Non-binary is just the beginning

[Dawning]

I just had a conversation a couple of days ago with a man, in which I said, "If both of us decided that we love pink chiffon more than anything, and wanted to start wearing it all the time, one of us would continue life exactly as before, and one of us would find themselves out of a job and on the fringes of society." It's totally not fair, but that's the way it is in the modern world.

 

Is there any kind of "look" going on there in Great Britain where it's common for people to look sort of androgynous? Like here, we have goths, where males and females look very similar, with the same sort of clothes, hair and makeup. Even if you're not crazy about the style, it would at least give you a way to not look masculine, without people questioning what it means.

 

So-called "normal" people have it easy, because they can just cruise through life without ever having to analyze anything, and so they don't. If you're autistic, asexual, non-binary, or all 3 like me, every little thing becomes the source of endless speculation, always struggling towards a level of functioning in society that is effortless for most people.

[ElasticPlanet]

15 minutes ago, Dawning said:

Is there any kind of "look" going on there in Great Britain where it's common for people to look sort of androgynous?

Nothing springs to mind, but then I am generally rather oblivious to the sort of thing that people might call a 'look'! As I seem to remember saying somewhere recently, I want what I'm doing to be read as a gender thing, not an orientation or subculture thing. I don't really know how to achieve that; it just happens that I'm not into subcultures that have fashion baggage included with them.

[Dawning]

Do you have any images of the kind of look you're hoping to portray? I might be way off base, but this is what came into my mind so far:

 

[ElasticPlanet]

On 6/10/2018 at 11:15 PM, Dawning said:

Do you have any images of the kind of look you're hoping to portray?

I don't have a clear idea like that at all. I've really never had the experience of clearly seeing a potential version of me in the way somebody else looks. In the past it was because I thought I had to be male, and I wasn't inspired by any of that. These days, it's either that I don't see enough amab nonbinary people, or failing that, that maybe somewhere inside I'm closer to being a trans woman than I'd realised or allowed myself to see.

 

I'd really like to see more people around the place looking like that photo you just posted! But it's not me at all; really too formal in a lot of ways. I've been finding a style over the last couple of years by just buying things that seemed to appeal to me, or sewing my own, gradually pushing towards more femme than I'd dared before. I've only been able to learn by doing; by actually owning and wearing new styles of clothing to find out if/how they work for me.

 

Current sewing project is an experimental tank top with "too many" very different fabrics right up against each other in unusual ways. Including a few stripes of a floral fabric that are so narrow you really have to look carefully to make any sense of them. It's only the colours that the flowers have in common with the other fabrics; nothing else. I don't think this is going to be one of my best efforts, but that's how I learn. In any case, it's slightly different from anything I might have bought, and probably cheaper. [Edit: In fact I just noticed that this tank top is entirely made from the leftover materials from 4 other projects; it's so cheap it almost counts as free!]

[Dawning]

The non-binary universe is so gigantic, I think that each one of us might have a unique place in it. That's an awesome thing in some ways, but it certainly could make dressing in the way that best reflects who we are more difficult. That's awesome that you can make your own clothes, because that should really help you get where you need to be. Maybe it would help to make a few things that you have no current intention to wear outside of your home, just so that you can find what feels right to you? I think the tank top that you're making sounds really fun, and if there was a full shirt made like that ( I don't like to show much skin), I would probably wear it!

 

For my own clothing, I have defaulted to basic, inexpensive T-shirts and jeans for the most part, which would be pretty androgynous if not for my hips and my boobs; I'm so totally indifferent to any concept of gender that the curvy bits don't bother me, and I know that in practical terms, a good set of boobs has power in this culture, and I appreciate that. If money was not an object, and I had a good enough tailor to have things fit properly on my body, this is a rough example of what I'd love to look like:

 

 

Louche suit, unusual color combination, with a fun twist. I'd like more of a classic trouser shape, wingtip booties, and I would wear my long hair down because that's the only way I ever wear it. Gloves if the weather wasn't too warm. Big French cuffs with unusual cufflinks if the occasion was formal enough to permit it without looking costume-y or inappropriate.

