I think it’s just the term. “Binary” isn’t exactly neutral as it can imply narrow minded. Also labelling non-X imply that everyone else is X which often includes too many people that are kind of in the middle / doesn’t really care.
so what would you suggest people who do not want to be referred to as man or woman call themselves?
Blenders. Gender ephemeral. Intangibles. An even cooler fourth option, probably.
There are tons of cool names you could go with when your identity lies outside of preconceived boundaries (and pretty much transcends them). But, non-binary’s pretty clinical-sounding, so I guess it’s easier to work into a professional setting or something.
It’s easy to call a discussion silly if it doesn’t affect you personally.
Also have you ever considered the fact that maybe you (or other people) don’t really care about gender labels because you were assigned as the gender you prefer? It seems a bit silly to criticise a group who currently faces a lot of discrimination based on their gender preference. Also are you aware that your argument is often used to discredit the experiences of and as a reason to discriminate against people who identify as non-binary?
It seems a bit silly to criticise a group … based on their gender preference
Like, didn’t I just say that it’s the vibe of the word that I don’t like? Therefore either
- I am not criticizing any specific people at all because I’m just talking about how we use words; OR
- I am criticizing some people for their taste of words
and not what you say at all IMO
yeah, that’s understandable. i’d never thought about it that way before.
personally i use enby as a way to say that i am in the middle / don’t really care.
i think the issue comes from the fact that saying non-binary means specifically non-{man,woman}. whereas i’ve always interpreted it as just non-“specific gender”.
to me it’s the etc. of gender labels, but i realise that not everyone that i think it describes would want to identify with it.
(and that means it becomes it’s own label, and now we have to figure out what to call everyone_else all over again. (maybe the whole idea of gender labels was rigged from the start))
