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July 14, 2020 - 3:00pm
Today marks International Non-Binary People’s Day. Scheduled ingeniously 128 days after International Women’s Day (on 8 March) and 128 days before International Men’s Day (on 19 November), today has been set aside for people who identify as non-binary. But while it is easy to create identities, it is rather more difficult to define who qualifies.
Authority on these matters seems to have been entrusted to lobby groups like Stonewall UK who define non-binary as “an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’.” They go on to explain that non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely.
But couldn’t that refer to everybody? Does anyone identify completely with those arbitrary and sexist constructs imposed us by a society that — just like Stonewall — likes to classify us and slap labels on us.
Confusion has arisen because, once again, sex has been conflated with gender. When we distinguish between them, clarity is restored – certainly as far as sex is concerned.
There are only two sexes — there always have been — and we created neither of them. Rather they created us. If anyone is unsure, I can only refer them to their biological parents: both of them. One will have supplied a small gamete and the other a large gamete. There are no other gametes and therefore no other sexes. Sex is binary.
I might be a transwoman but I am also a science teacher and I am under no illusions about the gametes I produced and hence my male sex.
But while sex relates to biology, gender relates to psychology and there are far more than two of them. Arguably there are currently 7.7 billion different gender identities. Where is the binary in that context? Maybe we are all non-binary?
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SubscribeYes; when it comes to gender, maybe we are all non-binary (what I like to call a “person”). When I was growing up in the seventies, toys were far less differentiated than they appear to be now; it’s disappointing to see everything pink and glittery “for girls”, etc. We’re going backwards, trying to fit everyone in smaller and smaller boxes, and it will suffocate us.
I shall continue to classify myself as a woman, according to my sex. (I happen to have a very traditionally “male” mind, but thought all my life until now that feminism was about getting rid of “ALL women . . .” and allowing the possibility of overlap.) I am quite happy for the tiny percentage of people who are true hermaphrodites to define how they will (or not). And if someone is trans, the very best of luck to them, but I am grateful for writers such as you who defend my right to female-only spaces – I am only comfortable about fully transitioned trans men in there.
Keep up the good work; you are a voice of sanity in the ever-louder wilderness.
If you don’t mind, can you tell me where “in there” is, that you’ve noticed you’re only comfortable with “fully transitioned trans men?” (Trans men are people assigned female gender at birth who feel most themselves when presenting as men . . . is that who makes you feel safe? Sounds like you’re in favor of non-binary facilities, rather than all female-presenting?)
I don’t hear many stories of men identifying as women, pre- or post-surgically or even just criminal opportunists, attacking women in public bathrooms or private locker rooms, certainly not at rates approaching cis-men raping cis- or trans-women . . . do you?
I also wonder if you feel more entitled to feeling “comfortable” than other people do. Is it okay to make a trans woman feel uncomfortable — say, to deny her the right to use a women’s bathroom — if that makes you feel better? Would you consider that fair?
You’re right – I meant trans women. I am happy to share female-only spaces with those who have transitioned fully. I am NOT happy to share such spaces with a six-foot bearded man in a dress. I am very sorry if this is unfair on him. Should space allow, then the third option of loos that everyone can enter are great.
I am not entitled to “feel comfortable”. I rather feel, though, that I’d prefer not to reactivate my post-rape PTSD.
If we are all non-binary and everyone is their own unique point on the spectrum, then gender really ceases to be anything at all. Which is perhaps all for the better. You might as well have an international non-height day for all those people who don’t think of themselves as either tall or short. The only way you can define non-binary is by stereotyping what the fixed points are, which we have all been told for the last 50 years is a bad thing. Your perspective is refreshing and, I suspect, shared by the unheard majority. We need more of this, not the media suggesting JK Rowling is somehow controversial when she probably reflects the view of 95%+ of the world.
Is someone suggesting we *are* all nonbinary? Or is the OP just exasperated with how many people are trans in one way or another and snidely suggesting we all give up on the idea of sex and gender if we’re all not going to happily identify as the sex we were assigned at birth? (I’m not sure why that’s such a bother, unless they are a closeted transperson? Or maybe it’s too taxing to use the correct pronouns? Or maybe the use of correct pronouns is somehow considered a “special interest”?)
The Human Rights Commission estimates transpersons, including nonbinary, in the US represent about .3% of the population; that number is seen in societies worldwide. Here’s a cool interactive map! https://www.pbs.org/indepen…
From wikipedia: “In recent years, some societies have begun to legally recognize non-binary, genderqueer, or third gender identities. Some non-western societies have long recognized transgender people as a third gender, though this may not (or may only recently) include formal legal recognition. Among western nations, Australia may have been the first to recognize a third classification.” Freaking out about trans/nonbinary is so ahistorical, which is kind of funny because the same right wingers complaining about sex and gender ambiguity are the same ones freaking out about statues of “great” historical figures, whose statues were only erected during the Jim Crow era to keep Blacks alert and fearful.
