#i could definitely analyse this from a gender perspective and make a point for nonbinary lightning but the world isnt ready for that

[yukinyaans]

Thinking about this photo and how Lightning isn't close to Hope's group or with Vanille and Fang, she's just her own person on the side

[gendercensus]

On “enby” and age

This report is the first in a series, analysing the >24,000 responses from the 2020 Gender Census question-by-question.

[ Report #2: The identity question // Report #3: The Title Question // Report #4: The Pronoun Question ]

~

Over the last few years I’ve seen two prevalent points of view regarding the word “enby”. Some people consider it a necessary noun without age connotations, simply a phonetic spelling of the abbreviation of the adjective nonbinary, NB, and refer to nonbinary people collectively as enbies. On the other hand, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen someone tweet something like, “please stop referring to us all as enbies, not all of us are comfortable being referred to like that!” When asked for further thoughts on this issue, people often describe finding it condescending or infantilising.

I originally discovered the term (as part of “enbyfriend”) on Tumblr, in a post inspired by creator @revolutionator. Their original post is no longer accessible, but after some digging I found that it was posted sometime no later than 2013, seven years ago at the time of writing.

i wish there was an nb equivalent to words like boys and girls

nb

enby

enbies

It seems pretty clear that the word enby was originally intended as a noun to complement boy and girl, specifically to refer to nonbinary minors - but my experience was that not everyone uses it that way or is aware of the word’s origins.

I am not into the idea of imposing a meaning on a word. I prefer the “common usage” approach, of using spellings and definitions that are most widely accepted and understood. Thankfully, this year I asked participants for their approximate ages, and the word enby was in the checkbox identity list for its fourth year, which means I can find out the ages of the people claiming that word for themselves.

In other words, it’s possible for me to find out whether enby tends to be used more frequently by younger people, similarly to boy and girl. I think most people can imagine that it would be inappropriate in many contexts to address a room full of adult women of various ages with “hello, girls,” so finding out how nonbinary people might feel about this kind of situation with a sample size of 24,000 is very valuable. (The usual caveat, though - most Gender Census participants are from the USA, and these linguistic conventions vary from culture to culture.)

I started out by counting how many participants identified as either “boy” or “man”, and I called this group, for want of a better word, “male”. I calculated what percentage of that group identified each as “boy” and “man”, since many identified as both. I then did the same for “girl” and “woman”, grouped as “female”. Boy, man, girl and woman were all checkbox options in the identity question.

The conditional formatting gives a rough visual guide of how popular a term is in an age group: the darker the shade, the higher the percentage. To walk you through how this table works with an example, in the first section of the first row, 15.3% of participants aged 11-15 identified as either boy or man, and of that 15.3%, 89.3% identified as boy and 49.9% identified as man.

There is a line across the whole table after 51-55 because over age 55 the sample sizes start to get a lot smaller and might be unreliable.

Interesting but irrelevant: We can see that as the ages of participants increased, participants were less likely to identify with “male” words, and more likely to identify with “female” words - not something I could have predicted, but a clear and fascinating trend.

More relevant: Within those subsections, and in both subsections, as the ages of participants increased, participants were less likely to identify with the “child” words and more likely to identify with the “adult” words. This is the useful part. We don’t have a group of cisgender people to use as a control group, but I think it’s not unreasonable to expect nonbinary people’s claiming of those words to reflect society’s use of them in general. (Most people can agree that most of the time, in most contexts, the word “boy” is used to describe a child who is male.) What this means is we can use these trends for comparison with use of the word “enby”. (However, we can’t prove causation with correlation yet. More on that later.)

I made a new table for more comparison, using the number of participants who identified as enby, boy, man, girl and woman as a percentage of total participants in each age group.

Again, the higher percentages are filled with a darker colour to make patterns easier to spot. Starting at the top left, 35.5% of all participants aged 11-15 identified as enbies, 13.6% of all participants aged 11-15 identified as boys, etc.

