Where is the line between non-binary and binary?

[Gloom]

Hey, all.

I had a hard time figuring out how to title this thread. Basically I'm having some minor struggles about what I should "be out" as.

I'm FAAB, and I'd previously been identifying as agender, but I lean slightly masculine. I'm transitioning (or have plans to transition) in most respects in the same way an FTM person does. I've changed my name to a masculine name, I've had top surgery, I started testosterone a few months ago--all of these things have been great for me. Technically I don't "feel like" a man--I just think of myself as a person, but I've generally been comfortable whenever someone perceived me as a man (in contrast to being perceived as female, which was dysphoric for me), and I'm comfortable with my body being masculine (and I experience dysphoria regarding the feminine parts of my body). The few things that make me different from "the standard" FTM person (acknowledging that no such thing exists) is that I don't want any bottom surgeries and I prefer they pronouns (but "he" doesn't bother me too much).

Oddly, people seem to be far less accepting of non-binary gender identities than of binary transpeople, at least in my environment. It's incredibly hard to explain myself, especially from scratch, and I either come off as confused/questioning or give someone the wrong impression about me. I also feel less included. I'm still excluded by men, but now women exclude me as well (which, okay, that's fine, but I feel a little sad when I'm excluded from male groups). This is sometimes subtle and sometimes overt. It's like people have two set ways of acting around people and don't know which one to use on me and get annoyed/confused by my very presence. Then there are the people who don't think being non-binary is even a thing...On top of that, my family is not supportive and not informed, and trying to explain the nuances of my gender identity to them has been like pulling teeth, and from a religious standpoint, they find being non-binary more objectionable than being binary trans. And it gives them more room to attack me for being confused, broken, curable, etc., etc.

So I'm at this crossroads where I haven't announced myself as out to the world (though lots of people know I'm not cis and use they pronouns), and I have the chance to use whatever label I like, but none of them are exactly right, and somehow masquerading as a man seems so much easier than trying to explain how my identity is maybe sort of off from male and living with the awkwardness/confusion/exclusion. Can anyone relate to this?

Also, I'm wondering what it even *feels* like to have a binary gender identity. Gender is a continuum, so exactly how far off from "exactly (fe)male" is the non-binary region? If you are binary identified (more relevantly, trans and binary identified), how did you know for sure that you were a boy/girl? How did you avoid placing yourself in some nebulous area in the non-binary spectrum? Was this an obvious experience, or was there room for doubt?

I guess I'm trying to figure out why I'm holding onto stating that I'm non-binary when it'd be so much easier to blend in as a binary trans person at this point, and I despise drawing attention to myself.

[cosmosredshift7]

I honestly think that the gender you are is based on which one you feel most comfortable identifying as. Like, gender is really a social construct; there are guidelines for being Boys/Men and Girls/Women and they are honestly very restricting, especially when the two 'Opposite Genders; don't leave room for real people who feel like partly one, both, or neither.

I myself am bigender; both agender and female, at different times. I grew up identifying as a girl, though i never truly was one; I didn't want to look pretty, I was more interested in 'boy things', and I was completely uncomfortable with myself. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I began to feel like a girl: i wanted to put make-up on, wear feminine clothes, and just be girly in general; i thought that it was me growing into myself. It wasn't until a few months ago that I realized I'm also still the weird, sort of masculine person I grew up as. I've learned a lot of different things about gender from tumblr, but i never thought about them in reference to myself; I remembered the phrase 'bigender', so i did some research and realized that the term fit.

I started out know that I was partly female, and unsure about the other part, so I tried out thinking about 'well, do i feel like a guy? i'm going to try out the idea of being a guy, and see how i feel about it'. I went through that step for other identities, and ended up with agender because it fit me the best; not having to fit myself into any kind of 'strict' 'gender roles'.

[dash]

Oh wow, so much to chew on here.

Nonbinary doesn't have to be in the middle of a line. Nonbinary could mean a third gender, or no gender, or somewhere else on the gender map with gender as a two dimensional space or a three (or more) dimensional space. My gender is like a die, with one side up at any given time, but with n discrete states. Some nonbinary people have genders that are fluid, or are always in more than one gender state at any given time. Some people don't even know how to begin to talk about their gender in relation to the binary because it's like trying to understand cucumbers in relation to toast.

