Non-binary: What do you understand it to mean?

[AuroraSaab]

What does 'feeling feminine' mean though, Andy? As far as I'm concerned, there's just your sexed body. Everything else is personality and personal expression.

 

[AndyRM]

What does 'feeling feminine' mean though, Andy? As far as I'm concerned, there's just your sexed body. Everything else is personality and personal expression.

What does feeling masculine mean?

It's a weird thing to try and describe, but I'll give it a shot... Yes, I have a male body, but it doesn't always feel that way. I guess for context, if I was taking the stage in my old band I'd be full of rage and ready to destroy people. That's not how I feel when I'm feeling feminine. There's a fluidity to the whole thing which I don't fully understand myself, and probably never well.

That said, I understand the need to respect gendered spaces and would never go into a women's changing room or bathroom or whatever even if I was wearing a dress. Because that's not cool and I have friends who I know that would make feel uncomfortable/unsafe.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Surely feeling masculine or feminine are just as much the norms we have dripfed and indoctrinated into us over the years as they are a natural factor of our sex. Is feeling weepy or interested in fashion feminine, or wanting to stand shouting in a football match or keeping a stiff upper lip masculine?

It seems to me as if stereotyping wrt gender/sex is deemed as much more acceptable, even something to be proud of, than stereotyping by race/religion.

Maturity as an individual as well as a nation must mean acceptance that the most important way to judge people is how respectfully and fairly they treat other people, not the gender they choose to (or cannot help but) identify with at any one time.

As an old bloke, who is definitely a product of his upbringing and his era, I must admit to struggling to fully understand the details of the debate about gender definitions/identification/non-binary, but I am definitely less judgemental about it than I probably would have been 40 years ago.

 

[theclaud]

Everything else is personality and personal expression.

People express their personality in gendered ways, because we exist in a relentlessly gendered world. You and I would (I guess?) agree that this is learned and not innate, whereas in a lot of transgender politics the belief in innate gender identity is quite strongly held. However, trans people, or those who describe themselves as NB, are using the same cues and cultural meanings as everyone else, but coming to a different understanding of what it means for them and who they are, and there's a political imperative for this because it creates space for new forms of expression, or indeed new forms of being. It isn't inherently damaging or fake or ridiculous or pathological for people to make different kinds of sense from the same available range of meanings. If the current GC movement were as serious about female (or sexual) liberation as it is about Victorian toilet arrangements, it would instinctively grasp the importance of this, especially with regard to how much it matters for young people of a radical disposition. And it wouldn't be stuffed full of toxic reactionaries like Hartley-Brewer, or waste its energies being poisonous to actual feminists like Finn Mackay.

 

[AndyRM]

Surely feeling masculine or feminine are just as much the norms we have dripfed and indoctrinated into us over the years as they are a natural factor of our sex. Is feeling weepy or interested in fashion feminine, or wanting to stand shouting in a football match or keeping a stiff upper lip masculine?

It seems to me as if stereotyping wrt gender/sex is deemed as much more acceptable, even something to be proud of, than stereotyping by race/religion.

Maturity as an individual as well as a nation must mean acceptance that the most important way to judge people is how respectfully and fairly they treat other people, not the gender they choose to (or cannot help but) identify with at any one time.

As an old bloke, who is definitely a product of his upbringing and his era, I must admit to struggling to fully understand the details of the debate about gender definitions/identification/non-binary, but I am definitely less judgemental about it than I probably would have been 40 years ago.

I feel that your last sentence is the most important here. Because you're making an effort to understand. And that is huge.

 

[swansonj]

Why badly, why not 'good and proper'?

I think there was a slip of the keyboard there, I think what you meant to say was, I apologise, I realise I've hurt you, and as a result I've reflected on my online behaviour and will try to rein in my tendency to be offensive to people in future.

 

[Ian H]

...actual feminists like Finn Mackay.

Thanks. I think this is worth posting: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...the-writer-hoping-to-help-end-the-gender-wars

 

[fozy tornip]

People express their personality in gendered ways, because we exist in a relentlessly gendered world. You and I would (I guess?) agree that this is learned and not innate, whereas in a lot of transgender politics the belief in innate gender identity is quite strongly held. However, trans people, or those who describe themselves as NB, are using the same cues and cultural meanings as everyone else, but coming to a different understanding of what it means for them and who they are, and there's a political imperative for this because it creates space for new forms of expression, or indeed new forms of being. It isn't inherently damaging or fake or ridiculous or pathological for people to make different kinds of sense from the same available range of meanings. If the current GC movement were as serious about female (or sexual) liberation as it is about Victorian toilet arrangements, it would instinctively grasp the importance of this, especially with regard to how much it matters for young people of a radical disposition. And it wouldn't be stuffed full of toxic reactionaries like Hartley-Brewer, or waste its energies being poisonous to actual feminists like Finn Mackay.

Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!

And yet, without some unlikely Steppenwolfian late life re-birth some of us are condemned to be onlookers, like Larkin:

I see a girl dragged by the wrists
Across a dazzling field of snow...

 

[Rusty Nails]

I think there was a slip of the keyboard there, I think what you meant to say was, I apologise, I realise I've hurt you, and as a result I've reflected on my online behaviour and will try to rein in my tendency to be offensive to people in future.

I think you overestimate his ability to understand, or care about, the difference between "saying it as it is" and being offensive. Tbf it is much easier to see everything in life as a binary choice, than to admit there might be shades of grey, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.