At younger ages, people are more likely to call themselves “enby” compared to “boy” or “girl”, which makes sense when you consider the target group for the survey: “anyone whose genders (or lack thereof) aren't described by the M/F binary.” And the “dark-to-light” pattern of “boy” and “girl”, being used less often as age of participants increased, is reflected in the use of “enby”.

I turned it into a graph to get a different perspective:

The bold lines are the “minor” words, and the finer lines are the “adult” words. You can see how “enby” (dark green) follows that downward trend as age increases. (Note again that sample sizes in age ranges over 55 are too small to be reliable.)

Since there is a steady decrease in all three terms as age increases, we can look at whether use of the term “enby” decreases at a similar rate. Use of “boy” starts at 13.6% for the 11-15 age range, and halves by 26-30, a comparatively steep drop. "Girl” starts at 11.1% and halves by 41-45, which is much older, and it matches my experience (with exceptions) of women being commonly referred to as girls and also being more comfortable with that. Use of “enby” starts at 35.5% and halves by 51-55. This suggests that claiming the word “enby” feels more okay to older people. If I were a speculating kind of person (and I definitely am), I might wonder if the impression of “enby” as a diminuitive word doesn’t have as strong a foothold, and perhaps that’s because the term is relatively new?

I will have to ask about the word “enby” while also asking for participants’ ages for many years before I can conclude definitively that “enby” is generally a word referring to nonbinary children. It’s possible, for example, that older participants hadn’t come across enby in the first place. We can’t be sure that people tend to become less comfortable with the word “enby” as they age unless we follow its use as those people age. It’s possible that “enby” will go out of fashion before we can get any reliable long-term data.

And it is worth noting that in its most popular age group (11-15), enby was only claimed by 35.5% of participants. Overall, that figure drops to 31.5%. Here’s how it fits in:

nonbinary - 66.4%

queer (partially or completely in relation to gender) - 42.9%

trans - 33.7%

enby - 31.5%

gender non-conforming - 29.0%

^ “Enby” is the bold green line. Note that there was no survey in 2014.

My overall conclusion here is that while “enby” doesn’t have such strong age connotations as “boy” or “girl”, for whatever reason older participants did tend to feel less comfortable being addressed that way, and under a third of participants are happy to be described as an enby. I would especially recommend avoiding referring to groups of nonbinary people as enbies if you want to include people of all ages.

That does take us to the next question: do we need a noun for nonbinary adults? (A man, a woman, a... nonbinary?)

~

Note: I will publish the spreadsheet of responses when I publish the final report.

Final report here!

~

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it and would like to give something back, you could increase your chances of taking part in future surveys by following on Tumblr, Twitter or the Fediverse, or subscribing to the mailing list. Alternatively, you could take a look at my Amazon wishlist.

[werevulvi]

What's the difference(s?) between being GNC vs trans NB in your opinion??? I used to think they were very diff until i read about "you don't need dysphoria to be trans" discourse and also stories from dysphoric GNC ppl so is it like a matter of ideology?

There is a lot that goes into this, so this will be a very long reply... but yes, ideology is deeply soaked into it, although it's not only because of that, I think. So like, okay, first off, you probably know I come from a radfem perspective, but then I also take into consideration things that radfem in general may disagree with if I find it to be logical or making sense enough. So my opinions are more so rooted in what I personally think is logical and makes sense, as well as facts, which just so happens to mostly align with radfem, rather than being truly rooted in radfem.

That said, however, this particular topic is not so much based on scientific facts (as there's just not much established science to go on here) but more so on anecdotal evidence and my own logical conclusions of that.

Not sure where to start, but there are several different "ways" to "validate" the existence of nonbinary, if you feel ever so inclined. One is by understanding that a nonbinary person who's dysphoric has the same legitimacy to identify outside of the sex they were born as, as "binary" trans people, and if their dysphoria is atypical enough, that it also makes sense for them to not wanna identify as the opposite sex either.