 

[ElasticPlanet]

14 hours ago, Dawning said:

Maybe it would help to make a few things that you have no current intention to wear outside of your home, just so that you can find what feels right to you?

Thanks for the idea. I've been doing that sort of thing. Also when you're trying something new, there are many places with different levels of safety. Kate Bornstein said a lot about it in her New Gender Workbook - that's the part of the book that I seem to revisit most! As you say, home alone is always the first place to try anything. I also feel more confident pushing my own boundaries at trans events, kink events (the only place I've worn a dress with other people around) and that sort of occasion. Most of the new things I've tried, I've kept doing, pushing out further into public spaces, one step at a time, and becoming familiar as the initial excitement or nervousness faded away.

 

It's good to hear you have things you're already doing and ideas to look forward to when you figure out how best to achieve them. Your last photo especially reminded me of something I read recently defining the word dandy: "Although this style uses the structure of men's wear, it has an overdressed, ornate quality, sometimes using traits more common in feminine fashion..." so if that's the sort of thing you're looking for, I hope you succeed in making it work for you. I'm after something rather different, so to paraphrase that quote I just borrowed: the structure of skin-tight stretchy sportswear, with a modernist aesthetic of hard edges and mostly plain colours... but not meant to look sporty. But as you've heard, sometimes it's fun to have a break from that and subject some retro floral fabric to the worst possible mistreatment... Oh and then there's my wardrobe full of skinny jeans...

[Dawning]

What you're doing must take a great deal of strength and courage, and I salute you! I'd be willing to bet that you will eventually find exactly the right spot to be in, and you will flourish in it.

 

I hadn't consciously realized it, but you're right, dandy styling, which I think is primarily a British thing, does often have some aspects taken from female fashions! I'm sure that must be why it appeals to me, especially that part of it that overlaps into the universe of louche styling.

 

If Ozwald Boateng ever brought out a collection of womenswear that was a modified version of his menswear, I would be incredibly happy, as long as I could afford it by then. :-)

 

Here's a look I just found that I would definitely love to do, kind of a low-key louche, although I would do it with a pink shirt and a dandy-ish shoe:

 

[ElasticPlanet]

I think I've been lucky in some ways. If I were trying to be read as female I'd have to get a lot of things very right very quickly... or rather, I'd get many of them wrong and then have to deal with the consequences of not passing. Although I'm trying to present as a kind of gender that people aren't taught to recognise, I'm not trying to hide that I was assigned male. So I was able to start with the way I already looked, and bring femme things in, one at a time, starting with less noticeable ones, and get used to it gradually. So, thank you for attributing courage to me, but I've had it easy, really..!

 

Last photo was interesting, again not for me but something I want to see more of in the world! Reminds me of Richard Ayoade in his very colourful suits presenting the Crystal Maze, which has just started up for another series. I don't know where you are in the world though, or whether you can watch that from where you are. The first ever Crystal Maze presenter from 25 years ago (Richard O' Brien of Rocky Horror Show fame) is now out as nonbinary...

[Bloc]

6 hours ago, ElasticPlanet said:

I think I've been lucky in some ways. If I were trying to be read as female I'd have to get a lot of things very right very quickly... or rather, I'd get many of them wrong and then have to deal with the consequences of not passing. Although I'm trying to present as a kind of gender that people aren't taught to recognise, I'm not trying to hide that I was assigned male. So I was able to start with the way I already looked, and bring femme things in, one at a time, starting with less noticeable ones, and get used to it gradually. So, thank you for attributing courage to me, but I've had it easy, really..!

I can really relate to this. I am currently trying to find out what feminine clothes I like and how you can combine them with masculine clothes. But there are also times I want to present masculine or rather feminine, although I still erar a beard.

 

Sometimes I am thinking about having female breasts and liking the idea. Sometimes I find my body beautiful as is and don't want to change anything. I don't think HRT would be the right option for me, at least at the moment. But this is something I keep in mind as an option.

