The reasoning behind TIFs and TIMs is clear... But wtf is the validation behind NB??

submitted by Jekawi from self.GenderCritical

TIMs want to be women. TIFs want to be men. If we disagree on principle or not is despite the point. They want to transition to the other gender/sex. Makes sense. But non-binaries can't be anything but a trend. You can't opt out of gender without acknowledging that what you're actually opting out of gender roles. That doesn't make you special. It's nothing to do with sex or anything. It's just a special name to say that if you're a girl maybe you don't like wearing dresses and if you're a guy maybe you dont like trucks (idk).

What I mean is that there is no 3rd gender. You can say you're GNC, but that shouldn't give you special rights. The example of saying "people with cervixes" to be inclusive to NB (and transmen) is ludicrous. NB say they opt out of the binary BUT THERE IS NOTHING ELSE BUT THE BINARY!! Therefore, it's a trend. Fair and simple.

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[–]Complicated-Spirit 48 insightful - 3 fun48 insightful - 2 fun49 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Nine times out of ten, it’s “I’m not like other girls” for girls/women and “I may be bisexual and occasionally cry” for boys/men.

It’s such a rigid adherence to socially-constructed gender roles that they cannot conceive of “man” or “woman” outside of a predetermined, predefined, strict stereotype. Any deviation from those “norms”, and they have to be something beyond man or woman. For kids, I think it’s also a way of reassuring oneself that one really is special and unique. A girl can see another girl in a flannel shirt, feel a strike of fear that she is not the only one who wears them, and then tell herself that while the other girl is still a girl, she herself is “non-binary”.

[–]jelliknight 22 insightful - 2 fun22 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

The thinking seems to be "I don't like what's expected of women, but I know I can't change sex and I don't want to take hormones. If only there was some other option..." Claiming to be neither sex doesn't make any less sense than claiming to be the opposite.

[–]Lizzythelezzo 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have met a lot of NB people who take hormones, though there are many who don't. I think the ones who take hormones are more likely to have dysphoria about their bodies.

[–]GreenChiles 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

In some way I can understand teens wanting to be NB. Heck I probably would have sprung on that if it where a thing when I was a teen if I thought it would stop my moms obsessive attitude over what I wore. I too hated dresses(well panty hose which according to my mom must always be worn with dresses and I had to dress up for church.) Also with her atiquated views on what women enjoy(why doesn't brother have to cone shopping/to the prade of homes with you but we do? Well because he's a boy!) But I never wanted to not be a woman and I would have pretended to be NB until I moved about and could be the woman who does whatever the hell I want like I do now. So yea, it's just an out on stereotypes which is helpful when people with control over your life try to shove stereotypes on you.

[–]Complicated-Spirit 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Omg, my mom did the same thing with pantyhose. I HATE them. I hate the way they feel. I hate the ridiculous way they look. They are the epitome of discomfort to me. I don’t even own any anymore - I refuse. Yet my mother seemed to think that if I wasn’t going to wear pantyhose under a skirt - and I had to wear a skirt/dress to certain events, because I had to “dress up and look nice”, which mean being physically uncomfortable - than I might as well go naked if I’m going to display the indecency of my bare knees and calves to the whole world. I probably would’ve gone NB too, if I could’ve used it as an excuse to get out of those damned pantyhose.

(Yet, it seems like TIMs are the only ones keeping the pantyhose industry in business anymore - whenever you read their coming-of-gender stories, pantyhose is one of the first things they often grab. Ugh. I’d say it’s like taking an oppressively uncomfortable male garment that has persisted in being worn only because it’s considered ghastly and uncivilized to appear in public with whatever it covers, uncovered; then putting it on your female body, and declaring yourself liberated because now you are made to dress in awkward, tiring, uneasy clothing just like a man has to wear to conform to expectations of decency and shame - but males don’t have garments like that.)

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It wasn't much fun having to wear stockings for church, synagogue, work or school before pantyhose was invented, either, LOL.