That is probably the simplest way to view nonbinary as different from being gnc, by simply applying the same logic to them as you would to differentiate butch/masc women from trans men, or feminine men from trans women: their sex dysphoria is the defining factor, not how they dress/act.

And how to then differentiate nonbinary from "binary" trans, is that the nonbinary dysphoria is often atypical in nature. That generally means the person may be dysphoric about only some of their sex characteristics, but not all (for example a dysphoric nb may have discomfort towards their chest and voice, but not their genitals or their curves/lack of curves) - but it can also mean that the dysphoria is towards all of their sex characteristics but the desire is to look "sex neutral" instead of as the opposite sex. It can also be a combination of those. A third distinction is that their dysphoria may be fluctuating a lot. Like maybe they feel really uncomfortable with their sex for a certain amount of time, then love their bio sex, then again dysphoric. Basically any sex dysphoria that makes the person not feel like they "should" appear as the opposite sex entirely could be called atypical.

This is also NOT to say that "binary" trans people who opt out of for example genital surgery are nonbinary. It has to do with the intent/desire, what one's body would be ideally and how one interprets that ideal - not necessarily what they actually change with hormones/surgery in practice. Like for example there IS a difference between being okay with one's vagina and not wanting any surgery on it because neo-penis doesn't live up to one's desires, but still wishing they had an actual penis - and actually genuinely LOVING one's vagina and feeling strongly protective of keeping it as is, with no desire to have an actual penis, while still being dysphoric about other sexed aspects of one's body. However, that's also not saying trans men have to be dysphoric about their vaginas to count as "binary" - it has more to do with the individual's own interpretation of what their dysphoria means to them, and what being a man/woman/nonbinary means to them.

But there is more to it than that, which is what you call into question: the "you don't need dysphoria to be trans." This is where it gets tricky, anecdotal and a little whimsical.

Many are sceptical of that notion, however most nonbinary people are not. Ideology does absolutely go into this. The sceptical ones tend to be (or lean) transmedicalist/truscum, or in rarer cases radfem, while those who don't think you need dysphoria to be trans tend to be (or lean) tucute/sjw/libfem. And I too am more than just fairly sceptical of this... However, I have found one argument which I'm considering... plausible, for considering non-dysphoric trans to be a possibility.

That argument is: gender incongruence without marked distress.

This is where shit gets complicated, so I'll try to explain it as well as I can, and then you can make your own opinion on if there's any legitimacy to it, or look into it further if you wish. I'm not here to attempt to change your opinion in any way. I'm only sharing what made me reconsider the notion that dysphoria is necessary to be trans. What you do with that info, is entirely up to you, and I honestly don't even care about holding it against you, or anyone else, for that matter. I just wanted to clarify that, in case this comes off as me trying to shove a weird ass argument down your throat, as that is absolutely not my intention by any means. You're absolutely free to call bullshit on this.

Alright, before I dig into it, I first have to raise the question "what is gender/sex dysphoria?" and answer it: My understanding of what this type of dysphoria is, is that it's not only wishing your body looked different and to be read as the opposite sex (or both/neither sex) but it's categorised as marked distress/strong discomfort towards your body's sex. This is important, so try to remember that.

I used to think that's all there is to feeling like you're not capable/willing to live with your body/gender* as it is naturally. However, I then started talking to a few transsexual MtF's and FtM's who happily medically transitioned... without dysphoria, and their stories puzzled me, but they also intrigued me. Thus, I listened with an open mind.

