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The only reason people can fathom why we would look this way is because we want to draw attention to ourselves. They can’t even consider that maybe we look like this for ourselves, and not for other people. We are reduced to a spectacle. And when you are a spectacle, the harassment you experience becomes part of the show.
Most of this conversation has little to do with the everyday experiences of nonbinary people (people who are neither exclusively men nor women) and gender non-conforming people (people who visibly defy society’s understanding of what a man or a woman should look like). A lot more airtime is given to other peoples’ views of us rather than our own experiences. Our existence is made into a matter of opinion, as if our genders are debatable and not just who we are.
Gender non-conformity causes such a huge reaction because we’re consistently taught that there are only two fixed and universal genders. Seeing other people defy this mandate brings the entire system into question.
“new terms” often hides a more sinister motive, even if it’s not conscious. They are okay with language shifting as long as it’s the people in power doing it, not us. They say that gender non-conforming people, in particular, are caught up on some new fad: that we are inventing language, identities, pronouns, and genders.
Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be. No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide.
In 2018, in response to pervasive anti-trans legislation, over 2,500 distinguished scientists released a statement noting that the idea of the gender binary has no biological basis.
This is how power works: It makes the actual people experiencing violence seem like a threat. Moving from a place of fear leads us to make harmful assumptions about one another. In our fear, we treat other people’s identities as if they are something that they are doing to us and not something that just exists.
