoosh]

Not everyone who puts on a dress actually identifies as a woman, though. I should know, I've done it before. In fact I grew up being dressed up as one or the other, because basically mom wanted a boy, grandma wanted a girl, and it ended up one of those rare happy compromises, where both got their wish at my expense

Came upon a snapshot of my father wearing a dress but I should note he was a toddler and it was the 1920s.

According to The Vintage News, gender-specific clothing and hair styles were not a big deal in Victorian England and other contemporaneous cultures.

Not to get confused, the patriarch system was the norm in the Victorian era and gender roles were extremely polarized. However, young children were left out of the equation. According to most accounts, pictures, and photos, up until the age of seven, gender was apparently not something that parents paid much attention to. The clothes worn by boys and girls were nearly identical, indistinguishable from one another.

I don't know how accurate it is that gender "was not something that parents paid much attention to," but it does interest me that the 20th century came to be the era where strong delineations were placed on what little girls wore vs. little boys.

 

[MisAndreG]

And my point is that race is a bad example if you want to make the case that things are binary. Because even with what you wrote above,

1. it's not as simple as whether someone is black or non-black, nor a historical precedent for it being that clearly divided into black or non-black. AGAIN, the fact that some people are somewhere in between, and could look like either or really in between, was known all along. In fact it is the whole POINT of miscegenation laws back in the day, under which you could be classified as black even if you look paper-white.

Or even nowadays, just ask Trevor Noah, who was born to mixed parents in South Africa. For the whites he was black, for the black he wasn't black enough, so he got considered something else by both. How's that for non-binary?

But even more importantly...

2. for about 99% of the population, exactly when would it matter to you whether someone is black or white? Exactly when would it even come up in conversation? Do you actually use different pronouns for blacks and for whites? Segregated bathrooms? Or what? Exactly when would it even come up, much less matter, whether that dude identifies as white, black, hispanic, Eskimo, or even Romulan?

So if the point was whether it's somehow right to make a fuss over whether someone male identifies as female or as neither, then your analogy fails right there. It's not an analogy because the relevant attribute isn't shared. In fact, it's outright negated: you SHOULDN'T care about whether someone is black or white.

Well, I’m not totally convinced it is a failed analogy because the attributes are analogous in one important way - your ethnicity or race is a fixed attribute that you can’t really change, just like your sex. take Noah, the man is clearly black, and it didn’t make a difference what ideological regime was in place that considered him not black enough or white enough or whatever. He is a black man. Incidentally Rashida Jones would have been a better example for you to use as she is black but white passing but w/e. Mixed race people - like moi and jones - can be complicated I guess, maybe you have a point there and the analogy does break down in those cases. the analogy is messy, a lot of them are, but I think you got what I was getting at, no? One can’t really change sex or negate it no more than I can become a white female or a non identity, regardless of what an ideological paradigm says that I can

As for #2 I see what you’re get at. But tends to matter to people in the group - like, look at Rachel dolezal she is a white women who claims to be transracial Black and that **** is offensive to black people for a bunch or reasons, including how she used her transracial identity taking positions that should have gone to ados. I hope I don’t have to explain why. Moreover it’s just not true - she is not black. (Socially, meaning how you are treated in public by society by race shouldn’t matter, nor politically, meaning the law shouldn’t discriminate on race and treat everyone as individuals)

so I’m perfectly content with making a fuss about people who play pretend they’re something they’re not, especially if they want to use the power of the state to enforce their nonsense on everyone, or inculcate children who have psychosocial issues surrounding identity in their beliefs, or take up space in places we’ve designated for historically marginalized identity groups especially when they’re from the dominant groups

Apologies if I’m a tad incoherent I’m very tired atm. I hope you got the gist of what I’m trying to say.

 

[d4m10n]

In my opinion, there are two separate discussions that are happening. One is the discussion on the rights of transgendered NON-BINARY people. The other is the discussion on whether a transgendered NON-BINARY person's gender objectively differs from their sex.

Just tryna stay on topic.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I don't know how accurate it is that gender "was not something that parents paid much attention to," but it does interest me that the 20th century came to be the era where strong delineations were placed on what little girls wore vs. little boys.

It's certainly true that young boys and girls would basically wear what we would think of as dresses, but there was some attention paid to gender. For example, pink was for boys and blue was for girls. Pink was thought of as a "strong" colour, suitable for boys, and blue was weaker and therefore for girls. It was only in the early 20th century (I'm thinking around the late 10s/early 20s, but I'm going from memory here) that the colours switched because a prominent and popular figure of the time (a princess, IIRC but, again, don't quote me on that) dressed her children that way.

 

[LlamaDrama]

I know four non-binary people in real life. Here's my entirely non-scientific assessment of each one of them:

NB1: Uber hipster. Seems to be entirely heterosexual female in everything other than protesting too much about pronouns on Twitter. The only NB concession is their haircut.

NB2: Partner of NB1, uber trendy hipster, heterosexual male in every sense, has been known to wear a dress at a couple of parties.

NB3: Until recently she was a perfectly normal heterosexual female. Suffered some health and mental issues in the last couple of years, and since then has come out as trans, NB, queer, GNC, and changed her name so many times in that period that I have no idea what to call them any more. Has now settled for a female name and shaved head, and I have not talked to her since January, so i have no idea what she identifies as these days.

NB4: Heterosexual Female until 2 years ago. Also had serious mental and health issues, and came out recently. Is the most steady of all 4 in their identity, but every time I see them they present as a female with short hair. They had hinted at serious abuse as children, and I suspect deep hatred of their own female shape from some conversations we've had.

What does it all mean? I suspect that there's a trend here, particularly with the women. Abuse, internalised misogyny, mental problems. Can't be a coincidence. The first two are bored heteros who want to be more interesting than they really are.

 

[LlamaDrama]

You judge people based on their gender presentation? In what ways do you consider someone who presents as a woman different from someone who presents as a man from someone who presents ambiguously? What judgements do you make on that basis?

I judge them on whether I would like to have sexual intercourse with them. There are many other assumptions, some unfair, but they tend to work on average.