(*I should probably explain my view on what gender is, but very briefly: I consider it a personal interpretation of one's experiences with anything gendered and/or sexed. So it's a subjective perception and personal conclusion, more so than a feeling, similar to how "feeling cold" regardless of actual temperature is perception and a conclusion of how your mind and body responds to the temperature, and not an actual feeling like happiness or anger, nor is it objective fact. "Gender" can also simply be "I wish I was male but in fact I'm female. Thus I intepret my gender as man" without even including gender norms at all, but literally only focusing on sex. I personally conclude my own gender by my bio sex and my sex characteristics (including transitioned/desired ones) only, but I also accept the former definition for others just fine.)

Then I started also analysing my own dysphoria and noticed that it's not really a one big solid thing happening, but different aspects that together make me come to the conclusion that "I'm not comfortable looking/being clearly female, I feel a deep internal desire to look/be partially male, thus transitioning is alluring to me."

Split apart it's more like this: 1.) The first aspect is a strong discomfort with certain aspects of being physically female (I mean in the past before I transitioned, to clarify.) 2.) The second aspect is a strong desire for those aspects of my body to instead be male (again, only applicable in the past tense, as those aspects of my body now are appearing male.) 3.) The third aspect is what is the social result of what my sexed body appears like, meaning people read me as a man or woman based on what sex my body looks like, which is a direct reminder of what I look like (negative pre-transition, positive post-transition.)

The third aspect is generally what's considered "social dysphoria" and generally is considered a result of physical/sex dysphoria, than a stand alone thing. Some disagree with this, however. Many trans people split their experience of dysphoria into "social" and "sex/physical" as it's very common to experience both. However, both the first and second (as listed above, to clarify) aspects are together what most people only recognise as simply "sex/physical dysphoria" without really paying attention to that there are TWO aspects of it. One which pushes you away from your actual sex, and the other which pulls you towards the opposite sex (or both/neither.)

And here's where shit gets interesting... What if a person only has one of those two aspects of physical/sex dysphoria?

Meaning, they either feel discomfort about their physical sex, but lack the desire to instead appear more like the opposite, or both/neither sex (just discomfort, no desire) - or they have the desire to appear like the opposite, both or neither sex, but lack the discomfort towards their actual physical sex (just desire, no discomfort.)

The former point, feeling discomfort without desire, arguably is not "really" gender dysphoria, but something more along the lines of body dysmorphia/poor body image. That, however, is only my personal, unprofessional opinion. As most shit I say is, lol.

That latter point, however: Having the desire to appear like the opposite, both or neither sex, but lacking the discomfort towards one's actual physical sex - is basically what is considered experiencing gender incongruence, but without actual dysphoria.

So then what is gender incongruence? Typically it's part of gender dysphoria as a whole: it being sex dysphoria, gender incongruence, social dysphoria, and if/when alleviated: gender euphoria. If you have all those aspects then it's not really important to consider the incongruence aspect separately. However, what gender incongruence is, is basically just feeling like you should be of the other sex (or both/neither.) So, it's basically just the "desire" aspect of what's generally considered the concept of "gender dysphoria" as a whole. Except, without distress... dysphoria is not dysphoria.

Whether it's actually possible to have gender incongruence without dysphoria, I think is very difficult to say. However, what I struggle to de-legitimise is: if someone is transitioned (especially medically) and happy with the result, but what drove them to transition in the first place was a desire without distress. So what I actually consider to be "trans" is not necessarily "dysphoric person" but rather anyone who is happily transitioned, or know they would be happier transitioned, regardless of what drives/drove them to transition in the first place - as well as dysphoric people who don't wish to transition and/or detransitioned.

One thing I find compelling about this "incongruence without dysphoria" argument is that this is not actually a new thing.

I spoke to an older trans man (in his 50's) who transitioned back in the 90's and said outright that he never experienced dysphoria, yet he's (by his own words) satisfied with his transition. He's a fairly known and I guess "famous" trans activist in Sweden, and also hangs out in the same fb group as me, apparently. So I exchanged a few words with him on the topic of dysphoria. Although he didn't call his experience "gender incongruence" that's kinda what he seemed to imply. I've also talked to an older trans woman who also transitioned decades ago and also firmly stated and explained she never experienced dysphoria, yet is happily transitioned. Then I've also heard the same sentiment from a few younger trans people.

