Non-binary seems like it could have several non-compatible meanings, so I wanted to list some of those meanings and see if there are any others out there I don’t know.
One way I could think of non-binary is as being a kind of third gender category, like there are men, women, and non-binary people. In this sense of non-binary a butch woman who considers themselves a woman would not be non-binary because they are a woman.
Sometimes non-binary is used like “genderqueer” is sometimes used, as a generic description of anyone who doesn’t fit perfectly in the narrow confines of the binary genders (i.e. men and women). In this sense a butch woman could see themselves as a woman, but also as genderqueer and non-binary, as they do not conform to binary gender norms for women.
Another way non-binary seems to be used (related to genderqueer in its historical context) is as a political term, an identity taken up by otherwise cis-sexual and even cis-gendered people who wish to resist binary gender norms and policing. In this sense even a femme cis-sexual woman might identify as non-binary. Sometimes this political identity label might come with a gender expression that cuts against the gender expectations for the assigned sex at birth, but it doesn’t have to. (I recently met two people whose gender expressions matched their assigned sex at birth but who identified as non-binary in this political sense.)
I was wondering what other meanings of non-binary are out there, and how they are commonly used.
Note: gatekeeping what is “really” non-binary seems pointless to me, since I agree with Wittgenstein that “language is use”.
I know people get heated about policing what a word means (and I am guilty of this myself), but in the interest of inclusion, pluralism, and general cooperation in our community I think we can find a way to communicate with overlapping and different meanings of a shared term.
First, you assume I’m not non-binary and that there is some kind of divide between us as though I’m lecturing you about something I know nothing about or that I’m not experiencing myself. A lot of the motivation for thinking through these different meanings is precisely because I am struggling with my own experience as a trans person, which slots easily as non-binary depending on the definition or meaning you give to it.
Second, this was not meant as a lecture at all - it was a question, an invitation, and a disclosure of my working thoughts. The meanings I have encountered contradict one another and are not authoritative, nor coherent. They aren’t meant to have the weight that I infer from your message you seem to be giving them (let me know if I’m wrong here, I just think calling it a “lecture” sounds pretty heavy). I was thinking the meanings I shared were meant to be questioned and modified by the voices here - I want you to tell me what meanings you have encountered, what you make of those meanings, etc. and also what you think of the meanings I have described and whether they are accurate or not, or when or how you have encountered them.
I think that’s a fair point, I think why people identify as non-binary is usually involved in what the meaning then becomes for those people (though it may actually go the other way), but I wasn’t so much trying to deny that relationship as much as I was trying to clarify what exactly I was interested in, which is the theories and meanings that emerge (rather than just why someone identifies).
Of course I expect the “why” to be one of the main entry points to discussion about non-binary identity, but I was just trying to be clear and to respond to your criticism that I shouldn’t be asking about the meaning but about why people identify.
Hey, I appreciate your apology, I think I am a bit surprised honestly. I don’t usually do well at recovering once I have made someone upset, and it felt a bit foolish of me to be vulnerable in that moment and share my feelings. Thank you for being so human.
Also, the term is typically neutered in most contexts for me too, but it was in particular the way you were approaching me with a kind of hostility, in particular the expression of open disgust or contempt, that transformed the term into a misgendering barb. I considered that you may have not intended that, but it still stung. Thank you for being sensitive, especially in a context where it’s not easy to be.
I’m also sorry that I didn’t find a way to write my OP in a way that didn’t avoid this situation all together, as it seems I have failed to avoid the very thing I was concerned about when writing the post. I think people are rightfully defensive about these identities and labels and their meanings, and rightfully defensive against attempts to inspect them (especially by outsiders). There is a kind of vulnerability to asking questions that requires trust, and I acknowledge that trust isn’t always just there.
I want to learn and don’t mean to be imposing, but I also understand what I’m doing is perhaps too sensitive for this context.
Of course, friend. I appreciate your communication on the matter.
Eh, perhaps I am the only one who has taken issue. Given your clarifications, suffice it to say that I do not think the meanings you have described are accurate lol. Broadly, I think you’re overcomplicating things. If someone told me she was a woman, I would take her at face value. She is a woman. From there if everyone were so inclined we could continue to learn about each other.
Let me put it another way. Do you think women who shave should be categorized within womanhood differently than women who do not? One woman might tell you it’s important to her because it makes her feel more feminine, the other might tell you it’s unrelated to how she thinks about herself so she doesn’t bother. Is this a contradiction deserving of investigation? I suggest that no, it is not a contradiction, and that by even framing the question in those terms I have revealed a critical underlying misunderstanding I carry about the concept of womanhood as a whole.
Now there are women who shave and there are women who don’t and it is related to gender expression and there is a way to have a productive conversation about how that all plays out. But I would go about it much differently.
Now, in light of all that you have written I do not mean to say that you have gone about inquiring about non-binary identities in the exact same manner as I just described, I just want to illustrate my point generally. If that in any way assists in seeing where I’m coming from
Yes, I was avoiding saying this because I want to be open-minded and receptive to different perspectives, but I also don’t think some of the meanings of non-binary I have encountered are accurate or make sense.
For example, in one lecture I attended a femme-presenting presumably AFAB individual gave a presentation of their paper about non-binary identity, providing an account of non-binary as being defined exclusively by political positions (such as rejecting oppressive binary gender norms), and even took a stance that people who identify as non-binary cannot be if they do not live up to certain behavioral standards such as showing solidarity (the example they gave was of a shooter of a gay club in Colorado who identified as non-binary, and the presenter argued that this person could not be considered non-binary because they violated solidarity by killing fellow LGBTQ+ folks).
