Tips and Tricks to Decolonize Your Mind, the Non-Binary Way

Asia Kate Dillon as non-binary character, Taylor, in “Billions”

Gender, though an intersectional category, is utilized in all things through a binary lense. Stepping away from assumed gender norms is a necessary means to decolonize one’s self from the two-gendered system.

The show “Billions” screenwriters have taken the necessary to steps to break down this very false notion that there can only be two genders with the debut of an non-binary character, Taylor, played by Asia Kate Dillion, also identifies as non-binary. The show has been picked up for a third season and Dillon has already completed five episodes playing the character.

“Anyone who has gone on a journey of self-discovery with specific regard to either their gender identity or their sexual orientation, I think has had to look at themselves from sort of every angle,” Dillon said.

Dillon further discusses the self discoveries that they have made playing this role in an interview on “Ellen.”

“Taylor is female and non-binary. After doing some research, I realized, ‘oh sex and identity are different,’” they reveal. “Female is a sex, and sex is between our legs and gender identity is between our ears,” Dillon said.

When sharing this quote with my fellow non-binary friend, they shared the variation within the own label, that to some who identify as neither, there is the possibility that they will and that they will not identify with a sex. There is variation within the non-binary community as well.

Taylor’s character is an example of how media can be used as a tool to challenge narratives and bring to light the various systems that work to always tear us down.

Hari Ziyad, author of Everyday Feminism article “What I Learned from Being Non-Binary While Still Being Perceived as a Man” shares what it means for them everyday stepping out of society’s binary system.

“The violence inflicted by being inside those cages can’t be understated. My inability to properly connect with the gender I was told I was meant to be was an experience filled with anxiety, confusion, self-loathing, and other significant injury,” Ziyad shared.

Gender has continued to be a timeless conversation since and before the earlier works of Angela Davis and Frantz Fanon. Both reflect on the solutions to the oppression of the marginalized, specifically through the means of decolonization.

In Angela Davis’ work “Women, Race and Class: The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective ” she discusses the domestic slavery housewives endure in their own home and the race and class response to non-white women’s occupation and purpose in society.

The Women’s Movement in 1981 focused its efforts on the “emancipation of housewives” by demanding wages as well proper recognition that house work is just as important as any other work. The effort for the “housewife wage” intersected into the working-class movement as well. Though the emancipation of women through paid service has not seen the light of day, ladies have pushed to find their value and work outside of homes. As there are more and more working mothers, girls and gals have evolved their demands to include subsidized child care. Ladies are fighting for their “liberation from the kitchen sink” and the end to assumed domestication simply because of the gender they identify with.

Out of the western society, the term “housewife” has less application. Davis discusses racism and economy as well as the relationship between capitalism and domestic life. Most due to European expansion and colonialism, the South African society found its way to showcase higher valued Black labour with which men “are viewed as labour units whose productive potential renders them valuable to the capitalist class” and domestic life as well as women are seen as the “procreative capacity of the black male labour unit,” according to Davis.

Just as gender is society’s tool to control people who can not be found in neither the female or male spectrum, color and class also play a significant role in marginalization.

“It can also illuminate how some tools work better when used by white hands. Because gender is perceived differently across races, it is impossible to apply the same framework used in white non-binary spaces to define myself,” Ziyad said.

Working women find their strength in fighting for socialism, according to Davis. Working against capitalism by challenging wage gaps, canvassing for subsidized child care not only leaves capitalism behind the door but pushes the necessary actions for social change. Those who are not even seen or recognized as a part of those oppressed need to be brought into the light.

Angela Davis’ means to decolonize are very direct, physical actions. She does not spend time discussing the psychological and mental barriers to push through as her work reveals that the physical damage on colored bodies need to stop and that is her direct focus. Comparatively, Fernon’s way to decolonize lies within the mind.

In his work, “Black Skin, White Masks,” Fernon shares his belief that “true authentic love — wishing for others what one postulates for oneself, when that postulation unites the permanent values of human reality — entails the mobilization of psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts.”

For the people who have yet to realize that gender is a form of social oppression, Fernon comments on the yearning of acceptance.

“The person I love will strengthen me by endorsing my assumption of my manhood, while the need to earn the admiration or the love of others will erect a value- making superstructure on my whole vision of the world,” Fernon said.

Fernon’s work evolves around psyche. He discusses that it is by and through people that we find love and admiration. Applying it to where we are now in the “gender” conversation, Fernon’s work can be evidence of how people rely on those around them to “endorse” their identity they assume. He goes on further to discuss purgery and how vital it is to “purge oneself of that feeling of inferiority” for real love.

When deciding to remove one’s self from the system, whether it be through the embracing of a non-binary identity or open-mindedness to a non-gender exclusive way of thinking or being, it is all but vital to take the physical and mental necessary steps. Though both Davis and Fernon make good work through the ways they would decolonize they both lack the other’s perspective and both are needed to truly step away from the system that shackles us.