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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.
I see it as a cope rather than an identity. The people who I have met who have called themselves non binary have been people who have failed out of their gender rather than adopted something else. Women who simply don't preform as women call themselves non binary instead of just admitting that they have few female secondary sexual characteristics and are far from any man's fantasy wife. The men who become non binary are often physically weak men who are lacking in male capabilities and virtues. Instead of admitting that they lack the attributes of their gender, they claim that they both male and female. Apart from certain superficial attributes, this is rarely the case. They are not doing lobster fishing on Saturday and dancing on Sunday. In reality, they are probably laying on their sofa scrolling tiktok.
We have a society obsessed with gender, yet we have less gender than ever. The same goes for asexuals, I have yet to meet one that I found highly attractive. I have never met an asexual man that gives an aura of having ravaged a women. My suspicion is that this is just a nicer way for incels to label themselves.
I don't know that "copes" and "identities" are mutually exclusive. Many identities, including some ethnic identities, are copes of some sort. A kid who identifies as Hui in China might well identify as Chinese if he moves to the US if the only other Asian kid in school is Han. Someone who never identified as a member of a group is more likely to do so when circumstances change. And, someone who is told or feels that he does not belong in group X or group Y is going to look for another group to identify with. And, an effeminate guy who is straight is not clearly in any particular prexisting group, so it is hardly surprising that he will end up identifying with a new group of similar people. You are describing >how binary gender identity develops more than you are undermining the legitimacy of the identity.
And, the people you describe -- women with few secondary female characteristics and men lacking in male capabilities and virtues -- clearly don't fit neatly in either gender and almost certainly have attributes of the other gender. You are basically acknowledging that some middle group with attributes of each gender exists, so it seems that you are mostly objecting to the name. And note that society already acknowledge that there are women with male gender (not sex, but gender*) attributes: they are commonly called tomboys.
*You err in saying "Instead of admitting that they lack the attributes of their gender, they claim that they both male and female" -- they lack the attributes of their sex, not their gender. Gender = a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex. By calling themselves non-binary, they are indeed admitting that they lack the attributes of the gender associated with their sex.
This definition presupposes that these roles are all learned and are mere societal expectations (presumably arbitrary ones at that).
But actually the same thing that makes your body grow a penis or a vagina also affects the brain, the hormones etc. The gender-sex distinction is made up, it's not even possible to express it in any other language than English (other than outright loaning the word "gender" as is). Gender started out as a euphemism for sex, to avoid referring to the act of sex (before that, it only referred to grammatical categories). They should be nothing more than synonyms.
No, it doesn't assume that. A norm is literally that which is deemed normal. Eg: Men are stronger than women, so it is natural that society would deem it normal that men do jobs which demand physical strength. There is no reason at all that gender norms should be arbitrary. But they can be nonarbitrary, yet nevertheless change, as when they take more extreme forms, such as "women can't be lumberjacks" or "men don't cry" or "married women shouldn't work."
And, feel free to suggest a different term, if you don't like "gender." We would be having this same discussion, regardless.
Feminists who still understand gender as the roles you mention are fringe today and labeled TERFs. Yes, originally gender studies was about these roles and women's place in society etc, but today's woke gender concept is something else. The whole point was that these gender roles are something you are pushed into by your social setting, not something you choose based on your unique snowflake personality quirks. The original goal wasn't to tell people "hey, you don't like the roles/social expectations put on you? Then you aren't actually a woman/man!" but to allow women and men more flexibility in shaping their roles to their personality and temperament without anyone denying that they can live like that as women/men.
Interestingly enough, a significant chunk of the Hungarian left (including a massively popular leftist YouTube show) are also with that earlier definition and are woke-critical/gender-critical. It would be worth a post sometime I think.
I don't think that's the intention, but when you start putting all sorts of prescriptive political, moral and aesthetic judgements on these things....
What they hell did they think was going to happen?
The problem was a lack of self-criticism where they never realized that trying to allow men and women more flexibility in terms of personality and temperament was always in conflict with the political goals of more freedom for women, or at least how they went about it focusing on universal socialization and the Blank Slate.
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