Being Non-Binary.

A little while back, I did a post about multi-gender attraction, and what that looks like for me. Today, I thought I'd take a look at being non-binary, and what that looks like. Which means that it's time to talk about gender!

When we're talking about gender, we're actually often talking about two different things in one; gender identity, and gender expression. Gender identity is your innate sense of what your gender is, on a psychological and internal level, however you kinda want to define that. It's how you see and understand yourself internally and what you identify with personally. Gender expression is how you choose to show and demonstrate that externally, through things like dress, behaviour, speech, and the like. It's what you want other people to see, or how you're choosing to act in a given moment.

People might then go, hey! What about body stuff? Well, bodies are something else again. That's what's referred to as biological sex; things like what chromosomes you might have, what genitals you have, etc. And even here, things are a fair bit more nuanced than the binary people are used to. Depending on where you look, there are some estimates that close to 2% of people are intersex; close to the number of people who have naturally red hair. It's not as uncommon as you'd think.

If you're not familiar with it yet, I do recommend the Genderbread website as a handy tool and explainer around these issues for those that are finding it a bit difficult. They do a decent job at breaking it all down.

For myself; gender identity is something that I find very difficult to pin down. My gender feels very difficult to define or contain or explain in any tangible sense; it feels rather amorphous. Part of this is probably simply because gender is somewhat of a social construct, and being neurodivergent, I don't deal with empty constructs that well. So I find it really hard to say if I'm more "male" or more "female", or both, or neither, or something else entirely. I don't feel like my gender identity is something that moves around or changes on a regular basis, so I don't think something like genderfluid or genderflux resonates with me; and at the moment, at least, I don't think that it's absent, so I don't think that agender quite fits either. So, insofar, I've just been using the broader term of non-binary, since it encompasses everything that isn't solely male or female. And I think this is an understanding that I've had on some level most of my life, just without the language for it.

Gender expression, though, is a little different. I think I could describe my desired gender expression as - eccentric? I've had a somewhat masc gender expression most of my life (though still with some hefty doses of femme), and I'm now skewing that more towards femme. I'm wearing skirts, trying dresses, growing my hair out longer; I'm pretty comfortable in my body (thankfully), so at the moment I don't have plans to try hormones, and I'm not thinking about doing surgery or anything like that. There are a few other things that I'm still thinking about - I've been inside for a fair while because of lockdown, so I've only been "expressing" my gender to the few people that I'm living with xD So I'm still exploring and figuring out what that will look like.

Other things I'm not so much making femme, but moving away from masc. I'm using they/them pronouns now and quite enjoying them; with some groups and people I've also started to use Bren rather than Brendan, though I'll probably still use the latter for formal documents and the like for a while yet. I'm not changing because I have dysphoria around the name Brendan (I quite like my name!), but because I like having a gender-neutral version of it. People see Brendan and think male, whereas people see Bren and don't immediately know what gender that is associated with.

I'll also note, that as a non-binary person - I'm not a man, and neither am I a woman. I'm not a boy, or a girl. I'm not a bro, or a sis, or a dude, or a guy, or a sheila. I'm not a sir or a ma'am, a Mr or a Mrs or a Ms. Now, it's not so much that these terms being used for me would cause dysphoria - it's just that they're not me. They're not inclusive of who I am. It's like if you said to a room filled with people from different backgrounds, "Hey white people!" It just doesn't make sense. It's not including a bunch of people that are there. If you have other people in your life that are non-binary or trans, particularly family or someone you're in relationship with, I'd really encourage you to talk with them about what language they enjoy being used for them. Because it's not just about not using language we don't like - it's also about using language that we do like. For me, a big part of that is when people use Bren and they/them for me. Other things are when people use compliments that are more typically femme; like calling me beautiful, pretty, or gorgeous - those are words I really enjoy.

Non-binary is a big umbrella, and I'm just one person standing under it somewhere. I've shared my experience here, but there are a lot of other people that use this identity too, and in different ways. I'd encourage you, again, to talk to these people in your life about what it means and looks like for them, and put in the extra mile to get that language right. Maybe that means using a different name; maybe it means using they/them, or even neopronouns! Maybe it means changing what compliments or other terms you use. If they're someone that you care about and want to build or maintain relationship with, take the time. It really helps.

If you've taken the time to read this - thank you. Hopefully it explains where I'm at at the moment in regards to gender a little bit better. As always; this is something where my understanding could change with time. But this gives you a snapshot of where I'm at now.