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I'm firmly in the camp of people who doesn't quite understand what a lot of "non-binary" people are doing with gender, despite being somewhat progressive and happy to exercise pronoun hospitality with such people. (I once heard an acquaintance describe their gender by saying, "if man is black, and woman is white, I'm purple - if you see me in monochrome, I'm more masculine, but really I'm not either of them" - and I was more confused than before I heard the analogy.)
I've seen various mottizens bring up the idea of "gender" being the latest subculture like goth or punk, and recently I stumbled across an interesting Tumblr post that accidentally circles around a similar insight. The whole thing is interesting, but I think you can get the gist from the following:
and
Now, I grant that the gender-as-fashion analogy isn't the only possible takeaway from this person's observations. I'm reminded of the "soul-editor" from the SCP Foundation Wiki that had symbols from every major world religion, as well as a few unknown ones. Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all? Perhaps some qualities of human minds/souls/whatever are ineffable, or so unique and subjective that one cannot help but create a new label for oneself in describing one's personality?
But I have my doubts. Mostly, I often feel like people must be mislabeling something that I have in my "mental box" as well. (I've read accounts of genderfluid people who talk about "waking up feeling masc" some days and dressing the part, while suddenly and abruptly "feeling femme" partway through the day and wanting to change outfits - and I couldn't help but speculate if they hadn't attached special significance to what I label "moods" in myself.) I don't discount that there are many real human experiences that aren't in my "mental box." In a very real way, I can't do much more than guess what depression, schizophrenia, OCD or dozens of other seemingly real human experiences are like. If I'm being maximally humble about what a tiny part of the vast terrain of possible human experiences I occupy, I have to concede that I can't know that many people aren't out there experiencing "gender" in ways I never will.
My partner is a binary trans man, and many of my friends and acquaintances are part of the LGBT+ community. I still don't quite understand why someone in that extended friend group suddenly finds it very important to change their name, and let everybody know that their pronouns are "she/they" now - while changing nothing else about their appearance or presentation. I'm happy to use a new name for someone, if they don't make such changes too frequently for me to keep up with, but I often feel baffled by why they find it so important? It's not really a big deal to me, but I would like an explanation. Gender-as-fashion seems so tempting as an explanation, but I worry that it might be a false explanation flattening human experiences into something that's more comfortable to me - the same way, "that person who supposedly has ADHD is just lazy" might flatten a person with ADHD into a form more comfortable for neurotypical people, and not in a way that is very sympathetic to the person with ADHD.
How do people in your circles react to them coming out? Is there an outpour of love, applause and validation?
Being nonbinary in gender or bi-curious in sexuality are cheap ways to become LGBTQIA2S+. No need to transition. You suddenly become an interesting person. It's basically the next level of "ally". There was some leaflet I saw on the Motte how the gender spectrum goes from Barbie to GI Joe. If conceptualized like this, it's not even a lie for them to say they don't feel fully female, as they are not some plastic barbie doll or stereotypical extremely girly girl. They see the female role as too weak, too patriarchy-defined, to male-gaze-defined.
Call it fashion, peer-pressure or whatever. People want to belong. And today, especially online, you can belong, be interesting and validated by showing that you are "diverse". Identify as mixed-race, discover your 1/32 indigenous roots, be nonbinary with 'they' pronouns, have "mental health struggles" etc.
There's also this gender hobbyist/enthusiast community who like to catalogue all the genders, like stamp collectors. They are the same sort of people who made Tokio Hotel fan club websites in 2003 on Geocities. The sort of people who make the Aesthetics Wiki. I think this hobby community (who debate the fine differences between demigirls and whatever else) is also really just a small subset of the whole progressive pro-gender crowd, a kind of autistic/aspie subset probably. They also probably don't quite understand it so they obsess about systematizing it, and probably a lot of them are wannabes. The rest probably just go about their lives, or go to weird quirky bars and have nontraditional sex and so on, instead of arguing online.
This is not to say that it's all based on nothing. There certainly are some rather androgynous people, tomboyish girls. But now it's hard to distinguish because it's become a fashion too.
It's certainly more healthy to do this, than to go full HRT+surgery. It seems to me to be an alternative path towards becoming LGBT instead of just a step on a slippery slope. It might be a memetic evolution to allow teen (which nowadays extends to the 20s) girls to do their teen girl stuff without also destroying their bodies and their ability to have kids once they grow out of this.
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