A lot of people seem confused when I talk about how non-binary activism can be into respectability + assimilationists politics because “how can a group whose existence isn’t recognized be assimilationist?” and “Isn’t non-binary politics inherently radical?”.
And the answer is no, non-binary isn’t inherently radical and yes, non-binary can be assimilationist. Here’s why:
Radical means ‘to strike at the root’. To have a radical approach to non-binary politics is, for example, to fight the gendering of babies at birth based on their genitals, to expose the way capitalism shaped the notion of two genders to control its workers and colonialism eradicated non-western gender identities and to call for a broad anticapitalist, anticolonialist non-binary politics that rejects all gendering at birth and all forms of grouping humanity in two, or three, gender labels.
Assimilationist means ‘to make assimilation your goal’. An assimilationist approach to non-binary politics is to work for a place non-binary people within existing structures. To argue for a place for non-binary people within the military and the representation of non-binary people in politics, to have a non-binary clothing segment at the GAP and in many other ways to establish non-binary people as a third recognized group of consumers under capitalism and voters under an imperialist state.
Radical politics is an uncomfortable dinner guest that challenge the way cisgender people live their lives and raise their children. Assimilationist politics avoids these prickly politics to gain a seat at the table.
Respectability is a tool by which assimiliationism is furthered. Respectability as a tool of non-binary politics means to create a narrative of what it means to be non-binary that is comprehensive to the masses and to fight narratives that are contradictory or paradoxical, it means to select a number of non-binary spokes people that are respectable: pretty, professional, articulate, not a sex worker, addict, criminal etc. In other words: people you would comfortably take as a date to your grandmothers christmas dinner. Respectability politics pushed these people forward and tries to silent the non-binary people it does not see and being good role models. The messy, the openly sexual, the anarchists, the rebels. All these voices must be drowned out to present non-binary people as an acceptable third group of consumer-citizens.
Sound farmiliar?
Side aspects of respectability and assimilationist politics are:
– throwing groups under the bus whose identity is seen as ‘too weird’ or ‘not deserving’ of assimilation.
– praising people and organisations that aid non-binary people regardless of their other flaws. For example: cheering the production of a gender neutral clothing line by a company that uses child labour.
– colonialism: presenting the western idea of what it means to be to be non-binary as universal for humanity. Grouping all non-western genderdiversity under a western umbrella term.
– more stuff.
Of course I am not saying that all non-binary activists are into respectability politics and assimilation. Far from it. There are a lot of radical non-binary activists out there. But an assimilationist movement within non-binary activism definitely exists and it needs to be recognized as such.
QueerAnarchism 