Having to wear stockings held up by garter belts or girdles with garters (aka braces in British parlance) was a big drag. Especially since back in the days before panty hose, teen girls in countries like the USA were required to wear skirts/dresses and hose to HS; women in college and uni had to wear them to classes; and working women had to wear skirts and hose in a wide variety of jobs too - from nursing, waitressing and running a cash register to working in the secretarial pool or being a file clerk. This was expensive too, since the hose back then got holes and "runs" so easily. (And in cold winter weather, the tops of the thighs not covered by the stocking would get very cold to the point of often getting chapped, especially in high winds.)

Equally unpleasant to wear back then were the big, thick, super-chafing sanitary pads that were kept in place by the awful contraptions known as sanitary belts before thinner sanpro pads with adhesive backing and "wings" along with a variety of easy-to-use tampon products were introduced. Having to go to school or work wearing both a garter belt holding up your stockings and a sanitary belt holding in place a giant "sanitary napkin" in your crotch at the same time really sucked! LOL

[–]our_team_is_winning 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

the awful contraptions known as sanitary belts

My mother's aunts grew up in the 1920s and they told her they had to use rags and wash them and reuse them, like the way some do with ecofriendly (?) diapers. What's disturbing to me is that I'm sure some TiM would get off on washing out period blood.

[–]Complicated-Spirit 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

You think it hasn’t happened? It’s the same reason they claim we’re “privileged” for having periods.

Speaking of their love for pantyhose, they also seem to love slips and camisoles and all matter of uncomfortable, old-fashioned, rayon, lace-festooned underclothes that women have discarded. So I’d imagine they’d be all over the sanitary jockstraps (as my mother disparagingly referred to them).

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You're right: males' tendency to fetishize female bodily functions and to get off imagining themselves as having female bodies pre-dates both the current and prior century.

[–]Shesstealthy 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Not for 30 years they wouldn't.

[–]denverkris 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

For a minute I didn't get this, then it hit me and I knew why I missed it at first. I hit menopause a few years back and I miss that thing so little that its almost like I've totally blocked it out of my mind, haha. SO do not miss it.

[–]luckystar 13 insightful - 5 fun13 insightful - 4 fun14 insightful - 5 fun -  (7 children)

They want to fit in in left leaning crowds and they think claiming to be a marginalized minority wins them oppression points. Non binary is the easiest marginalized minority to be because (a) literally everybody is "non binary" as in the sense of, occasionally or frequently feeling disconnect with gender roles / (b) you're not allowed to question any sort of trans identity because all identities are VaLiD. You can't fake being black. You can sorta fake being gay but not if you're in a hetero relationship. However to be trans non binary you literally have to do fuck all but claim you don't like your birth sex.

I know a man who claimed to be non binary and literally had a beard! Nobody would ever see him as anything but a man. He painted his nails sometimes, wow, how stunning and brave! He got into socialist/Bernie Bro politics circles where being oppressed makes you fit in better. Sad thing is I'm sure on some level he did dislike being a man, but not because of gender dysphoria or anything, just because he was the dreaded "cishet white male" which is the worst thing you can be in internet anime/communist circles.

I have almost never seen anyone but middle to upper middle class hard left leaning white people do this "non binary" nonsense. The overwhelming majority of them are very obviously quite comfortable in their biological sex -- women that show off cleavage and curves, men with beards, etc. Most of them are actually gender conforming much of the time! A woman with her profile picture of herself in a WEDDING DRESS calling herself "non binary". Yeah ok sis, sounds legit.

Don't even get me started on all the other cultures they refer to, 9 times out of 10 when they talk about a "third gender", that culture has a word for being gay or being a trans woman (they don't pretend trans women are literally women). And virtually no "AFAB" can be the "third gender" from those cultures because women are needed as baby incubators. Only male people can opt out of manhood, because men are more expendable in terms of reproduction.