Brazil, as one example, has famously celebrated their third gender people, at least until their fascist strongman Bolsonaro forbade such forbearance. In the US, Native communities, especially the Navajo, also have a long tradition of recognizing non-cis tribe members without feeling the need to punish or marginalize them.
Trans- and nonbinary people have been with us throughout history. Here’s an easy fun read about some famous ones — maybe Joan d’Arc??
https://thetempest.co/2020/…
You may want to check your work on that 95% figure; transfolk are considered no big deal by about 70% of the population in a number of countries:
https://www.buzzfeednews.co…
Anyway, as far as I know there’s no real precedent for a short person being accepted as a tall one, like there is for people who aren’t either male or female. It’s science!
https://www.nature.com/news…
What are “those arbitrary and sexist constructs imposed us by a society”?
I came of age in the 1970s & don’t really understand what is meant by that statement.
I notice so many of the pieces appearing here are airing grievances of one sort of another, and lots of the time there’s a mysterious “they” making the OP feel constrained one way or another. It mystifies me, too, since I’ve never asked “them” if it’s okay to present as a cis-gendered female who doesn’t care to play an unnaturally (*for me*) feminine role, just as I don’t think “they” are judgy towards cis- or transswomen who like to pour on the makeup, attire, mannerisms, and interests of stereotypical femaleness.
I honestly don’t get why there’s any problem at all with people presenting as the sex that suits them. It doesn’t hurt anyone else, and is no one else’s business. Remember “if it feels good, do it?” and what an affront that was to people who prided themselves on sucking it up and “doing it” because them’s the rules, not because their lives were rich or fulfilling? Here and there I think we can sense jealousy of people who live their own way, not compromising their core values and identity. Otherwise why the need to put such people down?
Think you’re conflating sex with gender. Don’t think most people have a problem with how people express themselves, what they wear etc… and I’d gamble that people who have concerns about Queer Theory are not jealous of people ‘who live their own way’ One can live a relatively conventional life and it still be an authentic one. Much of my discomfort with Queer Theory is that it actively disregards objective, material reality in favour of subjective feelings. The world & people’s lives are uncertain & chaotic as it is, we don’t need postmodern ideas dismantling the scientific & visible truths we do have and know. There are more effective ways of giving people freedom to be ‘authentic’ than shouting (as activists have done) at people who disagree with them.
The problem with the notion that gender is non-binary is made clear by the David Reimer case.
For those not familiar with the story, Reimer was mutilated as a baby through a botched circumcision. His doctor, convinced that gender was merely a “social construct”, performed a sex change operation, then advised his parents to raise him as a female. He was given hormones to complete the task. He was raised believing himself to be female.
By the age of 5, he began to reject the female identity assigned to him, and began wearing boy’s clothing, and playing with male toys.
It was years before he discovered what had happened to him. Sadly, by that time he was so psychologically scarred that he committed suicide.
The doctor whose erroneous beliefs led to Reimer’s death never acknowledged that his notion of gender as socially constructed was wrong.
If “gender” means anything, it can only refer to the psychological attributes that have evolved differently in the sexes to enhance reproductive success. Like height, all psychological attributes are common to both sexes. But just as men tend to be taller than women, so some psychological attributes will exist on a bi-modal distribution curve. Because there are many such traits, gender is far more complex than height. Nevertheless, it makes sense to argue that there are behaviours that are typically male, and others typically female.
So gender exists; it consists of psychological predispositions differentially distributed, although overlapping, between the sexes. It has little to do with role models or performative aspects based on culture.
And it certainly is binary in a probabilistic sense.
Hmmm . . . the fact that David was assigned female at birth, despite having male genitalia and not being old enough to express any gender dysphoria, really makes the point that sex *can* be a very deeply felt part of one’s identity, though that’s not the case for everyone, and when forced to identify as other as one’s assigned sex, can cause great distress. He was never “nonbinary;” he identified as male, whereas nonbinary people don’t claim either sex.
Like David, many trans people kill themselves when they’re unable to make their appearance congruent with their felt sex — for safety reasons (transwomen, especially Black ones, are subject to horrific levels of violence and murder), or being rejected by family and society, or lack of funds. It’s terrible that we make it dangerous for them to align their sex with their felt identity. Imagine if, when David first began to feel gender dysphoric, his parents had explained their decision during his infancy and taken measures to reverse it.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that sex *is* nonbinary for the majority of people; in fact, the numbers are pretty small, even including those who never claim their real sex. The OP here is snidely denying the reality that some people don’t feel male or female, which wasn’t David’s problem; he felt strongly cis-gendered, as a male. But some people truly don’t feel male or female, and resent having to pick one.
Have you seen Billions? A major character on the show is nonbinary, and their depiction (by a nonbinary actor) might give you an idea of what it’s like to live openly with that identity. It’s quite wonderful, as the character is treated as a full, regular person by the rest of the characters and their nonbinary status is not a punchline,
Kind of how JB Peterson says, we can take our categories and keep fractionating into more and more categories until we reach the individual. “And that’s what the West discovered”.
