WrittenInRed (She/Her)

I mean based on Mary Magdalene, I’d assume feet.

Since middle school and throughout high school and college I got progressively more and more depressed due to repressed gender dysphoria, and starting HRT has almost immediately started reversing that. I had always been outspoken about how gender roles were stupid and never cared about using “women’s” things (like I shared my mom’s hair products and stuff), but none of that changed the fact that I was extremely uncomfortable in my body, and being perceived as a man was something to avoid as much as possible. If people made jokes like “that’s how you know you aren’t a woman haha” I would always fight back against that, but being compared to women felt like more of a compliment.

Plus imo anything a trans person does that could “reaffirm stereotypes” wouldn’t do that more than any cis person doing it. I’ve heard similar things from some cis feminists, where they felt that if they did something stereotypically “girly” it would be hypocritical of them, until realizing that the entire point was that you should be able to do those things if it makes you happy. Avoiding stereotypes can reinforce them just as much as doing them, since then it makes the people claiming the stereotypes as universally true seem like they have a view worth changing yourself for.

In your comments you actually used singular they several times probably without realizing it, because singular they has existed in English since the 1300s. Singular you wasn’t even really a thing until the 1600s, so that’s actually the less established pronoun in English.

The other thing is no-one “assigns themselves” or “makes up” their gender. Sure the labels given to things are made up, but so is every other word. Non-binary identities also are as old as binary ones. Some indigenous north American tribes have “two-spirit”. Rome had the Galli, as sort of trans-adjacent priests of Cybele. The jewish talmund lists 7 distinct genders. Babylon had multiple non-binary identies, often as priests of Inanna. Etc.

Irregardless though, the existence of multiple labels to describe similar but not identical concepts isn’t really “redundant”, in the same way that you wouldn’t claim the word “angry” shouldn’t exist because “mad” already does. To you it might not matter what someone identifies as, but its also not your job to decide whether or not that identity “makes sense”, because, by definition, if someone uses a certain label then that label has a reason to exist. No one’s asking you to memorize every single microlabel. That’s why non-binary is so widely used, its easier to have an umbrella term that’s more widely understood.

Gender isn’t something rigid, just like any other aspect of your own identity, and it would exist whether or not you had words to describe it. So arguing that having those words to describe it is more confusing doesn’t really make sense. In fact, before “they” became as accepted as it is now as a genderless 3rd pronoun, people did try to make a distinct third option to prevent confusion. Stuff like “e/em” for example. But none of them really picked up any widespread traction, because it turns out that most people already used they as singluar sometimes and it was a lot easier to just expand that usage naturally than it was to get every English speaker on-board with new pronouns.

And no one is really going to get mad at people for slipping up, or using they to refer to a group, or anything like that. Trust me, most binary trans people get misgendered often enough as is, and its much worse if you’re non-binary. Being corrected about someone’s pronouns isn’t people “getting mad over people not understanding”, 99% of the time its literally just a correction, same as if you forgot someone’s name or mispronounced it. Just like that, unless you’re intentionally doing it to be an asshole, the vast majority of trans and non-binary people aren’t going to make a big deal about it. Especially because we know that there’s the perception that trans/nb people “overreact to mistakes” so a lot of the time there’s a pressure to try and avoid doing anything that might accidentally reinforce that perception. Which really means if anything it’s a lot more common for a trans person to just not say anything when they’re misgendered than it is to say something.

Edit to say: Also honestly, you probably won’t be able to understand what it actually is when someone is nonbinary. Everyone, regardless of if they’re cis or not has a unique relationship to their own gender. Two cis men will have very different explanations of what being a man means to them. The same is true for any gender identity. Without actually having experienced dysphoria, or gender euphoria, any of the numerous experiences attached to being trans or nonbinary, it can be hard to “get it”. That doesn’t make it less real though, its just not something you’d personally feel, which is fine. No one expects you to be able to. A man also wouldn’t necessarily “get” what being a woman is and vice versa, but that doesn’t make “man” and “woman” invalid identities. I’m a trans woman and I honestly don’t really “get” what being a man is like, because my closest reference is the dysphoria that came from perceiving myself that way, which isn’t what “being a man” is, it was just part of my specific expierience of being trans. That doesn’t stop me from understanding that men exist, or make me consider “man” as a less valid identity, because whether or not I can relate to specific aspects of anyone’s identity as a man is irrelevant to whether or not they feel that it is an accurate or useful label to describe themselves. The same things are true for nonbinary identities from a cis perspective.

It would basically make the same amount of sense for me to say “I don’t understand what being a man is, so there isn’t a reason for it to exist, it’s just confusing. And idk why men get mad at me for using ‘she’ to refer to them. All of my friends are girls so its too hard to use something else besides she/her when I interact with someone in that group. I have nothing against men, but they shouldn’t bring that identity outside of their own circles because its too annoying to understand.” as it does for a binary person to say that nonbinary identities are confusing or shouldn’t exist because they don’t personally feel the need for it.

I’ll try to answer some of this, but I’m not 100% sure on a what you mean by a few things you mentioned so I might miss something.

Queer is just an umbrella term meaning any gender, sexuality, or similar type of identity that isn’t cishet basically. So like you said its kinda another word for lgbt, just one better suited to not exclude anything.

Non-binary specifically is about gender and not sexuality though. You can be non-binary and consider yourself gay, pan, bi, sapphic, straight, whatever, since sexuality and gender are two different things. Like a lot of labels, it is a blanket term sure, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. A scientist is a blanket term for a lot of different types of jobs in a ton of fields, but someone introducing themselves as a scientist still tells you a lot about them, and can often be easier than trying to explain to every person they meet all the exact intricacies of their specific specialty and how it differs from another. Nonbinary isn’t really anything different. Its an unbrealla term that means “not man or woman”, but there are basically an infinite number of super specific identities included in that, and in most situations casual aquantinces or random strangers don’t really need to know all the details of a persons specific identity because they aren’t super relevant.

I am confused on what you mean by

So can we use the term they to not refer to a gender but an individual like it always has been?

though.

They is a pronoun, not a gender, and it can be used to refer to a group of people, an individual with unknown pronouns (“somebody lost their wallet”), or someone who goes by they/them pronouns.

(Actually, rereading it did you mean that someone used “they” to refer to a person with unknown pronouns and was then told that person used he/him? In that case that’s not really anything new right? It doesn’t feel too different from saying “John’s friend told him” and being informed of what that friend’s name is so you don’t need to keep saying “john’s friend” when referring to them. It wasn’t a mistake to use they or anything like that, people were just giving more information to use in the future. The only time people would realistically get upset to be called “they” by someone is if that person knows what pronouns to use and “they” is just to avoid accurately gendering them. Using they by default for anyone you weren’t explicitly told which pronouns to use for is generally considered the best option, as long as that applies to everyone and not only people who seem visibly trans.)

The term LGBT is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Trans, but not every identity that falls under the queer umbrella is included in that. Often NB actually can be, since Trans is also kinda an umbrella term meaning “not the gender a person was assigned at birth”, which can definitely include non-binary identities. Stuff like asexuality and aromanticism aren’t in the actual acronym though which is why LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA, etc are used more often now than “LGBT” a lot now.

Really the only important thing is that identity is super complicated, and the labels that exist are just ways to help people both understand themselves better and also to give others an idea of said identity without constantly needing to explain every minutiae over and over again, which gets super tiring after a while lol.

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