#ALSO impossible to theorize abt that in a vacuum. if you never meet people and let them look at you and know you—you have no data.

[aeide-thea]

the thing is, right

say i were to give up on claiming nonbinaryness—

(i almost said ‘claiming inherent nonbinaryness’ but like. honestly i’ve never necessarily claimed that—i mean, i think there’s some truth in it although also other lenses are possible, i just have found value in this one—but i feel like it’s a fiercely-held political stance as much as it’s an identity thing? but then also political stances are an identity thing)

(anyway i reserve the right as always to say something different abt this tomorrow)

i still would desire/require genderless pronouns/descriptors

i still would conceptualize myself in ways that aren’t straightforwardly aligned with normative social notions of Womanhood or normative physical configurations of same

i still would be deeply alienated by binarism

etc etc

like really ‘nonbinary’ is an assertion and an organizing label, and i could take it back but i couldn’t take back the various types of conviction/alignment/alienation that it’s shorthand for, like, those are real and organically inbuilt and so this label that’s ultimately just the sum of them must necessarily be too

(i think i do wish ‘genderqueer’ hadn’t gotten SO drowned out tho—which further has me thinking abt, like, using multiple labels to stake out a positionality somewhere between them, or else flicker between multiple positionalities—like i’ve let myself get tied to this one Nonbinary concept and squeezed into ever-narrower conceptual confines by it and actually i think that’s nuts! we none of us are just one thing!)

(like ultimately nonbinary is also an umbrella just as genderqueer is but i have more trouble feeling that with nonbinary, i guess bc there’s a clearer single stereotype—which is worth pushing back at, but like. possible to push back sometimes and just duck other times. multiple strategies. situation-dependent and feelings-dependent. etc.)

(like i could just say ‘i’m genderqueer and i decline to be gendered except in contra-agab ways that are sexy or sexily-textured to me.’ end of.)

(anyway yeah this IS just the eternal ‘do you like microlabels’ debate but like. language is SUCH an important arena for me that i DO have to keep litigating these questions and can’t just cede the field. so like. new angles on the problem helpful bc rejecting it wholly not possible.)