But in total, I've heard about it from less than 5 trans people, and all I have is that anecdotal info.

But then the thing is that they were all medically transitioned. They "prove" to me that they're trans by simply being satisfied with their transitions. So whether they had dysphoria or not is not actually important in hindsight. What matters is that they're satisfied with how they changed their bodies. Because when it comes to most "non-dysphoric" nonbinary people out there, they don't even wish to transition medically at all. And that is different. Are all of them legitimate cases just like the "non-dysphoric" yet happily transitioned trans men and women I've talked to? No, probably not. I mean, let's be honest.

Nonbinary is (no matter how much a legit thing for some, also) a hype/trend and very many do absolutely try to identify out of misogyny, sexist gender norms, sexual trauma, etc, by picking up the nonbinary label. Some of them experience body discomfort vaguely related to their sex traits, but it's not actually gender dysphoria, or whatever it is, transitioning would probably not be the best solution for them. I think it's important to keep in mind that the culture around nonbinary identities is to not ever question their identities and that any kind of "invalidating" is considered a horrible hate crime, to them.

That attitude is a recipe for validating people who are not actually trans, but suffer from gender in other ways. And I don't think we should forget or dismiss that. I don't think there's much harm in them simply carrying a nonbinary label and some odd set of pronouns - but letting every single nonbinary identified person jump on hormones and surgery would be a very terrible idea, and when it comes to that identity specifically, I'd be VERY, very careful, as they seem more likely to disregard the possibly negative outcomes of medical transition and then end up devastated, as many of them disregard dysphoria, and often logic and reason altogether... where as "binary" trans people, although not at all without doubt and detrans rates, tend to be at least a little bit more careful and educated.

That said, however... I have heard from ONE nonbinary person who very nicely explained their experience of basically gender incongruence without dysphoria, and they were also happily medically transitioning. They were also older and seemed mature and emotionally stable. So, I'm at least open to the possibility that some nonbinary people can be satisfied with transition without gender dysphoria, and thus, I'd personally count them as trans. It's a youtuber so I could probably link that video in which they explained it, if I can find it from my huge playlist of "favourites" to which I'm pretty sure I added it. I found that video through Blaire White making a rant video about how the nb person was only transitioning for attention. Valid concern, but erh, I think she made an incorrect assertion, in that particular case.

Anyhow, I do worry that this whole argument of "incongruence without dysphoria" very easily becomes a slippery slope of... basically people transitioning for shits and giggles, or because they have a bad self image and just really badly hope the grass will be greener on the other side, which is why I'm still very hesitant to give it credit, and at this point I'm still only considering it plausible.

One thing worth noting is that some transmeds actually think that having incongruence without dysphoria counts as a form of dysphoria, but that is in fact not the medically established definition of gender dysphoria. "Dysphoria" in and of itself literally means "abnormal depression and discontent" so taking the distress aspect out of gender dysphoria is going against its very definition. So that's quite some intellectual dishonesty, that some transmeds are willing to admit that some trans people don't have dysphoria, but without actually admitting it, because that would go against their ideology.

I also think that it's foolish to say that every trans person who is happily transitioned "must" have been dysphoric, because we can't actually know that. We have not actually heard every single trans person's reason for why they transitioned. We can only assume that it was probably because of dysphoria, because that is the (most, or only) logical reason for wanting to transition in the first place, and for being satisfied with one's transition in the long run. That is not enough to make the claim that ALL happily transitioned trans people MUST have experienced dysphoria, which means there is and always has been a possibility that you may not actually need dysphoria to be trans, even if it's the most common reason.