[Dawning]

11 hours ago, ElasticPlanet said:

I think I've been lucky in some ways. If I were trying to be read as female I'd have to get a lot of things very right very quickly... or rather, I'd get many of them wrong and then have to deal with the consequences of not passing. Although I'm trying to present as a kind of gender that people aren't taught to recognise, I'm not trying to hide that I was assigned male. So I was able to start with the way I already looked, and bring femme things in, one at a time, starting with less noticeable ones, and get used to it gradually. So, thank you for attributing courage to me, but I've had it easy, really..!

 

Last photo was interesting, again not for me but something I want to see more of in the world! Reminds me of Richard Ayoade in his very colourful suits presenting the Crystal Maze, which has just started up for another series. I don't know where you are in the world though, or whether you can watch that from where you are. The first ever Crystal Maze presenter from 25 years ago (Richard O' Brien of Rocky Horror Show fame) is now out as nonbinary...

It's tricky trying to come up with, or even envision, a look that is truly non-binary, when almost all clothing is made for either men or women, but we might be the pioneers who start making it happen.

 

I'm in the USA, and I've never heard of that series, even though we do have the BBC America channel; I'll keep an eye open for it, though. I'm all for men wearing colorful suits, and just colors in general; after all, there is nothing other than tradition that gives the idea that some colors are feminine and some are masculine. In older times, men wore every color, patterns, fancy fabrics like brocades, jewelry, the whole 9 yards. In the modern day, the more those that are AMAB step out wearing what women take for granted, the easier it will be for other people to follow suit, and the day will eventually come where anyone can wear whatever they want to express whoever they are, all the time.

[ElasticPlanet]

The Crystal Maze is on Channel 4... I don't think they have much of an international presence the way the BBC does.

 

And I agree - more colourful colours for everyone! That's another perk of sewing your own stuff. For all the frustrations that some kinds of printed fabric you see in the ready made clothes aren't available by the metre in fabric shops, at least I get to build up a serious collection of plain colours and do applique with them. If I put the time in, I can make all sorts of things that the high street brands will never be able to because I'm not paying labour costs, only materials.

 

As for creating new styles for nonbinary, I think that's actually harder than it might initially seem. There are new style elements coming into clothing all the time, plus new combinations of old styles. But most of it ends up in the women's section only. Anything that few men will dare to wear, just because it's too different, gets classed as feminine by default, regardless of the actual technical details of the design, materials, colours etc. Yet another reason on top of all the others, why presenting as nonbinary requires you to do different things depending what you were assigned at birth...

[Celyn: The Lutening]

The Crystal Maze is on SBS here is Australia.

 

My favourite way to present as nonbinary is buy from second-hand shops where it is sectioned by gender, but often inaccurately - so often that I have a wardrobe full of clothes that I don't know whether they were designed for men or women.

[ElasticPlanet]

3 hours ago, Celyn said:

I don't know whether they were designed for men or women.

Ah that's another good strategy! :)

 

I mean, the things I make for myself are all designed by and for a nonbinary person... I make my own patterns, but the way I do it starts with some reverse engineering of clothes I've bought, all of which were labelled by somebody as male or female. Then I do a lot of my own tweaks and details, and use the same pattern many times over in very different ways. Recently I've had a go at clashing some masc and femme elements against each other within a single item - a T shirt or tank top, say. I see this as different from wearing some clothes that contrast with your other clothes, because the clash is 'baked in' to a single garment at the original design stage so it looks more like it was really meant to be that way. Whether anyone picks up on all that, or whether the only thing they notice is the floral prints because they think I'm male, I don't really know...

[Dawning]

I don't think it matters whether anyone else picks up on what you're doing; what matters is that you're making and wearing the clothing that makes you happy, so that you can express who you are. I applaud your hard work and creativity! And you never know, there may be a market out there for the things that you make; there are tons of other non-binary people in the same position as you are, but who don't know how to sew.

[ElasticPlanet]

Thanks so much! I don't think it matters overwhelmingly; it's just on my mind sometimes. I'm still trying stuff out and finding answers...