A different culture having a term that basically means "f*ggot" or "sissy" is NOT your "woque non binary folx" ffs.

TBH I don't care in general if people want to think of themselves as unique snowflakex that are just so much deeper and more complex than the "gender binary" (which they imagine for the majority of people that they love being GI Joes and Barbie Dolls). It's when they start whining about how they are le trans and thus the most oppressed ever, when by definition they are some of the most privileged people who ever live, that my blood starts to boil. That male former friend with the beard started telling me "you don't get to define who is a woman" and I was just. Done. Who the fuck do these people think they are.

[–]our_team_is_winning 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I have almost never seen anyone but middle to upper middle class hard left leaning white people do this "non binary"

They've been marginalized by the Woke Cult so they need an angle they can work to get reinvited to the party (who would want an invite to that party???)

THIS killed me: <That male former friend with the beard started telling me "you don't get to define who is a woman" > Mother Nature already did that in prehistoric times.

[–]Complicated-Spirit 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Those “third gender” culture are also generally super-strict when it comes to gender roles. It’s funny how they can wax poetic about the beauty and wisdom of the precious ancient sacred hijra tradition of India, and just not fucking care that it has the highest rate of violence against women in the world.

Yes, I said violence against women, not “gender-based violence” because I’m not insisting on remaining blind to goddamn fucking reality.

[–]luckystar 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, agreed. Maybe I didn't express it well enough in my post. These cultures have a term for "man who doesn't act like our rigid definition of what a man should act like". More egalitarian cultures don't need a separate term for that because their definitions aren't as rigid. And as always, it's ONLY men that are allowed to "opt out" of being men, because they aren't essential to reproduction (the "correct" men are probably thinking "hey all the more women for me"/"I can have sex with this man and still be considered manly as long as I top", it's a win win for them). If it was truly about having looser boundaries around genders then we'd see a term for women who break the mold, but since they always appear in these ultra patriarchal cultures, where women's reproductive capacity is tightly controlled, women are not allowed to identify out of womanhood. There are no female "hijra".

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

A woman with her profile picture of herself in a WEDDING DRESS calling herself "non binary".

Maybe her wedding dress was BLUE! >W<

[–]luckystar 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Lol not that it matters but it was indeed a white wedding dress and of course her husband was male too.

[–]Jekawi[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Transpeople should wake up and see that NB are a threat to them. I watched a video from Blaire White about it and the things she was saying about it was Schadenfreude. Things like she's being pushed out of trans places due to NB people made me think of women being pushed out of women's places for trans women. To be fair, I find White very reasonable and enjoy hearing about her experiences. Her and Rose of Dawn

[–]denverkris 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

"you dont get to define what is a woman"

Right, it's a rhetorical question, dumbass.

[–]emptiedriver 10 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I think it makes just as much sense to want to opt out of either gender as to want to transition to the other gender, when all that "gender" means is the stereotypical role of the sex. No one is actually going to change sex. They are just changing what stereotype they play, so a non-binary is choosing to not follow the pre-defined A or B, pink or blue, lipstick or facial hair, and instead mix it up.

Obviously that should just be called "personality". Having a cervix doesn't indicate whether you like high heels or boots or flip flops or nikes. It's not non-binary to dye your hair green or wear one earring or black lipstick or whatever.. (we used to call it goth) - it's not an identity, just a style.

[–]our_team_is_winning 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Spot on! It's just fashion. When did androgyny cease to be fun and become an obnoxious political statement?

Actually just read this today in a silly (and I mean silly) article called "What Does Gender Fluid Mean?"

<Someone who's gender fluid might also switch between different gender identities at different times, and have different forms of gender expression, i.e. wearing a suit and tie one day, and a dress and heels the next. >

Yeah, I change clothes every day too! They're telling me I can "change gender" by putting on or taking off a tie or a pair of heels? Then why do men need the taxpayer or insurance company to foot the bill for extreme radical surgery? Much easier to take off or put on a pair of shoes. This is all so stupid.