Anyway, yes, as a fellow nonbinary person, yes there are those who are less accepting of nonbinary people than of binary trans people, and it sucks. A lot. I'm sorry you have to deal with this and that your family isn't supportive. :(

I can't speak to what it's like to have a binary gender experience the same way as a totally binary person can, but I can say that before puberty I didn't question gender at all and was happily a girl, through and through. I can also say that when I'm feeling 100% male, I feel 100% male. It's all very subjective, there's no external standard for it, it's about how you feel inside. And as I'm sure you know, some agender/neutrois people prefer to have masculine bodies and some prefer to have feminine bodies and some don't have a preference and some prefer as close to an agender body as they can get.

Also, do you know the website Neutrois Nonsense? That may be a good resource for you.

[Miav-desu]

Hmm I can relate. I identify as a guy, im transman, as a kid I only knew about binary roles so I would say I am kinda binary but on the other hand I dont feel binary because I feel gender roles are rather sh*tty. somethimes I feel very much like a guy, othertime I dont really think twice about gender at all. I think there is no clear line from binary to non-binary. I feel non-binary is a large spectrum of various people and I also think it depends on culture. in some comunities I would feel more keen to decribe myself as binary and in other as non-binary because the "non" are defined diffrently from place to place. I think there is a special need for more awareness of non-binary people because binary transgender people get alot of attention and nonbinary hardly get any.

[brightberry]

I'd say the line is actually a gradient.

It's like in this picture. Where does orange stop? Where does orange end? For that matter, where do yellow and red stop and end? There's really no telling where. You can say that there are definitely red and yellow at either end, but in-between them it's impossible. Honestly, if I was in your shoes, I'd find your general location on the "gradient" of gender, and then find a word for that region. At some point though, it's useless to keep narrowing the band of color you fit in. But if a label works for you, then use it!

[Spider Milkshake]

Oh, the gender binary... I guess it's hard to say where the line is, or if there is a line really. I tend to think that the idea that there is a "line" drawn between binary and non-binary is itself a construction of the binary gender system the world has going... When really we all have our own gender experience(s), which overlap and recede as they will.

I suppose, according to the cisheteronormative society right now, anything outside of "exactly feminine" and "exactly masculine" (or even hyper-masculine stereotype, depending on how extreme the culture you look to is) is within the realm of "non-binary".

I would only say I'm "non-binary" to dispel confusion for people I meet not familiar with the concept of my gender. I generally just introduce it as "I'm a they, but he doesn't hurt. Absolutely no she-ing/Miss-ing/ma'am-ing." (Same pronoun experience! Neat! ^_^ )

[Hiraeth]

I'm stealth to 100% of people in the "real world", but if you're one of the lucky few who can get a narrative out of me, it'll be as "binary" and "old fashioned" as it comes. You might even find it so "old fashioned" that it's distasteful.

I've always "felt" like a genderless person, and always will, but to me that's a different conversation. If I'm trying to communicate to someone about why I have issues crossing borders, why health insurance is the first thing I look for when evaluating potential job opportunities, why there are parts of the world that will always be off-limits to me, why I wasted the first 20 years of my life doing nothing when I always knew what my passions were, why I don't enjoy exercise and shopping for anything that goes on my body, and why I now suffer from debilitating PTSD.... there is only one explanation: the body I was given was impossible to live with, and without changing it in "serious" ways (like surgery), even the most basic level of functionality wasn't possible. I never offer more details than that, because it's not necessarily relevant, and I feel that it may even detract from the point that I'm trying to make.

People can infer from that whatever they will. If they assume that it means I'm 100% binary, okay, whatever, but anyone who spends any time with me knows that my energy is inherently androgynous no matter how much I try to sway it in one direction or the other. I don't feel like I need to make that explicit in order to be detected and recognized.

When I first started trying to access medical services I told everyone I was neutrois, because I really didn't "feel" male, I just had this physical problem that needed to be corrected - sounds like an appropriate description of neutrois identity, right? Very few people took me seriously. Besides, wouldn't it be inappropriate for me to "transition to male" if I didn't "identify as male"? I was told that transitioning was all about "identity", so I held onto that and refused to budge, but it really didn't work and honestly I feel like a lot of time was wasted because of it. Transitioning for me is solely about a physical problem. I didn't at any point during my traumatic childhood, puberty, and finally transition, think that I was doing it because "I am a man" or "I want to be a man" or anything like that. After all, we're all taught to think of sex and gender as separate, right? Well, my problem was with sex, not gender. I didn't have any mental or emotional capacity to think about my gender identity when all of my energy was spent resisting bloody if not suicidal urges to "correct the problem myself".

Sometimes I will present myself in gender diverse spaces as an agender individual, and have people assume that I am MAAB. I feel more comfortable contributing to discussions about "gender identity" while doing this, because I don't feel as if I have anything relevant to contribute from my transsexual experience.

Not sure if that is helpful.