I think it's important to at least be open to listen to especially happily transitioned people's experiences when they don't align with our beliefs on what makes someone trans. They might be wrong about what their inner experiences with gender actually mean (as in they might have had dysphoria but were unaware that's what their experience was, or they might not actually be all that happy with having transitioned) - and we might be wrong about that gender dysphoria being the only thing that could make a person satisfied with transition.

So like... keep using those critical thinking skills, even after you think you know the truth ;)

Have I really answered your question, though? I'm not sure, but basically: trans nb generally means that your self-interpretation of your gendered experience as a whole (meaning how you RELATE to being male/female, feminine/masculine, considered a man/woman, etc, not if you are gnc per se) does not match your own interpretation of what it means to be either "fully" a man or "fully" a woman. Which is what gets watered down to the chanted phrase "nb means not identifying as either fully male or female."

So, how is that different from just being gnc? In some cases, it actually isn't. Some really do think that rejecting gender norms is what makes them nb, and in those cases, I won't personally consider them trans or truly nonbinary. But what matters (I think) is that there are also nb people who base it on sex dysphoria, and/or gender incongruence as thoroughly explained above, and I think there is at least some legitimacy to those reasons.

Then how gnc gets in the picture for those latter two reasons is pretty simple: For the same reason most trans men are masculine: to more easily blend in among men in society, as masculinity can in some cases help with passuing as male when you're female (and vice versa for femininity and passing as female for males.) That is sadly due to the reinforcement of masculinity as being "intended for men" and femininity as being "intended for women" which causes many people to subconsciously connect femininity with femaleness and masculinity with maleness, and many also confuse those things.

Ever heard a woman say that her having breasts is a "feminine" trait, for example? Yeah, no, it's not. That's her confusing femininity for what's actually a female trait. However, having large breasts can be considered "more feminine" than having small or no breasts, due to how society views gender, but that does not mean that large-breasted females are inherently "more feminine" than small-breasted ones, or those who don't have breasts, because that's really just a natural variation of femaleness.

That's an example of how femaleness easily gets blurred with femininity, and vice versa masculinity gets equally blurred with maleness, with for example beards and deep voices. Because the feminine and masculine archetypes do also include certain female and male body types. This is why I view my transitioned features from testosterone as male features rather than as masculine ones, because I can more easily differentiate what is SEXED from what's GENDERED, than probably most people, mostly due to my rather unusual upbringing. Thus, "binary" trans people can take advantage of that societal confusion and blur the lines between being perceived as masculine vs male (or feminine vs female for MtF) because the gender norms are so ingrained. Of course it doesn't always work in favour for trans people (hence non-passing trans men being seen as butches, and trans women seen as drag queens) but it CAN fool the eye to some extent.

Then, as for nonbinary people and androgynous gender expression: androgyny has often, historically been confused with... well, I may fail to put this delicately, but yeah basically having certain intersex conditions, which have been poorly understood throughout history as "hermaphrodites" and other harmful shit. Androgyny, meaning a combination of feminine and masculine, can thus be used to a nonbinary person's advantage (at least in theory) to attempt to confuse others to see them as either a combination of male and female (similar to false representations of certain intersex conditions, which I want for everyone to know that I absolutely abhor) or as sexless, basically.

(Just a sidenote for clarification of gnc: being "gnc" is in and of itself a form of androgyny, in either the combination of "feminine + masculine" or "feminine + male" or "masculine + female" but when it comes to binary vs nonbinary types of gender expression, I think it's important to differentiate the degree of gender non-conformity being expressed. I vaguely differentiate "androgynous" from "fem male" and "masc female" here and I hope you know what I mean. It's not to make more unnecessary boxes, but just for the sake of argument. Kinda like a gnc lesbian is not necessarily a butch, but a butch is definitely a gnc lesbian, if that makes sense.)

