[CW: Mentions of Binarism, Enbyphobia, and Transphobia]
As a non-binary person, I’ve come to realize how erased we are more and more each day. I’ve come to realize that people will go through extreme lengths to put us in a gender binary no matter how much we refuse it
It seems like the default assumption for non-binary people is that we are “functionally cis,” merely being funky variants of cis people of our assigned sex at birth. Many people assume that we identify as non-binary merely to make a political statement or be edgy/contrarian. Many people assume that we identify as non-binary to signal that we’re simply GNC cis people. Many people assume that, even though we are non-binary, our essence in this very binary society should be tied to the sex we were assigned at birth.
To give a really disgusting example of that last point: I was talking with a bisexual man online who asked me if I’ve ever been in a gay relationship before. I said “I really don’t know what would count as ‘gay’ for me because I’m non-binary,” and then he just said “Oh, just assume I’m asking if you’ve ever been with someone who is the same as your assigned sex.”
That was insanely disturbing. Binary trans people do not get this same kind of treatment as often, I noticed. I’ve seen people describing their sexual orientations in enbyphobic, generalizing, and essentialist ways too, saying things like “I’m a lesbian which means I’m attracted to cis women, trans women, and AFAB non-binary people!” 🤮 This is, once again, insanely disturbing.
I am transfeminine. It’s just very unhelpful to conflate me with cisgender men simply because I was assigned male at birth. I have an androgynous gender presentation. I’ve had moments where people assumed I was a cis woman. I’ve had moments where people assumed I was transmasculine of some sort. But you know what bothers me the most? You don’t have to assume anything about my gender. My gender doesn’t matter. I am a person navigating through life, and I seldom go through instances where my gender actually matters, and the instances where it does matter are because of cisgender people and binarists refusing to let me breathe.
I’m in a relationship with a queer cisgender woman. Our relationship is extremely queer. Hell, my lovely partner says she doesn’t even generally find men as attractive as women, and she more or less identifies with being bisexual but emphasizes being sapphic a lot more nowadays. Of course, this is validating for me, but it’s also kind of sad when she tells me how ways I treat her with basic human decency were things that she couldn’t get from her last relationship which was with a cisgender man. Bottom line is: it’s very clear that our relationship is not straight. We call ourselves a queer couple, but “gay” or “lesbian” couple? Nah.
I also hate how even if people don’t view me as “spicy cis” and actually accept me as a trans person, they still try to cram me into a transgender binary. People see me as the same as a binary trans woman in so many instances. Although I can relate to binary trans women regarding a good deal of things, like the fact that I’m taking estrogen and am seeking some feminizing surgeries, there are a lot of real-world differences between me and your typical binary trans woman. I don’t care about “passing” as a woman at all, I go by any and all pronouns and have indifference to how people refer to me with terms (like man, woman, human, etc.) and titles (Mr., Ms. Mx.), and I don’t want to have my “womanhood” validated because I don’t have womanhood. In a lot of instances, I can relate a lot more to a non-binary transmasculine individual on the basis of us both being non-binary than I can relate to a binary trans woman on the basis of us both being transfeminine.
I could even go on how all these issues are amplified by my intersections with me being a black, neurodivergent enby born into an immigrant family, but I think I’ve said enough for now.
All I truly want to do is exist in a way that makes me genuinely comfortable, but we are living in a binary world, and I’m so not a binary girl.
/rant
i don’t deal with all of that but i do find myself not being able to describe my sexuality without erasing or misrepresenting myself or someone else. we don’t have words for all the categories and combinations, and while i understand that labels aren’t taxonomy, it would be useful to concisely communicate and validating to not misgender ourselves in the search for companionship.
A person can definitely describe their sexual orientation more broadly without misgendering anyone, and linguistic prescriptivism is a silly concept to apply for neologisms dealing with a matter as personal and nuanced as sexual orientation. A person feeling like there needs to be a particular “rule” for how their sexual orientation handles non-binary people on the basis of assigned sex at birth is misgendering for this very reason.
Non-binary people are very diverse. I think trying to factor non-binary people into a specific mode of sexual attraction is ridiculous. Non-binary people have a broader range of gender presentation, expression, and ways of being than binary men and women do, and assigned sex at birth doesn’t play this “perfect at definitively determining how a non-binary person will be” role that misinformed people think it does.
I unironically believe that, regardless of a person’s own sexual orientation and gender, including monosexual people, a person can, in some way find non-binary people attractive because there is just simply no one “set” manifestation of non-binary expression and identity.
As far as non-binary people labeling themselves goes, there are gender-neutral labels for non-binary people, but they’re more obscure (e.g. trixic/gynephilic for NBLW and toric/androphilic for NBLM), but thankfully, “queer” works well for a lot of non-binary people in avoiding having to navigate these complexities which are overwhelming for some. If that’s too broad, simply saying “I’m non-binary, and I like women,” for instance, can be very satisfactory for a lot of enbies. Some enbies don’t mind using “straight” or “gay” depending on how they view their gender in relation to binary genders, but this is all case-by-case.
Basically, all this stems from just how damn diverse the NB experience is. There is a massive disparity between how diverse the NB experience is and how diverse binarists seem to think it is.
i don’t think i’m doing prescriptivism. when we’re trying to communicate with other people it’s kindof important to be on the same page, especially for something as socially fraught as hooking up and/or trying to date someone.
i want to signal to other agender and NB people that they don’t have to binary themselves to decode whether i’m talking about them.
On some level, I understand that, but I find that it’d have to be something that can be very case-by-case due to the diverse nature of non-binary people honestly. In the instance of you wanting to communicate something like being okay with dating enbies, if you were to just say that you are open to dating other non-binary people, that could be satisfactory, especially in the context of a non-binary person themselves saying it. If a binary person says something like that, it might seem a bit more weird to include on their end, but since you’re specifically non-binary, people may have a better idea of understanding where you’re coming from. However, it’s also important to note that you don’t need to classify every bit of your sexual orientation anyway, but I also don’t want to invalidate that you feel a desire to do so.
I can understand it can feel useful, but with the diversity of non-binary people, classifying it being hard is why that makes sense. If a non-binary person shows interest in you, you don’t have to speak on whether or not you find non-binary people attractive to proceed with being their companion. I don’t understand why it’s necessary, but I might be misunderstanding something. Do correct me if I’m wrong, but feeling like that you need to signal these messages to non-binary people specifically is kind of a part of the needless pedantry that a lot of people have with feeling to be so precise in classifying their sexual orientation in the context of enbies. I would love to try and understand what you’re getting at as best as I can, though! I just hope I’m communicating properly here.