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
hessianwithteeth 
June 15th, 2018 at 11:33 pm
Isn’t it better to figure out what you want to do and are able to do or can learn to do, and do it? Sure there are a lot more “gender roles” today than there used to be, but there are not an infinite number, and as soon as a person chooses a “gender”, they are shoehorning themselves into it. Yeah, it may be a closer fit than the old binary choice, but it is still defining yourself against a set of aspects which someone else thought up. Or you come up with a whole new gender for yourself which other people will then try to fit themselves to.
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June 16th, 2018 at 10:46 am
That pretty much the point you suppos to take. Although really there could in functionally infinite genders, the point being once you really dive deep and attempt to understand yourself, gender reveals how shallow it is. I think the only reason folks keep hunting for their own gender is because some many people are so obsessed with there own gender, not understanding stand that’s probably unhealthy and not something to aspire too.
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