Hey so I’m trying to explain to my best friend what it meants to be non-bianary. It’s hard because I identify as a cis woman & I want to be sensitive to nb folks. I also want to explain it correctly. When I tried she replied “well they obviously have to know if they are a man or a woman.” I told her not everyone feels like a man or a woman but I couldn’t elaborate. She just doesn’t understand. What do I say?
Even I have trouble explaining it. I just know I’m not a woman, but not a man either. I don’t want society to perceive me as either of those things because it feels wrong. But everyone’s experience is different, so I can only speak for myself. And I will explain this to the best of my ability based solely on my own experiences.
In order for your friend to understand that there can be a person who feels like neither woman nor man, she first has to detach genitals from gender, and understand that they are not dependent on one another. I think that’s where many people get stuck, especially cis people, because there are two main types of genitals — vagina or penis. If she can see a pre-op trans person as the gender they identify as (for example, if she can see a transwoman with a penis as a woman), then she’s already got this idea! Some people are born with both types of genitals, and so you’d think maybe they feel like both a woman and a man, but that’s not necessarily true. Some intersex people feel like one of the binary genders (woman or man) and take hormones and/or get surgery to match that identity. So genitals and sex do not equal gender.
Gender is a social construct. Women and men are treated differently by society in certain ways. And it has nothing to do with what’s in your pants, because how do people know what’s in your pants when you’re walking around? Identifying as a woman means that you want to be seen as a woman and treated as such. And identifying as a man means that you want to be seen as a man and treated like one. But what happens when you don’t want to be seen as either of those because neither of those things feel right? ...or as both? Or maybe one day you feel like you’re a man, and the next you feel like you’re a woman? What then? How do you choose when both feel equally incorrect...or equally correct?
For me personally, I feel like somewhere in between. When I stand with a group of women, I can relate to some things, but I don’t feel like one of them. I also feel that when I’m with a group of guys. It’s the same feeling your friend gets when she’s with a group of guys. She can relate in certain ways, and she can hang out with them, but she knows she’s not one of them. And it’s not because she doesn’t have a penis like they do, but because she is a woman and identifies as one. I get that feeling with both of the binary genders — that I am an outsider. If she still has trouble disconnecting genitals from gender, then ask her this...
Imagine you feel exactly the same way you do now, like your soul is the same, you still like the things you like and you still are who you are, but you wake up one day and you have a penis. And it’s not a temporary thing, you’re now stuck with it forever. This is your body now. Do you want to start living like a man now just because you have this new body part? Do you start going by he/him pronouns even though it feels wrong? Do you go into the men’s bathroom when going into the women’s bathroom feels right? What do you do then?
For some people, being called she/her and he/him pronouns feel equally wrong. And going into the women’s and the men’s bathroom feels equally wrong. And being called “ma’am” or “sir” feels equally wrong. And when you’re standing in a room and someone says “okay all women stand on this side of the room, and all men stand on the other side of the room” some people just truly don’t know where to go. And what’s in their pants, or on their chest, or what clothes they’re wearing, doesn’t matter. Gender is something inside you, not outside. You feel it in your soul, and everything you choose to do on the outside is a form of expression based on who you are and what feels like you. So, the outside (the body you’re born into) doesn’t determine the inside (your soul)...but rather, the inside determines the outside.
All humans are so similar in ways we don’t even realize. We try so hard to separate women and men into these two drastically different categories, but they’re not all that different. We all feel, we all bleed, we all love...we’re so similar. And no matter what body you’re born into, hormones can change it very easily. If a born female takes testosterone hormones, their voice changes, they grow body/facial hair, fat redistributes from the hips/thighs to the belly and other areas to give a straighter looking shape and strong jawline, the clitoris grows to look very similar to a small penis, they stop getting their period (for the most part), and their sex drive raises. And when someone born as a male takes estrogen hormones their body changes as well and they stop growing hair everywhere, and sometimes their penis shrinks, and fat changes to give a more curvy shape and soft looking face, and their sex drive lowers, and so on. Here are a couple of examples:
(A person born as a female who changed testosterone levels)
(A person born as a male who changed estrogen levels)
I don’t know either of these people and if they’ve had bottom surgery, but let’s assume they didn’t and they have the same genitals they were born with. If you saw these people on the street, you would assume the top person is a man and the bottom is a woman, despite what’s in their pants. Because these things such as body/face shape, hair, etc. are the things we use to determine woman or man...things that hormone levels create. And we treat that person a certain way based on that outer appearance (AKA, the amount of estrogen and testosterone in their bodies). So if you think about it, the fact that our bodies can change so easily just from changing hormone levels, means that we’re not all that different from each other. Separating “woman” and “man” from each other in such a drastic way is a societal idea, not a scientific, because anybody can look like a woman or a man without surgery no matter what sex (female or male) they’re born as. And so if that’s the case, and we can easily go back and forth, then doesn’t it make sense that some people can feel, and be, somewhere in between?
Some cis people will never get it because their body matches their gender identity, and so it’s very difficult to imagine the real possibility that for some people, it doesn’t. And that’s okay. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience for the idea to start to make sense, especially when we live in such a binary world. But everything is a spectrum, even gender. And just because you are on one of the very ends of that spectrum and you were born into a body with the right amount of hormone levels to match your identity, doesn’t mean that everyone is the same.
I hope this helps!
