I don't expect to get much agreement with this thought

[grayestofghosts]

I understand nonbinary as an umbrella term but I kinda hate it as a descriptor. It'd be nice to be something rather than be labeled by what one isn't by default. There's something distinctly unmooring about being forced to identify with what one is not, and I'm not sure who decided on that, but I wish they would have thought this through a little better, idk.

Comments

[axolotls]

Sounds like it doesn't fit your experience well, even though that kind of etymology might fit others'. I think it's a tricky issue, because really, we wouldn't need a term like that if gender wasn't an important thing in society, and particularly binary gender, bleh... This does make me wonder whether I would still identify as nonbinary or trans or agender if gender were a less prominent thing in society, or if saying I'm "just me" would be enough.

[grayestofghosts]

I find this to be a weird thought... because actually as gender becomes "less" important all these nonbinary identities have come out of the woodwork. Safety to assert oneself (as in "gender isn't that important") leads to more self-assertion, not it going by the wayside.

If I felt like my political solidarity with one side was more necessary to simple survival I would be much less likely to say anything about it.

[axolotls]

Hmm, that's not really how I see gender not being important, in my experience... Perhaps I'm imagining a more radical situation? Where people never refer to themselves or each other by gendered terms, or if they do, it's just grammatical and there are a variety of options, rather than sentiments I still hear outside of queer spaces to this day that presume certain things about Men and Women (and that continue to get forced on me instead of just viewing me as a person, alas). In my day-to-day context, at least, I keep needing to reassert my (non-)gender identity to people, which I'd like to imagine I wouldn't have to do if people would just file my pronouns away and never push a gendered framework onto me or talk about differences between people depending on their binary gender (even while I'm in the room), etc. (I don't mean to go on for too long, just wanted to clarify what I was thinking about a bit.)

[soc_puppet]

Completely unfounded rumor, take with a boulder of salt: I heard once that "nonbinary" was coined in part because the other major option was "genderqueer", which has the word "queer" in it, which is bad because queer is a slur 🙄

Genderqueer fits me better than nonbinary, but I like the colors of the nonbinary flag better, so. Shrug?

[grayestofghosts]

I have a feeling a lot of people might be weird about the genderqueer label because the flag is very similar to the suffragette flag that has been appropriated by TERFs, and of course the most important part of a queer identity is the flag.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people didn't use genderqueer because it has the word "queer" in it but I've also heard that it was thought to be more "expansive" than what was considered the genderqueer stereotype, which was "cringe" (which is very close to the current non-binary stereotype anyway so I don't think that actually fixed anything they were intending to). It feels like a semantic mess that we're just kind of stuck with forever now, sigh.

If we're going to be quite honest I don't really like either flag, but the nonbinary is slightly better than the genderqueer one, and the neutrois and androgyne flag give very much "I don't think you were even trying" vibes.

[axolotls]

I can see that. I don't use genderqueer myself because it seems to imply there being a gender, which isn't the case for me, whereas nonbinary being defined in opposition to a binary framework can accommodate both me and people who have a gender that just isn't one of the two binary options? (FWIW I also like the nonbinary flag colours a lot better, hah.)

[zavodilaterrarium]

I mean, fair enough. I mostly only call myself nonbinary because people will understand generally what it means. I don’t particularly mind the term, beyond the fact that it’s just kinda awkward to translate and whatever. Currently I’m using the Galactian system labels for myself, as they’re all specific things under the nonbinary umbrella. One of the labels actually explicitly rejects the idea of having to exist in “relation” to the gender binary, sort of like a fancy “I’m just a person”.

[fred_mouse]

I don't like 'nonbinary' but have been attributing that to it being a new fangled term for something we had perfectly good words for and while sure they are all 'nonbinary' but they aren't all the same thing and I don't like it as an umbrella term. ie. I've been assuming I'm just getting old and grumpy. And I'm also old enough that my default identity word is 'queer' regardless of whether I'm talking gender or sexuality.