Using she/he pronouns
It can be so difficult to be sure you’re not reading a parody. Surely the BBC wouldn’t publish a parody news item…
When Alexa Hermosillo, 25, came out as non-binary about a year ago, while living in San Diego, California, he found many of the people he dated still boxed him into a gender binary.
He was expecting to find something else? “Dating” (i.e. sex) tends to work that way.
Hermosillo had short hair and presented as more masculine, but was using she/he pronouns at the time. People he dated, however, “would assign that more normatively masculine role to me”, he says (Hermosillo now identifies as trans masculine). “If we drove somewhere, I would be the person to drive. If I took them out on dates, I’d be the main person paying.”
Is he helpless? Can he not negotiate who does the driving, as in one person drives to and the other drives back? Can he not negotiate who pays? Can he not use his words?
This is one of the many nuanced issues people who identify as non-binary face when dating. Both dating partners and dating apps are likely to assign them to a binary gender.
No shit. And why is that? Because 999,999 out of 100,000 people want to “date” (i.e. have sex with) a particular sex. Ok that probably undercounts bisexual people but you get my drift. Humans do “assign” other humans to a binary gender. It’s built in. Claiming to be “non-binary” is a new and silly development, and it’s not going to find many eager participants.
They’re subject to misgendering and inadvertent insults, people who try too hard to empathise with their gender identity, and those who don’t try to understand at all.
In other words everybody gets it wrong and it’s just so unfair.
Dating can be a minefield for anyone who’s looking for partnership – but for people who identify as non-binary, there are even more obstacles, often invisible to people who identify with the mainstream view of gender identity and heteronormative sexuality.
Of course there are. Suck it up. Nobody has to pretend to be “non-binary,” and nobody has to humor people who do pretend to be “non-binary.” Suck it up, move on, transition to being an adult.
Okay, so if this guy is male, how can he be “trans” masculine? Wouldn’t he just be masculine? Or is the drive to be special so all consuming that the only way to live is in your own sex as trans, or non-binary, or perhaps plaid?
1. What the fuck are “she/he pronouns”? Do we say she/he every time, or are we supposed to alternate?
2. Another amusing part from the article: “Thirty-three-year old Beberoyale (who’s withholding their surname for privacy), lives in New York City.” Yes, I’m sure nobody will be able to pierce that secret identity. NYC is huge, I’m sure there’s lots of 33-year-olds named Beberoyale!
3. I don’t really know what people expect is going to happen. Nonbinary people complain about being “forced” into a binary category, but they also don’t want to be put in a third category — or at least, not if other people can opt out of being shown nonbinary profiles.
I actually encountered this “in the wild” recently. A profile popped up on an app with a male name, and a photo of someone who had an utterly bog-standard conventional male appearance. I was confused why this person was in my queue, and discovered that they had checked the box for “non-binary,” and thus get shown both to people seeking women and those seeking men.
Now, this wasn’t a big deal for me — I just swiped left as I do on many profiles, and it’s the only instance I’ve experienced of this, so it’s not like it’s really an inconvenience — but I am baffled by who this kind of thing is supposed to help. Is it realistic to think that straight men or lesbians are going to suddenly be attracted to a male-presenting person because he identifies as nonbinary? “Well, I don’t date men, but this person likes to have doors opened and dinner purchased for them, so suddenly that moustache is sexy!”
Being a proper ally to these people is a constant process of trying to walk a tightrope between too little concern or too much. I think that’s by design. Keeping people constantly unsure is a way to exert power, while presenting oneself as the true victim, needing further soothing.
Exhausting.
iknklst #1
The important thing is she/he is not a straight guy, because that would be boring. She/he may be a masculine-presenting male who is attracted to women, but don’t call she/he a man. That would be Actual Violence.
That tightrope between too little concern or too much thing – that is SO central. It all boils down to I’m special, pay extra attention to me, today and tomorrow and in perpetuity. Narcissism, in short. This is one major reason it’s not even slightly progressive or social justicey or left-wing (not that it’s right-wing either – it’s off the map altogether). I will never understand how so many adults have been snowed by this ludicrous Look At Me pretending to be a form of politics.
These problems faced by non-binary people who reject the binary are nothing compared to the problems of non-binary people who follow the binary.
“My name is Julia, I go by she/ her pronouns, I always dress feminine and want to marry a good man and be a full-time wife and mother some day — so it’s agonizing when transphobes try to tell me I’m not non-binary. Even other non-binary folk try to erase my existence! But wouldn’t I KNOW if I’m non-binary or not? Don’t I have a right to exist despite my not fitting neatly into the ‘non-binary box???’ It’s a struggle very few people experience.”
I wonder if she/he is a typo for she/her, and Alexa was originally a woman, but is saying that her short hair led her to be treated in (what she considered) a more masculine way. Now that person is trans masculine and uses he/him. Almost as though they (for want of a better term for where you’re not sure) has given in to the gender stereotype so way they behave and people respond to them matches the expected gender roles.