#i too take psychic damage when i see trans women using words to describe their experiences

[bunnymedley]

yeah its pretty weird when people do that-

oh there it is

[little-grey-dowitcher]

Most people just don’t even know what nonbinary means. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people ask me “are you a boy or a girl” and when I say “neither, I’m nonbinary,” they say “that’s not a thing” or “oh so you’re a [h-slur]” (I’m perisex) or “ok but what’s in your pants” or “well I think you look like a girl so I’m just gonna call you a girl”. Some people know so little about it they immediately assume it’s a sexuality, like when I came out to my mom she thought it meant that I was gonna cheat on my husband??? And that’s just how little people know about the umbrella term, I’ve never even bothered trying to explain any of the microlabels I use for myself to anyone other than other nonbinary people. I’ve made a post about it before but I usually end up having to explain my gender to other people by telling them “I’m not a woman” and having to define myself by what I’m not instead of what I am, and it’s beyond exhausting to keep reducing myself down to the things I’m not and the things I don’t want to be and the things I’ll never be only to get a “I don’t get it” in response with no further attempt to understand.

If I tell people I use they/them pronouns, they say “that’s not grammatically correct” or just “I’m not doing that”. I’ve even had people that I thought were really supportive go behind my back and say that it’s dumb and grammatically incorrect and laugh at me, when like… singular they/them has been used regularly since 1375. It’s been considered grammatically correct for 650 years. And god forbid I tell people I also use xe/xem, I always get some speech about how neopronouns are “cringe” and “useless” and it doesn’t matter how many times I explain that we were forced to come up with language to describe ourselves because nobody would bother to slightly alter their wording to accommodate us, I still get hit with “well it’s still dumb”. And that’s just my experience with English, a language that’s much less gendered than most others. I hear from nonbinary people all the time who speak much more gendered languages, it’s a fucking nightmare for them.

I had to delete multiple social media accounts on other platforms because I was constantly just getting fetishized. I never even posted my real face, people just saw from my profile that I seemed like a cute girl with a weird gender and decided that meant I was ✨exotic✨ and they wanted to “try it out” (the “they/them pussy” memes I’ve gotten over the years have ridiculous amounts of psychic damage that I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from). And if I wasn’t getting fetishized, I was just getting harassed, usually sexually, because I was perceived as a girl. And this especially sucks for me because my asexuality very much impacts my gender, so to be seen as an object of sexual fascination feels like double misgendering to me.

I’ve had so many people call me a “theyfab transtrender” or something along those lines because I’m not medically transitioning and they assume it’s because I don’t have any dysphoria. I do have dysphoria, I want to get top surgery and low dose T, but I can’t because of my health issues. It doesn’t help that I’m kinda the stereotypical skinny white AFAB enby that’s naturally somewhat androgynous, so therefore by existing I “reinforce” those stereotypes and I’ve even had people point directly to me as an example of someone who is the reason transphobes/exorsexists don’t take us seriously.

It feels like most people (both cishet and queer) lump me and other nonbinary people into the women-lite/women+ category with far too much haste, or they boil us down to our AGAB. I only have experience as an AFAB enby, and I see us getting treated as either cis women who wanna feel special or as trans men who are too scared to admit it, but I often see posts talking about AMAB nonbinary people being left out of nonbinary spaces because they’re perceived as too masculine or as an infiltrator, and intersex nonbinary people face so much fucking bullshit but I’ll leave that for them to discuss in more detail, I just see intersex nonbinary people talking about the way they’re treated it makes me so mad that they have to go through that.

Not to mention that a lot of binary trans people seem to think we have privilege, because we’re more accepted and pass easier somehow and like… I don’t even know where that comes from. Even on the rare occasions when I manage to pull off perfect androgyny, I still don’t get read as nonbinary. I get read as a masc woman, or occasionally as a slightly femme boy, or just a queer woman. There’s no “passing” for us, because, like I said in my first paragraph, there’s just not a lot of awareness of us. And we’re definitely not more accepted, I mean, the vast majority of legal forms don’t include an option for us at all, what little representation I’ve seen in mainstream TV and such shows us as completely irrelevant side characters that are either just there for diversity points or to point and laugh at, and so many people treat our very existence as a joke. Yea, binary trans people aren’t fully accepted either, and they get similar treatment too sometimes, but like everyone knows what a man or a woman is, and there are ways to pass as one of those options — they’re not viable/desirable for everyone, they’re deeply rooted in unrealistic, white, skinny, perisex beauty standards, I recognize that, but the sort of “guidelines” at least exist. How do you “pass” and have passing privilege as a group that most people don’t even know exists? Even people who know about and support nonbinary people usually misgender us until we tell them we’re nonbinary, we’re never just assumed to be nonbinary. We have to out ourselves to get gendered correctly no matter how much we transition or in what way, because there is no way to “look nonbinary”.

Specifically in queer spaces, far too often I’ll see people mention AGAB when talking about nonbinary people when there was absolutely no reason to, such as posts that say things like “Happy pride to AFAB nonbinary people and AMAB nonbinary people!” Like what was the point of mentioning AGAB at all in that context? You could’ve just said “Happy pride month to nonbinary people” and left it at that, mentioning AGAB at all was just unnecessary. It really does just come across like the people saying these things don’t actually think of nonbinary people as our own separate group, but as a sort of “AMAB/AFAB but make it weird” identity. And I cannot emphasize enough how much they cannot be normal about multigender people, or nonbinary people who aren’t perfectly androgynous, or just any nonbinary person who doesn’t fit neatly into a “third gender” mold, such as nonbinary people who present closer to their AGAB after coming out, or use pronouns that are usually associated with their AGAB.

It also feels like I have no history to point to. Like, yea, there’s historical evidence of cultural “third genders” and many of those are still around today, but I’m not from any of those cultures, and even if I was, I don’t think I’d really connect with the idea of a third gender in general, because I’m multigender flux and most of the descriptions of ancient nonbinary people seem to mostly describe a single, static, third gender. The closest I’ve ever come to finding nonbinary history I relate to is the stories of Ishtar blessing those who were neither man nor woman, and even then it’s more of like a “oh that’s really cool” feeling than a “those are my people” feeling.

❗️❗️ This is asked entirely in good faith. This post is intended to open dialogue and help with solidarity and understanding. ❗️❗️

I would like to hear specifically from nonbinary people how the system of exorsexism/enbyphobia uniquely targets and affects you. Things that you feel other demographics do not experience. Reblogs and replies are very encouraged! If you would prefer, you could dm or send an ask to be added anonymously by me.

This is in the spirit of wanting to understand. I am listening. I encourage all binary trans people to not speak on this topic and let nonbinary people do the talking here. Reblog the post to spread it, but please say nothing.

Any and all people who identify as nonbinary are encouraged to participate. This is not agab-locked. If you are agender, trans neutral/neutrois, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, multigender, xenogender, genderqueer, third gender, two spirit, or any other gender not wholey contained within the strict binary of "man" or "woman", this post is for you. Even if you have already posted on the trans fem or trans masc versions, if you are nonbinary, you are welcome here.

This is not bait to start a fight. I will block without hesitation anyone who is actively being a shithead on this post. I want to hear and uplift your voices by getting it directly from you.

Click this to access the trans fem and trans women version of this post.

Click this to access the trans masc and trans men version of this post.