On being Non-Binary
I have been writing about being disabled and chronically ill recently, which has been very enjoyable, and I’ve been able to interact with quite a few people I know about the subject. People have been very supportive, and have been interested in what I have to say, which has been very validating to me. Talking about myself and my experiences has also helped give me the courage I needed to believe that I deserved to ask for some assistance from Social Services (a Blue Badge and bus pass), which I was granted, with the help of a social worker.
However, in one way, talking about disability is easy (there are also many ways in which it is not easy) because I could be fairly sure that everyone I know think that disabled people in general exist. Talking about my experiences was a way to help people realise that ambulatory wheelchair users exist, and to raise a few issues that I encounter when I interact with the public and with friends. If people were confused about these things, I could be fairly sure that my writing would make them think, and realise the reality of my situation. The thing is, I find it hard to just write about disability and not acknowledge another major identity and experience of mine, without feeling cowardly. But it is much more difficult, as I cannot completely rely on the same level of understanding, belief and respect, as many people do not acknowledge the existance of people like me, and often argue against us, or dismiss the majority of us as a fad.
I am non-binary. This means that my gender is not male or female (a binary system that is the default in our society). The term is more of an umbrella, under which exists a lot of different labels which can more accurately describe how an individual feels and identifies. I would describe myself as gender-neutral, but that does not mean that all non-binary people are gender-neutral. I don’t know how they feel, so I cannot describe their identities. My writing is purely about myself, although I wholeheartedly support any other person identifying as anything within the non-binary and trans umbrella.
Coming out as non-binary has been a relief, but also quite hard to do, or at least, hard to know if I have been heard. I expected telling people to be difficult, but I did not expect the difficulty to be not being able to tell who read my “announcement” and who didn’t. A facebook post is, of course, not the ideal way to do this, as it will only reach a certain amount of the people I am friends with, but I have no other way in which to tell everyone at once, and I lack the confidence to continually tell people this information out of nowhere when socialising. Because I am happy with my appearance and my name I have no huge changes to make, other than asking that people use “they” rather than “she” to refer to me, and use neutral words in place of female-gendered words. These changes are very significant to me, but they are not very visible changes to other people.
Although I have recently come out as gender-neutral, that does not mean that I have only recently started to feel that way. I cannot state exactly when I started to feel like this, as I didn’t start out as a binary gender and then change my mind. It is more truthful to say that as I grew up, I was assumed by everyone to be a girl, and I gradually gained the ability to articulate my feelings about my gender more and more clearly. In the last few years I have been able to put these feelings into recognised words. As trans rights and the existance of non-binary people have gained attention, I have discovered that there are words that other people use to describe feelings and experiences that are the same, or similar, to my own. Until this point, I felt that I could not clearly talk to anyone about how I felt, because they would react with complete confusion, or assume that I meant that I was a trans man, which I am not. I assumed until about 2011, that I was alone in feeling the way I did, after this point I gradually became aware of non-binary people, and it took me until 2019 to realise that I deserved to identify this way as much as anyone else, and that I was a genuine non-binary person.
I have been lucky to have an immediate family that have had conversations about gender being a spectrum with me as I was growing up. This did not cause me to identify as non-binary — the conversations were usually in reaction to me already being upset about something. My family also did not enforce gender roles or any stereotypes about gender onto me. I still didn’t know that other people felt the way I did, and I did not feel safe talking about it to people outside of my family, I assumed until recently, that they would always be the only people who understood. Because of this understanding at home, I grew up with the confidence (despite not being a confident person) to look and dress how I wanted, and to do the things I wanted to do, free from any expectations about gender.
However, this freedom from gender stereotypes and roles did not change how I felt inside when people referred to me as the gender they assumed I was, including my family. I was free to do and look however I wanted, but I still cringed strongly inside whenever I heard “she” or “girl” directed at me. As an adult, this is still the case, and I react even more strongly to “woman”. When I was a teenager I started to feel extremely uncomfortable around groups of girls, this is a complicated feeling, and some of it would have been a reaction to bullying, manipulation and social rejection by my peers, but a lot of it seemed to be tied in with gender. I felt out of place, a fraud, an imposter. I even felt ugly, large and clumsy, despite not actually having issues with how I looked. I still feel like this today, and will actively avoid ever being in situations where there are only women present. I have had to work hard to be comfortable around female friends, and would still decline any invitation from a female friend to an event only attended by women, however informal.
My direct, internal experience of being gender-neutral is hard to describe. I would say that I feel a gender, probably more strongly than many people who identify with the gender they are assumed to have. I do not feel both masculine and feminine, I feel one thing, and that thing is neither, it is neutral and it is a very strong feeling.
If you find any of this confusing, and want to understand more, please do ask me questions.
If you are wondering what language to use to refer to me, please replace the following with these suggested words that make me feel more comfortable:
She/her/hers: They/their/them.
Girl/woman/lady: Person/dude/guy/chap.
Sister: Sibling/my name.
Daughter: Child/offspring/my name.
Generally speaking, if it is a neutral word (like person) I am happy with it, and am also happy with informal male-gendered words (like dude/guy/chap).