[–]Literallyawoman 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It’s literally being not like the other girls except instead of stigmatizing makeup and “femme” clothes they now stigmatize being female. Like a lot of trends for women it’s rooted in internalized misogyny-women feel they can’t be gross, dirty, fat, thin and flat chested, masculine, fucking SMART or STRONG and still be a woman, so they redefine their label.

But that’s based on my experience and a total lack of any male enbys I know personally know or know of. And...it’s always really insecure overweight women. As someone who’s been overweight I feel comfortable pointing that out. Being fat isn’t considered feminine sure that’s a problem in society and ideal female bodies blah blah blah BUT it’s leading to overweight women feeling so unfeminine and undesirable/unsexualized they opt out of womanhood altogether, and just give up on their health completely in the name of “self-acceptance”.

[–]unexpectedly_local 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

they can’t be gross, dirty, fat, thin and flat chested, masculine, fucking SMART or STRONG and still be a woman

Woman = feminine beauty and fashionable. I'm not sure when, but at some point being beautiful and fashionable became a baseline for women. I feel like I grew up in a time where you didn't HAVE to be either and could rely on some other aspect that made you special. I'm still none of those things and it does kind of hit you like a brick when you walk into a Women's Group and all the other women there are beautiful and/or fashionable, or at least try to be. They talk about being a woman and womanhood and it's intertwined with their experiences in beauty and fashion and heterosexuality and if you're not into those things it's not really that relatable. But because it's called a women's group or based around womanhood, I can see how you might start to doubt even being a woman at all. I've been a gender abolitionist (in the traditional sense) since preteens, but even I sometimes feel like a muppet person compared to "real women".

[–]leaveandletleave 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I’ve had two children and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever feel like a “real woman”. Not that one needs to have children as validation (I certainly didn’t) but growing up that was the milestone my mother and other women used to weigh someone’s opinion.

Now those same people base their opinions on the speaker’s age. There’s no winning.

[–]Jekawi[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The singer Sam Smith has recently come out as NB with they/them pronouns (he was still using he/him for a while). Thing is he looks like a dude. Changed nothing about his appearance at all.

Also with the overweight thing I can't help but think of the Danish comedian I post about the other day, Sofie Hagen. She recently came out as NB and as I said in that post, I would think it's rooted in misogyny and her life long fight with it. It had to leave its mark somehow.

[–]denverkris 3 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

He occasionally wears lippy, a bit of nail polish. He sashay a wee bit.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

When I was growing up, we called those 'metrosexual'.

[–]moody_ape 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

they want to be snowflakes, that's all. "i don't like some of my physical traits" becomes "i have dysphoria", "i'm a weirdo" becomes "i'm oppressed", etc. in the early 2000s we had the emo kids, today we have the NB kids.

[–]meranii 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

NB started a few years after intersectional feminism was misunderstood in woke online spaces as a privilege ladder. Young white progressive men and women wanted to ardently defend their beliefs, but according to their own beliefs they had so much privilege that they had to basically shut up about any social issue and let everyone else speak first.

But oh, that feels so wrong when one just wants to be seen and heard. How to be special and rebellious when there are millions like you out there? Being gay or lesbian or bi itself is too boring, being trans is too much for them. But what's this, you don't always feel like a stereotypical boy or girl? Nevermind that no one does, get an undercut, dye your hair, call yourself enby (it sounds totally cute, doesn't it?), now you're part of LGBTQ+.

[–]StupidHappyPancakes 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

All I know is that the male NBs seem to be even worse than TIMs because they retain every bit of their male privilege but still get to make up pronouns and throw hissy fits if they aren't accomodated and celebrated wherever the hell they decide they belong. I've even noticed that they seem to be policing the language of regular trans people at this point!

[–]jjdub7Gay Male Guest Commentator 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some degree of "neurodivergence" going on in every case

[–]radarladal 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It’s trendy. That’s it