 

[AuroraSaab]

People express their personality in gendered ways, because we exist in a relentlessly gendered world. You and I would (I guess?) agree that this is learned and not innate, whereas in a lot of transgender politics the belief in innate gender identity is quite strongly held. However, trans people, or those who describe themselves as NB, are using the same cues and cultural meanings as everyone else, but coming to a different understanding of what it means for them and who they are, and there's a political imperative for this because it creates space for new forms of expression, or indeed new forms of being. It isn't inherently damaging or fake or ridiculous or pathological for people to make different kinds of sense from the same available range of meanings. If the current GC movement were as serious about female (or sexual) liberation as it is about Victorian toilet arrangements, it would instinctively grasp the importance of this, especially with regard to how much it matters for young people of a radical disposition. And it wouldn't be stuffed full of toxic reactionaries like Hartley-Brewer, or waste its energies being poisonous to actual feminists like Finn Mackay.

But surely the answer then is to get rid of gender, because it really is just stereotypes, not to reinforce it through the idea that if boys like dresses and ballet they might be a girl. Trans ideology desperately clings to the gender roles and the gender expression that feminists have worked so hard to do away with. It puts people in more boxes, it doesn't free them from the boxes.

People who present as more stereotypically like the opposite sex should be celebrated for being gender non conforming (though I hate that phrase). I find the idea that instead this means they might be somehow the opposite sex to be regressive and frankly homophobic.

There are a thousand different ways to be a woman - none of which tip you over into being a man. Likewise with blokes.

I've found some of Finn McKay's comments interesting but thought their response to the recent BBC article on lesbians feeling pressured into sex with transwomen was a very poor take on the issue.

How can women organise and campaign for their specific needs if their sex category no longer exists because it now includes everyone?

Women are oppressed on the basis of their sexed bodies, not their gender identity. When 'woman' is simply a feeling in your head, that a man can also have, you have redefined 'woman' from a material concept to a nebulous idea that has no agreed or concrete meaning. And you've also invited the oppressor (men) to become part of the class they oppress (women). The consequences of this are obvious - from the erasure of female specific language (like 'pregnant women' not being inclusive enough) to placing men in women's prisons. It is far more than about toilets, what you wear, and feeling feminine.

 

[AuroraSaab]

What does feeling masculine mean?
...if I was taking the stage in my old band I'd be full of rage and ready to destroy people. That's not how I feel when I'm feeling feminine.

Isn't this just our social conditioning though? Thinking that anger is a masculine trait and calmness, and submissiveness, is a feminine one? These are all just different aspects of our personalities. No emotion is gendered. How can it be? The fact we associate them with maleness and femaleness just shows how effect socialisation from a young age is.

 

[AndyRM]

Isn't this just our social conditioning though? Thinking that anger is a masculine trait and calmness, and submissiveness, is a feminine one? These are all just different aspects of our personalities. No emotion is gendered. How can it be? The fact we associate them with maleness and femaleness just shows how effect socialisation from a young age is.

You're right. I've not really explained myself well here. Of course there are times when I feel angry when I'm feeling feminine. In fact my most aggressive gig happened when I was in a feminine frame of mind, broke my drums that night.

 

[Archie_tect]

Why do people have to think about being anything... people either get on or they don't- matters not what they look like, matters not how they express themselves externally to others.

People are different for all sorts of reasons- just let people get on with living how they want.

Rules about what is reasonable where privacy needs to be respected have to be set but not in terms of groups being separated for convention, but for personal privacy so people can feel safe and protected from any and all intrusive voyeuristic individuals [from anybody if they so wish]... who or what they think they are or look like has nothing to do with it.

If people have the confidence to strip off in changing rooms then let them, whoever is around, bodies are just bodies- everyone's got one!- convention prevents people being openly naked in public but when people aren't comfortable doing that then they need privacy and that should be respected and space made available for them to be comfortable.

 

[FishFright]

But surely the answer then is to get rid of gender, because it really is just stereotypes, not to reinforce it through the idea that if boys like dresses and ballet they might be a girl. Trans ideology desperately clings to the gender roles and the gender expression that feminists have worked so hard to do away with. It puts people in more boxes, it doesn't free them from the boxes.

People who present as more stereotypically like the opposite sex should be celebrated for being gender non conforming (though I hate that phrase). I find the idea that instead this means they might be somehow the opposite sex to be regressive and frankly homophobic.

There are a thousand different ways to be a woman - none of which tip you over into being a man. Likewise with blokes.

I've found some of Finn McKay's comments interesting but thought their response to the recent BBC article on lesbians feeling pressured into sex with transwomen was a very poor take on the issue.

How can women organise and campaign for their specific needs if their sex category no longer exists because it now includes everyone?

Women are oppressed on the basis of their sexed bodies, not their gender identity. When 'woman' is simply a feeling in your head, that a man can also have, you have redefined 'woman' from a material concept to a nebulous idea that has no agreed or concrete meaning. And you've also invited the oppressor (men) to become part of the class they oppress (women). The consequences of this are obvious - from the erasure of female specific language (like 'pregnant women' not being inclusive enough) to placing men in women's prisons. It is far more than about toilets, what you wear, and feeling feminine.

You do write some rubbish sometimes.

 

[cookiemonster]

You're right. I've not really explained myself well here. Of course there are times when I feel angry when I'm feeling feminine. In fact my most aggressive gig happened when I was in a feminine frame of mind, broke my drums that night.

Sorry, what!?