 

When you mentioned maverique at the start of all this, were you looking for something more specific than nonbinary, or was it more that you didn't want to use a negative identity (you know, a 'not-x' kind of word)?

[Dawning]

I chose maverique for both of those reasons, and also because I wanted something more accurate. For at least some people, being agender, genderless, etc, isn't actually having no gender, but is sort of a de facto gender, like when they encountered that androgynous race, as they called them, in that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Outcast," which you can watch here if you haven't seen it:

 

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5fhza0

 

I highly recommend it, it was quite groundbreaking at the time. So, and apologies to everyone for not having the right terms for this, we have people that have sort of an androgynous or neutral gender, and they feel that way and want to look, present, and be treated that way; for someone AFAB, that can mean short hair and binding the breasts. I respect that, but I don't relate to it. I'm so totally detached from the concept of gender that I have no desire to present myself or be viewed any particular way. The person who created the term maverique, currently called Vesper I think, is clearly the same sort of person; if you look at their YouTube channel, they have the appearance of an attractive woman, with very long hair and jewelry that is definitely feminine. Even when previously identifying as neutrois, they were not attempting to create a gender-neutral appearance. Their description of maverique comes by far the closest to describing how I feel. So, maverique is the term that works the best for me. 

[Janus the Fox]

Im autistic but fell rather non-binary and agendered, while that is "just the beginning" I am more femme trans that I've not considered beforehand and thus could take me down the path of opposite expressions of gender.

[Dawning]

It's definitely a process, which is a little more complex for those of us on the spectrum. Do you feel like you might be autigendered?

[Janus the Fox]

I'd say I have an autistic perspective on the social ramifications of gender, I don't seem to have a need to consider myself the autigender label, while the descriptors are accurate.

[ElasticPlanet]

On 6/21/2018 at 12:18 AM, Dawning said:

when they encountered that androgynous race, as they called them, in that episode of Star Trek

I've heard about it. Could swear it was mentioned in a Kate Bornstein book somewhere. Must watch it now I've got the link...

 

EDIT: I just accidentally found where I'd heard about the Star Trek episode. It was Kate Bornstein. She was interviewed in a BBC radio documentary a couple of years ago - the one that I used to come out to my parents as agender.

 

On 6/21/2018 at 12:18 AM, Dawning said:

I'm so totally detached from the concept of gender that I have no desire to present myself or be viewed any particular way.

Interesting you say 'detached'. I'm the opposite in the sense that I've always cared about gender (but misunderstood so badly what about it was bothering me, and was so powerless to change anything for the better). If anything I learned to detach myself from it on purpose just to avoid dealing with something I wasn't equipped to deal with. I suspect this is quite different from the kind of detachment you were talking about. I always wanted out of the whole male/female thing but could only imagine achieving that by some kind of far future transhumanist total abolition of all sex/gender everywhere (yes, I probably really should watch the Star Trek!). I wanted to present more femme (though too rarely allowed myself to think about that and what it might mean). Now I have some kind of a clue what gender means to other people, I've been able to start placing myself in relation to them. Unlike you I do want to be viewed in a particular way, which is not male and not female. Not an equal mixture of both. Not a member nor even some kind of honorary guest of the girl club or the boy club. Just a person. That's why I call myself agender more often than nonbinary.

[Dawning]

Did you watch the episode? If you did, what did you think?

 

The radical difference between your experience and self-perception and mine is an excellent illustration of why we need different terms to describe ourselves, even though to a binary person we might seem at first glance to be same. Although it's always easier to come out under a certain label or term when all the flights have been fought, there is something to be said for being at the forefront of change, and that's where we are, not just you and me, but all the other non-binary people who are just now starting to stand up and let the world know who we are. In my lifetime, I've seen the laws in the United States go from criminalizing gay people in nearly every state to gay marriage being legal in most places, from trans people being something that no one had ever heard of to being on primetime TV… And our revolution is next!

[ElasticPlanet]

3 hours ago, Dawning said:

our revolution is next!

