does it ever bother other nb ppl that we’re literally called nonbinary aka ‘not binary’ cuz I feel incredibly othered
This is why “genderqueer” can be a good word to use instead. I believe that was even coined before “nonbinary”.
Yep, genderqueer came long before nonbinary was a thing. Nowadays, genderqueer refers more to people who have a specific NB identity, rather than being used as an umbrella term for all NB identities.
iirc nonbinary as an umbrella term was coined because of certain people not wanting to use their identity from a political standpoint, and wanting to better assimilate into mainstream society (so it’s Corporate Gay constrasted with “gender -fucks, -punks and -queers”, basically) and thus not wanting to use the word ‘queer’.
Nonbinary is also useful to strictly separate ourselves from GNC people, who also used genderqueer – which ties into assimilationist practices. I wonder, though, that if nonbinary had never catched on, genderqueer would just mean nonbinary just like transgender doesn’t cover all GNC or intersex people nowadays.
I like nonbinary because it’s a way to be specific about my gender – literally describing it as not binary – without a need for me to say my actual gender (which would bring up more questions, since most people can’t grasp anything beyond male/female or maybe both or genderless). Also, keep in mind queer is not necessarily a translatable and well-known word all over the world, so genderqueer may require extra explanations too.
I like genderqueer a lot, though, and it’s always an option to just use other gender labels (agender, solarian, demigirl, maverique, gender neutral, etc.) without using umbrella terms for yourself.
Nonbinary is also useful to strictly separate ourselves from GNC people, who also used genderqueer – which ties into assimilationist practices.
Yes yes yes, this is a thing I am definitely seeing. It goes sorta like this:
“We, the respectful non-binary people have a gender identity which is more valid than a gender expression and it comes with a comprehensible set of pronouns and a narrative that makes us easy to understand. We are not like those genderfreaks, transvestites, dragqueens and other weirdoes whose differences are performative and this not valid.”
It’s a ‘pushing ourselves up by pushing others down’ practice and it comes with a lot of stereotyping.
Often non-binary is presented as a skinny short cute young white masculine/subtly-androgynous person who looks naturally androgynous without any make-up, while gender-nonconforming is presented as a large unattrative older feminine person whose genderexpression is on the surface and clearly a product of make-up and other tools. All these stereotypes are used to present one group as ‘inherently real’ and the other as ‘performative’, to push the message that one group is ‘worthy of acceptance’ at the expense of the other.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
It’s ironic how much sense this makes, considering the rumors about genderqueer being exclusive of transfeminine people back in the day, and the use of those rumors to push the idea that nonbinary was the better term.
I wonder how much of this ties into the truscum rhetoric that perpetuated a few years (maybe less?) after the genderqueer to nonbinary switch, that was exactly that: a division between “transtrenders that said they were nonbinary but didn’t put in enough effort to look neutral and tend to use weird labels” and “respectable nonbinary people who undergo transition and only use easy to understand labels such as bigender, agender and nonbinary”.
I have seen some genderqueer people do similar transmisogynist truscum shit, it is not exclusive to non-binary people.
A lot of times when ‘newer terms’ were embraced by young trans people there have been attempts to distance the newer group from genderdiverse groups that were seen as ‘less real’, older, more feminine and less able to represent in a way that made a good trans PR video. It happened to genderqueer, it happened to trans* and it currently seems common among non-binary people, especially those that push a strong division between gender identity and gender expression.Several people have been either making ‘that is not my experience’ replies to this or extensively picking apart single sentences from my post without engaging with the main argument, probably trying to express a discomfort with my post but not knowing how to put it into words and thus focussing on word choices and language details instead.
I’m not going to reblog anyone because I don’t want to spotlight a single person and put the response to all those things on them (nor do I want to write a dozen replies).
I just want to say: I am writing this as a non-binary / genderqueer / genderfuck / gendertrouble / whatever person and I am just writing this based on my own experiences, which obviously do not ring true of every non-binary community everywhere.If you see none of this in your own non-binary spaces and you see a positive embrace of our gendernonconforming comrades, that’s great. If something about my post does ring true to you, maybe take some time and look a little deeper at what kinds of ‘othering’ of gendernonconforming people is happening in your community,
Just seconding that I’ve had similar experiences to you – I think this is more common of the older crowd (particularly gen X’ers), as we’re more likely to remember/have been part of the community long enough to have seen the complete switch around.
I personally remember when it was “transsexual” (for binary trans men and women) and “transgender” (for genderqueer, genderfucks, genderpunks, gnc, butches, femmes, crossdressers, drag queens, transvestites etc.) But the whole truscum debate made a LOT of people against “cishet crossdressers” / ”transtrenders”, and transgender’s meaning was changed.
Yes. And what makes me sad now is that the truscum battles are over, we should be back to being a wide inclusive movement, but we’re not. In the proces of these struggles a segment of our genderdiversity has been labelled ‘just genderexpression’ (as if there is anything ‘just; about a transvestite risking her life to express herself) and therefore ‘cishet’ and ‘not us’ and it makes me so sad and angry. Transvestites have been an important part of our movement and of our communities since the 1920s and before. They have fought with us, they have faced the same battles, they are facing much of the same violence today, yet somewhere along the way the transgender community has decided that they don’t belong because they don’t fit the neat identity politics narrative.
QueerAnarchism 