I've been wanting to define my thoughts on "non-binary" for awhile, and so as I continue the "let's be controversial" series that I started with two weeks ago, here we are. This article from The Guardian really hits the mark with my thoughts, so I'll respond to it in a few places. So that I don't jump randomly around, I'm going to outline my speaking points here. We'll talk about my upbringing being a factor on my thoughts (because whose isn't), the harm done in keeping things separate (how labels can be too much), the simple grammatical confusion of a singular "they," and the outright pomposity of the notion of remembering to switch if a person uses multiple pronouns.
My upbringing
My mom was the carpenter, plumber, overall fixer of the house. Yes, she stayed home until we were in middle school, she did most of the cooking, and she attended more school functions. But she also drove, managed the finances, and other "manly" things, all the while making sure she looked nice and encouraging us to do so. My dad worked long hours as a chef. However, he also cared for the plants around the house, the animals, liked to look nice himself, cooked, and did laundry when needed (when Mom wasn't available). So they both showed traditionally masculine and feminine things mixed within themselves.
They encouraged us (two girls and a boy) to do well in school and sports. My dad was proud (taking after him) that we girls were good at math in the age of the "math class is hard" Barbie. Of course, they pushed my brother into sports more, with my dad's fear that my brother was gay or at the very least, "a sissy." So they showed some gender expectations. Or more in that vein, Mom would chide us girls on "un-ladylike" things, such as certain sitting postures, spitting out snot, and burping out loud. This would annoy me, since I thought, "other people do it, so why can't I," not liking the idea that men could do some things and get away with it while women couldn't.
As a kid, I was vehemently against overtly girly things. I refused to continue ballet and gymnastics after one summer session, thinking them too girly (though now I wish I could have continued with gymnastics; with my natural flexibility and small height, maybe I could have been in the Olympics!). We had horse and dinosaur toys, Lion King toys, rather than Barbies. Our make-believe was more about adventures, injuries, and death, as influenced by The Land Before Time and The Lion King. We didn't do kissing and dating things.
But the thing is, I learned to like girly things like getting nails done and putting on makeup as time went on, especially in college and out of it. I spent my teenage years as a tomboy, and I continue to see myself as a tomboy, but one who wears dresses now more often. I still prefer adventure and death over chick-flicks, but I also don't mind looking nice with jewelry and clothes that look good for my shape. So because of my own growth, and knowing what's possible because of my parents, this is my number one beef with "non-binary."
The majority of the people that say they're non-binary are teenagers or under 25 years old. They are people still figuring themselves out. My 20s were definitely about discovering myself outside of my parents and my twin, working through trauma, learning how to adult, and kind of overall not as good a time as I'm having now in my 30s. These people are finding their style and where they fit in, like we all do. I determined my style ("geek chic," but also "leather and lace") with the help of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, where the author Mari Kondo suggests defining a style to guide the creation of your space and wardrobe. So in my thoughts, they're trying to determine how androgynous they want to dress and be, given their idea that the sexes of male and female must be separate, which leads to my next section.
Why keeping things separate is harmful
I walked into Target recently and was kind of maddened. I'd learned they were removing the "boys" and "girls" labels from things once in some announcement, but maybe that was only one toys. Clothing however has not changed, and I saw Marvel characters in the boys' section. I didn't go looking in the girls' section, because it wasn't on my way to the cat food, but I did wonder if any girls' clothes had Marvel on them. Why should comic books continue to be gendered?
But besides that, I believe we've made huge strides in removing the "traditional" gender roles. Men can cook, women can lead companies, men are looked down on in Scandinavian countries where they do have paternal leave if they don't take it, women can not marry and it's not a huge deal (no label of spinster). There's a lot wrong still, but we're working on it, like the toxic masculinity (my dad suffered from the "I must not cry" phenomenon of his generation, but I as a kid I always felt somehow glad to see him cry when he was sad). In general, there's been a coming together and allowing people to be who they want to be over the last decades (even if they choose to be the subservient wife, like one of my high school friends going into a strict fundamentalist religion).
So with the kids of today saying they don't want to be a man or a woman, what does that mean? It means to them, there's only X amount of things that define a man and X amount for a woman. You get people calling themselves things like demi-woman, believing that their body is female and some of their thoughts, but the rest of their personality is too masculine, so that means they're not all woman. You get people trying their hardest to be in the most middle as possible of both sexes' traditional clothing, that they end up complaining on Reddit about how they don't feel non-binary enough, berating themselves for wanting to look pretty (implied as a girl would) yet trying to remain masculine.
This sentence from The Guardian article stands out: "When people say they’re 'non-binary,' it sounds to me more like they swallowed the lie of the pink and blue onesies." The teens of today truly believe that women must act and dress and be one way and men the opposite. They are the ones keeping things separate now. They are the ones enforcing the binary, when the rest of us are fine with being both feminine and masculine. It is a balance of energies, as illustrated by the yin-yang sign.
I don't go around my day thinking, "I'm a woman, so I must act in X manner and dress in X manner." No, in getting dressed, I think about the weather and choose something, or how I haven't worn a certain skirt in a while, so I'll choose that. When buying new clothes, I choose what looks best on my body, and I like fitted things, which I'm not going to find in the men's section. I like dresses and skirts because of the airiness, and I believe men should be allowed to experience their summer cool as well (all people wore the same robes and long dress-like tunics once). I daily forget I'm a woman and only think of myself as a human, short, Jewish, and beautiful. I remember I'm a woman when I'm in unfamiliar places and men are leering and cat-calling though.