Does androgyny have that same "confusion effect" as masculinity and femininity, though? Not really, in practice. Fewer are fooled by it, largely because "androgynous agender/bigender" (neither gender/both genders) is not an established social gender category like "feminine woman" and "masculine man" are, but is more like a fantasy concept. Also most people will automatically want to figure out if someone is male or female, which makes it extra hard for nb people to actually be viewed as... not that. So "androgyny as expression for sexlessness/both sexes at once" mostly only works in theory, but that is (or can be) the intent behind a nonbinary person's androgynous style, as it can still offer some mental relief even if the outcome is sadly not aligned with the intent.

(Metaphor time: You know, like sometimes I wanna bake a nice looking cake, but it turns out looking like sad poop, but that's okay, because it still tastes good. Meaning, the outcome didn't match my intent, but the outcome was still good enough to enjoy.)

So basically: trans nb people may not be nb because they're gnc, but be gnc because they're nb. Just like many trans men tend to be masc because they're ftm, not ftm because they're masc. So the difference between gnc and nb is in the intent. I think that's the best way I can explain that distinction.

(Also last sidenote: anyone reading this transitioning because you're masc/fem/gnc... PLEASE reconsider that, I urge you!)

[comrade-meow]

"When someone tells you to 'educate yourself,' they are not telling you to actually learn the facts, figures, history, or logic of debate. They are telling you to agree with them. The idea that someone may be educated on an issue and yet still disagree with you on it is inconceivable to people who have been 'dis-educated.'"

Educate yourself. If you have ever stated an unpopular opinion online, especially about social issues, you’ve probably had this mantra thrown at you. If you’re new to being on the “wrong side” of a particular debate, being told you need to “educate yourself” can be really disorienting. The phrase implies that the speaker knows more than you, you’re undeniably in the wrong, and a little bit of reading will set you straight. But like many mantras on the left today, “educate yourself” has become a meaningless tagline devoid of any real connection to the actual text of the phrase.

A popular progressive Instagram account, @soyouwanttotalkabout (no affiliation with the book “So You Want To Talk About Race”), claims to help educate readers on issues such as race, gender, and politics. The account includes over 400 image slide posts of sound-bite style messages on all of the most popular issues in social justice today. “Choosing to educate ourselves is the first step in becoming allies,” says one post on being a trans ally. “With this education, you’ll be able to better support the trans and nonbinary folks in your lives, and help to create a safer, kinder and more accepting world.” The account also includes, without the slightest hint of self-awareness, a post describing “performative activism” (vs. “authentic activism”) as activism that is “Visible, Audience-driven, and Sustained by public consumption.”

There are pages of comments on these posts thanking the account for the content and helping them learn. The most popular comment, though, appears to be followers tagging in another user to the thread—presumably, to educate them.

“This was a good one for me to share with family & friends that just refuse to open their eyes & minds,” one user commented on a post titled “White Denial.”

“@[username] you should read this,” says another.

The @soyouwanttotalkabout account appears to exist almost entirely to give people a place to go when they need to “educate themselves,” or, when they want their friend to get educated.

But the posts themselves are superficial in depth, often repeat misinformation, and rarely cite sources except in the case of direct quotes. To be fair, Instagram does not lend itself to a more detailed, nuanced, or in-depth format for education—but this is exactly the problem. Well-meaning people who want to “be better” are turning to social media for an education on issues that are often complicated and have real consequences on the lives of others.

This account perfectly encapsulates the problems associated with demands to “educate yourself.” Education in this context doesn’t mean actually learning the breadth of information on the issue, but instead training yourself to parrot surface-level mantras. When questioned on the details of your stance, you don’t need to deepen your education—you just need to shut down debate and tell the other person to educate themselves. What’s happening is not education but rather, as Jones School of Law Professor Adam J. MacLeod put it, “dis-education.” In a 2017 speech to his first-year Law Students, MacLeod confronted his students over the growing trend of illiberalism among his students:

“Before I can teach you how to reason, I must first teach you how to rid yourself of unreason. For many of you have not yet been educated. You have been dis-educated. To put it bluntly, you have been indoctrinated. Before you learn how to think you must first learn how to stop unthinking.”

