For many of us, gender is just a basic identifier. It’s something we’ve had as far back as we can remember, and even if it never really fit us, it was not a particularly uncomfortable fit either. However, for a growing number of people, the genders society offers just don’t appeal. They see the obsession so many people have with “fitting” those gender expectations deeply unappealing. But many still hope to find the “right fit.” Some yet undiscovered gender that they can just slip into.
That desire, while not inherently wrong, I think misses the issue though. Genders, particularly the Man/Woman binary, they are not niches the people slide into, but broad categories of culturally defined (and highly variable) traits. You not meant to fit into them, but to be caught up in them, shaped by them. I think in practice people don’t fit into the gender binary in the way they think they do. It’s not this highly personal “truth” they say you are a man or a woman, but rather it’s an ill defined goal people aspire to fit into.
Something non-binary people have managed to step beyond, as many non-binary people find as they soul search and attempt to discover there “gender” they end up further away, because they end up learning who they actually are rather then attempting to fit some general category.
Something non-binary people have managed to step beyond, as many non-binary people find as they soul search and attempt to discover there “gender” they end up further away, because they end up learning who they actually are rather then attempting to fit some general category. It seems to me that by rejecting the binary, people end up becoming more complete as people, no longer bound by the often impossible, toxic, and contradictory standards the gender binary. Non-binary people, and those who reject gender more explicitly are able to, their personal environment permitting, expand into fit the space of themselves, rather than the outlines cut for us all, but our cultures ideas of gender.
Withteeth
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