So in summary, I simply do not understand why we can't just expand what men and women are allowed to look like and wear. Why can't men wear dresses and makeup and still be called "he?" Why can't women shave their heads, wear baggy clothes, and put on weight, and still be called "she?" If someone really is medically transitioning to the other sex, then we should call them by their new chosen sex. What makes no sense is when someone wants to be "they" because they think they don't fit all the traditionally feminine ways; none of us do! Again, they've swallowed the lie of the pink and blue onesies, or can we say Kool-Aid?
I know a person who is trying out being a male, like with chest-binding and such, but still wants to look like a female too. For these androgynous-choosing teenagers and others, what do we call people that are still experimenting and haven't alighted on a final choice? Or also I have two trans-male friends that still want to maintain some of their feminine presentation so go by "they." But if you went through all the work, why can't you just be a man that likes to wear makeup? Maybe for this androgyny, we just ask them and settle on some "non-binary" pronoun until they finally choose, but I propose ze/zir, which I'll get to in the next section. We've had androgynous icons before like David Bowie and Annie Lennox, though both remained their respective sexes. I know a lot of chemicals and hormones go into making up who we are in our brain versus what sex our body shows, but in the end, what's so wrong with just expanding the definitions of man and woman? And if you want to look androgynous, then be prepared for a lot of questions and don't get mad when people get you wrong.
The grammatical annoyance of the single "they"
I'm a grammar nazi, no doubt about it. One friend has a kid going through the non-binary phase, but he also has another kid. So following his conversations when talking about both kids can be confusing sometimes (which he also admits), because is the "they" both of them or just the non-binary kid? If we really have to go down this road of separating ourselves with a bunch of dumb labels, rather than allowing "man" and "woman" to simply mean "adult male" and "adult female," no matter the dress or state of medical transition, then let's have a singular neutral pronoun come to the fore. I propose ze/zir simply because of its usage to good effect in a sci-fi book called Record of a Spaceborn Few. Yes, I use "they" when I really know nothing about the person, but once you've seen the person, it's extremely hard to go back to "unknowing" them. I see a person, I now know you have a female face and body, how can I not call you she? We could go to our one neutral pronoun in English, "it," but that sounds rude.
Why should I have to think so much just to please you with your multiple pronouns?
The people with the multiple pronouns are just the worst. Are you giving me a choice when you say he/they? Because then I'm choosing the easier one, he. I went to a play recently, and in the book, one (male) person was all three, he/she/they. What the heck am I supposed to do with that? Imagine the difficulty of making you feel good; if I'm telling a story to someone, and I keep having to 1) think about which pronouns I'm using for you, and 2) make it so the person I'm talking to understands this is still one subject, then that's way too much work for me, and now you look like an incredibly special snowflake, the fact that I have to devote this much thinking power towards your pronouns. Also, maybe it works in a little theatre bio, but imagine reading an entire book where the main character switches from he to they; how am I as a reader supposed to follow that, to understand we're still talking about the same character sentence by sentence?
From what I understand, the reasoning in choosing multiple pronouns is to 1) say you're okay with he and they, usually depending on family versus friends, 2) you don't feel masculine enough to just be he, 3) you feel this expresses you best. Great, good for you, but again, for a second person (me) to have to remember to use both of your pronouns in a conversation and use them equally is way too much work and seems selfish on your part. If you're okay being he to your family and they to your friends, good; again, just don't get mad at me for only calling you he. And if you don't feel masculine enough to only be he, then this just gets to my overall point of "let's expand what is masculine and feminine," so that you are comfortable being a "he" in dress and makeup, but with a male body. Or at the very least, if you simply can't abide being that masculine and are looking for some androgyny.... then again, let us allow androgyny but keep he/she or if you must, ze.
If you're one of those who call themselves genderfluid, who expect to be known as Bonnie when wearing a dress on Monday but Bruce when wearing pants on Tuesday, then again, expect great confusion on the parts of others in conversation (not to mention you again are being very selfish, expecting great mental output from others towards remembering things about you). Why can't you just dress how you want, dress on Monday and pants on Tuesday, but be the same person with the same pronouns every day? It makes sense to change persona if you're going on stage, but not in real life. Now you seem like a person I can't trust, because I'll never know "who" you are. I have no problem with name changes from the birth name to something more suitable, but why change it every day?
Summary
My points throughout, if they weren't clear, are:
We need to continue to expand what men and women are allowed to be, do, and wear, yet remain he and she (to me, this is more freeing than creating a "third gender").
People change and experiment, especially in 10-20s, They are allowed to and encouraged, and one day they will settle. So why are we as a society putting so much stock in what the "non-binary" teens are saying anyway? We were on a good feminism/equalizing trajectory before they started narrowly defining man and woman.
Everyone has masculine and feminine in them, and how you express it is up to you but doesn't change the fact that you have a male or female body (I'm not even getting into intersex, because that's very rare and those people decide for themselves).
"They" as a singular pronoun is too grammatically confusing.
If you use multiple pronouns, you're selfish in expecting others to remember to switch them up for you in conversation to avoid your ire.
I invite civil argument to my points. In the end, I want the same as the non-binary kids; I want that people are free to be themselves, dress how they want, and transition medically if they need. I simply want to define things differently and get away from the idea of "non-binary," because like The Guardian article says, "too often, discussions of gender today, rather than expanding boundaries, only contract them. When people say they’re 'non-binary,' it sounds to me more like they swallowed the lie of the pink and blue onesies. Because the point is everyone, really, is non-binary – no one’s a wholly pink butterfly or blue car onesie. We are all, to varying degrees, purple spaceship onesies – and, yes, that is the scientific term."
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