Today, the professor would probably face disciplinary action for this speech.

When we are told to “educate yourself,” what we are actually being told to do is to allow ourselves to be indoctrinated into a particular ideology. In reality, developing a deep understanding of all sides of the debate is unwelcome, and those providing the “education” are often very misinformed themselves. For example, in their post on being a Trans Ally, @soyouwanttotalkabout made several claims that are logically incomplete (such as creating a circular definition of “gender”), but actually didn’t even represent the critical gender theory ideological perspective accurately (the side they are claiming to educate us about).

Despite many people helpfully instructing me in the past few years to educate myself on trans issues, I was able to immediately spot problems with the thread from the gender theory perspective (such as their list of “common genders,” conflation of “gender” and “gender expression,” and the claim that gender identity “can change over time”). This is because, despite disagreeing with the ideology of gender theory, I am actually very well educated on the issue. I have spent the past three years now writing nearly exclusively about gender identity, I have personal experience with friends and family members transitioning, and I work for a nonprofit which largely focuses on the issue. I am, by nearly every measure imaginable, more educated on the issue than every person who has ever demanded I “educate yourself.”

When someone tells you to “educate yourself,” they are not telling you to actually learn the facts, figures, history, or logic of debate. They are telling you to agree with them. The idea that someone may be educated on an issue and yet still disagree with you on it is inconceivable to people who have been “dis-educated.”

Two people who are equally educated on an issue (imagine they have read all the same books and studies, spoken to the same experts, and listened to the same people with “lived experience”) may still come to a different conclusion.

How is this possible if all you need to be on the “right” side is to simply educate yourself?

The deciding factor in most of our political opinions is not the facts of the case, but rather the values we hold through which we interpret the meaning of these facts.

Most people, to at least some degree, hold many of the same values: individual liberty, societal equality, the sanctity of life, and the desire to reduce harm and suffering in the world. How we will position ourselves on certain issues often has less to do with the facts of the case, or even which values we hold, but in which order we prioritize these values.

To grossly oversimplify the culture war between the “woke” and the “unwoke,” critical theory tends to prioritize social equality over individual liberty (for example, by limiting which groups of people can use certain words or hairstyles to prevent the few instances of racism that could stem from individuals of these groups using them).

When someone disagrees with a value prioritization on issues where values compete (such as individual liberty vs. social equality), education based on your own values is not what is needed to change that person’s mind. The role of facts in changing someone’s stance is to inform them of whether or not a position they support is ultimately upholding their values. Sometimes people apply their values inconsistently, and pointing this out can be either met with defensiveness or provide an opportunity to change their opinion. However, what someone is unlikely to change through the knowledge of new facts is their underlying values and the priorities they assign them.

If we are to trust a definition provided by @soyouwanttotalkabout, intolerance is:

“Not being able to or willing to accept that someone’s ideas or lives are different from our own.”

The inherent intolerance in the “educate yourself” rhetoric is the assumption that someone can not hold or prioritize different values from you. Our values are borne in us from a combination of our genetics/personality and life experiences, and they are core to what makes us individuals. “Educate yourself” is a form of gaslighting—denying the facts we already know and rejecting our own perception of the moral implications of that reality. Unless the person repeating the command is a verified expert in the domain, they probably have no business demanding you to learn anything (see also: the Dunning-Kruger effect). If anything, the very use of this phrase is likely to signpost a person who is actually quite uneducated on the issue—or else they would have been able to engage with you in a more meaningful way.

The truth is, we probably could all stand to have more facts when evaluating our stances on important social issues. Facts help us decide when our values are being upheld or when they are being violated. But when someone tells you to “educate yourself,” they don’t mean engaging in the process of collecting facts and analysing their moral outcome as compared to your value priorities. They mean fall in line. Capitulate. Give up your own values, your own education, your own life experience and do what I tell you—or else.