This whole approach, of thinking about non-binary in exclusively political terms, reminds me in some ways of the second wave radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys’s Political Lesbianism (PDF) whereby she argues that women should become lesbians for political reasons (essentially because heterosexuality oppresses women).
In both cases it feels like the main context for the identity is hijacked and utilized for political ends but without regard to the underlying reasons the identity had for existing in the first place. Specifically lesbianism is usually a sexual orientation, presumably an orientation someone is born with and which is not the result of conscious decisions or reasoning. Some women just happen to be attracted to women, and others are not (at least that seems to be the case with sexual orientations). Similarly the argument for political non-binary identity seems to miss the element of gender identity that I do tend to think underlies being non-binary. That is, people are typically non-binary because of their gender identity, not because by some line of reasoning they chose to be non-binary. But I do not feel confident in my position, clearly it seems like political lesbianism and political non-binary identity both are getting argued for in some fashion, and I guess I’m wondering what people make of these ideas.
After I left the lecture and went out for lunch, a stranger who was also at the lecture in the audience recognized me and asked to sit and chat, and in doing so I learned that they too identify as non-binary for political reasons, as a form of resistance. While it’s always uncomfortable to disclose these things, it’s probably worth noting this person disclosed they were AMAB and they don’t alter their gender expression based on this political non-binary label, so they are cis-gendered in their expression and presumably in their gender identity, though who can say for certain, perhaps for example, their openness to identifying with a non-binary label for political reasons could have to do with being an egg, who knows.
All this to say, I hope you can see some of the reasons I am trying to present the different ways I have been confronted with theories or meanings of non-binary which seem at their root based on quite different notions.
Hopefully now with context you can see my post is not a practical question about when I should call someone non-binary or not. I’m going to call the political non-binary people non-binary because they identify that way. Even if I am suspicious about their conception of non-binary, I’m going to respect their identity. I don’t see much good in refusing to respect that identity (though the lecturer seem perfectly willing to deny other non-binary people their identity, something I found somewhat disturbing).
Of course not, but this question communicates to me that I failed to communicate adequately in my original post. Perhaps this relates to my use of butch women in examples? I was thinking about Leslie Feinberg and the characters in Stone Butch Blues, and particularly the way gender worked for the main character Jess Goldberg - the way they moved through identities, living as a butch woman, then transitioning to living as a man, then detransitioning back and trying to reclaim that connection to women they had before. I was thinking about how it might feel when working through one’s gender that way, and how one might reason to themselves about their identity and which label applies. In my example I was imagining the very same butch woman considering whether they were non-binary. One way of thinking about non-binary might lead that character to thinking of themselves as non-binary and embracing that label. Another way of thinking about non-binary might lead them to rejecting that label.
My point wasn’t even about what categorization is right or legitimate, it was more like I wanted to draw a map of the constellation of non-binary meanings (the “worlds of sense” that are vying for power, to connect this back to how I was approaching it after reading Bettcher and by extension Lugones).
This is interesting, I am not sure yet exactly how this example maps to my project of mapping the constellation of non-binary meanings, but I suspect it has to do with your interpretation of my OP as a kind of misguided, critical, and invalidating perspective on non-binary identity. It seems to me you are suggesting that I was poking holes in non-binary as an idea by exposing contradictions, and here you provide me with a counter-example where there might be inconsistencies in how women experience their gender, yet there is no hole or problem created. The inconsistency doesn’t create contradiction / paradox / problem.
Am I understanding you correctly?
I hope that I have also made some clarifications, and more so that I am understanding you correctly. Let me know where I’m going astray when interpreting you.
And thank you for making an effort to help me understand your point. I’m sorry that this is so laborious (I recognize it’s a lot to read my messages and respond).
Yeah you are understanding perfectly correctly! I would only add that my question about shaving was rhetorical and also a part of this same counter-example. I believe also that I am understanding you, now. Thank you for taking the time.
It’s a very interesting concept. Certainly, it is possible to lie. When the mentioned shooter was arrested, I heard several people essentially claiming that “they came out as non-binary after-the-fact to try and get a lesser sentence”, presumably on some hate-crime technicality. This could be true. It could be true, also, that they were closeted beforehand as many are. Or they just snapped and started saying random things, and none of it really matters. At a certain point you just can’t know.
In this case, I mean, after what they did, to be honest it’s a struggle for me to even see their bare humanity as being valid. But if I can surmount that suspicion, then it’s just plain easy to respect their gender as well. Worst that happens is I was deceived into believing someone was a member of a group anyone is welcome to join at any time anyway.
In the less severe cases, such as someone who says they are motivated to identify as non-binary for seemingly superficial reasons such as political posturing, like I said, they are still welcome! Even if they brush it off as not being a big deal for them, that just actually demonstrates (in my opinion) an exceptionally non-binary attitude haha. It is very unlike a cis person to change their gender for any reason.
It could also very well be that they were living their lives authentically before, but because they were always told they were their agab, grew up believing their expression was naturally representative of their agab. And now that they have learned more and affirmed their non-binary-ness, they simply don’t realize their presentation was actually congruent with their non-binary identity all along.
And yeah I’m sure a handful of people really are just lying for some hopefully innocuous reason. That’s cool too, I hope they enjoy their stay.
Completely random thought just popped into my head, but I believe when I was reading about Canadian powerlifting, they actually had very specific rules about trans lifters competing. Such as “must be affirmed on your government ID for at least two years”, (apologies for not linking the document, this may not be exactly accurate as I am going by memory.). This type of “purity test” I think attempts to add a dimension of legitimacy someone’s identity by asking them to maintain it for a duration of time. I personally will not comment on that other than that I found it interesting, and somewhat related to our topic here.