When you understand that, you’ll see the growing list of genders as sort of a cute social project by the historically illiterate. It’s like they’re retreading already blazed trails and acting like they’re discovering something new. It’s adorable.
The highest number of sexes I’ve seen documented by science is 5. Do you know of more?
Character is not gender. Sorry.
Rather than “identify as non-binary”, as the writer suggests, I would suggest instead that we recognise that we are individuals.
or even a-gender to placate the ‘woke’
Nonbinary and agender are virtually synonyms, except to the more educated or pedantic, who also use aporagender as being under the umbrella of agender.
One definition: “Non-binary referrs to any gender identity that is not, or not exclusively, “male” or “female”. Some people will use it as a gender identity, but it’s also used as an umbrella term for various non-binary identities. Agender is a non-binary gender identity which means not having any gender.”
P.S. What happens if you don’t placate the ‘woke’?
(I’m not referring to people like Jordan Peterson, who lacks the courtesy to refer to people by their preferred pronouns, and is so boorish he makes students at a publicly-funded university with rules about civil rights issues like not calling people out of their identified sex, or talking about n*****s . . . the ‘woke’ punished him so severely that he kept his university position, sold millions of books, and toured the world to disseminate his ideas.)
Peterson never said he wouldn’t refer to people by their chosen pronouns. What he has argued from the beginning was that the government had no right to compel him to do so. That is a much different issue, one that is as much about civil rights as your choice of pronoun. The fact that people continue to spread the lie that Peterson is somehow transphobic because he refuses to abide by the governmental imposition of speech codes demonstrates the narrowmindedness, and willingness to dissemble by the left.
It is a pleasure to read someone who can present this inflamed subject in such a reasonable and and understandable way.
Might it not help, though to make an additional distinction, between your gender role, and your (gendered) sense of self (‘gender identity’ could mean either)? There may well be a many senses of self as there are people on the planet, but the sense of self is internal, private, and not open to negotiation or discussion – not a good starting point for human interactions.The gender role on the other hand is a social role, hence defined collectively by society. Up until now we have had just ‘male’ and ‘female’ as gender roles in this country, and the vast majority of people (cis or trans) have been content to belong under one or the other umbrella, but we could in theory convince civil society to define more. Unlike biological sex, however, social roles can be flexible and change, as can the rules for who are eligible for them. Maybe a discussion in terms of which role one can adopt or which treatment one can expect might be less incendiary than arguing about what specific individuals or women in general ‘really are’?
Interesting . . . in the US and Australia, at least, third genders have been recognized and sometimes revered among Native persons.
This is brave and incisive stuff (although I will disagree that gender is primarily a social construct. Yes, people can be fluid/non-binary and gender is partly socially influenced, but the correlation of gender to sex is near universal among humans)
@Poynton
Up to a point, Prime Minister.
Sure, male gender is basically the role for biological men, and female gender the one for biological females, anthropologically. But there are (a few) societies, historically, that operate with more than two genders, or allow you to switch (under carefully controlled conditions), so it can be done. And a lot of things in the gender roles are definitely not biological (pink and blue, anyone?)
If we were all cis there would be no problem, but when the world is not quite as simple as we would like it to be, something has to give. Decoupling the social role from the sex (while leaving the controls with the community) sounds less fight-provoking than selecting a single definition and trying to force it on everybody.
“Decoupling the social role from the sex (while leaving the controls with the community)” – a bit like what the feminists have been fighting for since the 60s? It is very dispititing to see that we are back at a point where ‘gender roles’ are being made stronger and stronger; one might even think that some members of society don’t want women to be treated equally! Surely not.
Yes, I lived for many years in an Asian country where trans-gender women were simply called “the 3rd sex” (ie. a tolerant way of saying trans-women are people, but not real women), and were tolerated quite compassionately as eccentric, and often colourful, outliers. The naturalness with which they treated them seemed more humane than our big song and dance in the West of either worshipping them or denigrating them. They accepted them as a rare oddity with a place in society, however they certainly would never dream of holding them up as role models for their children, like we are moving toward in the West – obviously, as no life-affirming, family-driven society would promote trans-genderism. To do so would be a type of ethnic suicide – and we in the West are making a good go of that right now with our latest brilliant innovation of Oikophobia. You will note that I said “near universal” – there are always exceptions that prove the rule in nature. Just because we have dawn & dusk does not mean that we don’t know exactly what night & day are.
7.7 Billion ?
Its worse than that. Most people like to change orientation depending on their partner or mood
I think you’re confusing gender identity with sexual preference.
I think you are confusing pseudo-rationalism with human nature
‘Non-binary’ is just a way for identitarians to classify ‘individual personality’ into yet more identity boxes. Screw that.