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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32834 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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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:

[...] I think there’s an interesting similarity in the way nonbinary (or genderqueer people in general) talk about the nuances of their gender and how people really big into specific music scenes talk about the nuances of the genres they listen to. Like there’s the description you give other people in your community, and the “normie” description you give to people who aren’t as familiar. And “genre” and “gender” are both constructs in similar ways too. Just my little binary observation tho.

and

so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they’re nonbinary or even just “female”, they clocked you as a gender normie lol.

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.

I think a lot of the problem for understanding "nonbinary" as a term is that it can mean a lot of different things, both as an umbrella term and as a mess of categories that aren't that clear themselves:

  • Clownfish-nonbinary, in the sense of taking different gender roles depending on outside stimulus. That can be social, in the strict sense that clownfish only turn female in a sausage fest, but it can also be role-based (eg, male at work and female at party), group-based (eg, female among one social party, male among another), or through different times (eg, some weeks male, some weeks female). Genderfluid usually means this, though I've seen a few exceptions.

  • Whiptail-nonbinary, in the sense of taking a role that doesn't normally make sense within the male/female lines. I use whiptails as an example not because they're lesbian, but because they're lesbian in a way that can have hormonal layout take 'male' or 'female' courtship and mounting in the same coupling regularly, in ways that increase reproductive success'. In humans, this usually doesn't turn into becoming the non-genetic-but-physically-relevant role for reproduction (and even most people that fetishize that don't do so in a nonbinary framework), but the 'so dyke she answers to sir' is kinda the low end of this particular wading pool. These people aren't (usually?) trans in the surgery-sense, and even stuff like laser hair removal or hormones might be more in the aesthetic framework than the dysphoria ones, but there's some point where it's useful to be able to distinguish from mere 'gender-non-conforming' (... sometimes...).

  • Hyena-nonbinary, in the sense of having a mix of traits consider mainstays of male/female. No one is archetypically male or female, not least of all because each of these have contradictory and/or impossible, but just as there's a level of bro or stacey that can't shut up about being it, there's eventually a point where people can't shut up about how they're not.

  • Worker-ant-nonbinary, in the sense that talking about gender in any sense but the chromosonal is kinda missing the point. Neuter or neutrois are the more extreme bits, here, but there's a dark mirror to the 'cis-by-default' concept that's kinda the opposite of it, where someone doesn't hugely care about gender but also doesn't get any reason to act toward their default role.

  • Landmine-nonbinary, where they just really don't want to deal with any gender stuff publicly, and want to make it your problem.

  • Peacock-nonbinary, where there's a bunch of really complicated social signalling stuff that doesn't (seem to?) have pragmatic impact.

  • and probably some other groups I don't know about.

the 'cis-by-default' concept that's kinda the opposite of it, where someone doesn't hugely care about gender but also doesn't get any reason to act toward their default role.

I strongly suspect that this is the majority of people. I am baffled by someone describing the experience of 'feeling like' something as abstract as a Gender.

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