I hope so!

[henshin]

Quote

Not only do I have no gender-related feelings whatsoever, I honestly have no idea what people mean when they say that they feel like a particular gender, any gender.

 

This is pretty normal as far as I'm aware. Cisgdender people don't go around claiming they feel like a man or a woman, it's just that there is general agreement between society's expectations of the gendered behaviour they should present and the type of gendered behaviour they want to present, and the things they don't like about their bodies aren't their sex characteristics. 

 

I.e. if you asked a cisgendered woman if she felt like a woman she would likely say, um wut, then yes out of habit, social conditioning, and because she feels generally comfortable behaving like women are 'supposed' to behave. 

 

[Dawning]

That's probably true for some people, but most people appear to have a clear and specific idea of what their gender is; if they didn't, we wouldn't have a trans community, for example.

[RakshaTheCat]

On 6/7/2018 at 9:40 PM, Dawning said:

I don't feel bodily dysphoric either, just for the record, but I have always felt pretty much indifferent to the naughty bits, and even to my physical existence as a whole; I have often joked that I would be a perfect candidate to be a brain in a jar like they used to have in some of the sillier sci-fi stories.

Haha, so true, I would happily go 'brain in a jar' myself. Having ability to use different bodies for different occasions would be interesting on soo many levels

[Karst]

@Dawning ...

Have you ever read The Left Hand of Darkness? It's a fascinating novel about a society without gender. Ursula Le Guin wrote it in 1969, and it's amazingly ahead of its time.

I'm recommending it to you since I suspect that that TNG episode borrowed a lot of ideas from it.

[Dawning]

No, I've never read it, but I'll definitely look into it, thank you!

[henshin]

On 6/23/2018 at 11:53 PM, Dawning said:

That's probably true for some people, but most people appear to have a clear and specific idea of what their gender is; if they didn't, we wouldn't have a trans community, for example.

I am not disagreeing that some people feel that way, obviously trans people do. What I'm contending is that 'most' cis people feel that way. Unless you have some studies to support your suggestion that most people do feel a gender identity that is separate to both their sex and their gender presentation, then it's just my unproven theory against your unproven theory really.

[Dawning]

3 minutes ago, henshin said:

I am not disagreeing that some people feel that way, obviously trans people do. What I'm contending is that 'most' cis people feel that way. Unless you have some studies to support your suggestion that most people do feel a gender identity that is separate to both their sex and their gender presentation, then it's just my unproven theory against your unproven theory really.

If that's the case, then why are you arguing about it, LOL? Over the years, I've asked hundreds of people about this, and 100% have respond as I described; that's a solid base for an opinion. How many people have you questioned, and what have their answers been?

[henshin]

I'm arguing about this because I see a fuck ton of people coming on here and saying they think they must be non-binary simply because they don't 'feel like the gender they were assigned at birth' and more often than not that seems to boil down to people just wanting to present in a more masculine or feminine way that social custom dictates and not really giving a faff about pronouns. These feelings are not unique to non-binary people, they are pretty common among the cis people that I have spoken to who never actually understand what is meant by gender identity unless they are already familiar with the LGBT community.

 

What I'm trying to say is that gender identity is a really fucking vague concept, and I'm not saying it doesn't exist because I have worked with suicidal trans people and I know they are going through something really bloody serious, but I am saying that as a concept it leaves a lot to be desired and no-one seems to want to touch this with a ten foot pole because they don't want to de-legitimise trans people. Its like how people don't want to touch the 'born gay' thing because if you say that sexuality can be socially constructed then it leaves homophobes with an avenue of attack. 

 

The reason I care about this is because while I currently identify as cis, I am going through exactly the same thing as people like the OP who are questioning their gender identity and wondering if they are non-binary, but tbh was fine with it before non-binary started becoming more popular. I'm trying to figure out what makes up my gender identity, and how much you have to care to go from someone who doesn't like things about your body to someone who identifies as trans. 

 

Literally the only thing I can come up with for someone who isn't dysphoric is that it is a choice based on how you want to choose.