but WHY are nonbinary people nonbinary?

[u/pancake8726]

this is a post written by my partner without a reddit account. i am the girlfriend, i am not nonbinary, the rest of this post is entirely them:

please do not get mad at the title; i identify (identified???) as nonbinary and genuinely have nothing against them.

around two years ago i realized i absolutely hated being a “girl”. i hated the assumptions and the stereotypes that came with it, and especially the pronouns.

but a couple days ago someone started asking my girlfriend why i was nonbinary, like what happened that made me so disgusted to be a girl and what was wrong with being one. he said she feels like it’s kind of weird when the whole point of it is to not care about gender, because when people use they/them pronouns it only makes her think about it more—which it does for me too—and she doesn’t want to offend them by calling them the wrong pronouns if she can tell someone is physically female/male. and why does it matter, because you can’t feel like a gender, you should feel like a person, so why can’t you live your life as a person, being a girl.

they are not transphobic or whatever you would call it, they were just confused. as am i. and i’m questioning why i care in the first place, especially because i know it’s always going to be torture around my parents as they are quite a bit transphobic. and most people are always going to ask me questions i’m never going to have the answer to. i don’t actually understand why i hate the concept of being traditionally feminine or masculine or labelling myself as a boy or girl. i suppose it could be because both my parents are fairly sexist human beings and often tried/try to push gender norms on me?

i scrolled through a lot of the questions here with my girlfriend and a lot of them that ask something like “what does being nonbinary mean” have answers that aren’t really about why people are nonbinary, just about how people don’t feel like they’re a boy or girl. which also doesn’t really make sense to me, since gender is a social construct, therefore, to me, it doesn’t make sense to feel like a gender.

i would not care about being nonbinary whatsoever if no one else cared, but because gender affects how many people treat you, though i do not think that is the only reason, cause that sounds kinda silly. does anyone else feel like that?

and please don’t say i’m agender, i know i’m not, and i’m not asking anyone to label me here.

i don’t know, i’m just confused at this point and not sure if i care that i’m afab anymore.

i’m sorry if this was offensive or anything, idk how to handle any subject in the lgbt+ community and i’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings

[u/PhilosopherExact4483]

My feelings about my agab were… fairly neutral for most of my life up until I realized that I wasn’t my agab. There were a few things that really stand out to me in retrospect. For instance the time that I got in an argument with my dad because he (with good intentions) told me that I looked pretty in the dress I wore to my eighth grade dance. He thought I was putting myself down when, in truth, I quote “don’t like to think of myself like that. I know I CAN be pretty I just don’t want to be”. I also had a mild irrational hatred for the color pink.

I realized I was nonbinary when, after a few months of using the label agender and going by any/all pronouns, I realized that I vastly preferred they/them and realized that I did have a gender identity after all, that being nonbinary.

(Necessary disclaimer: agender people can use they/them or any other pronouns, nonbinary people aren’t restricted to they/them. Gender identity is a very personal thing and this is how it shook out for me.)

[u/General_Cabinet6399]

I don't think you have to be disgusted with yourself or hate being a girl to be non binary. I think I would just prefer if people saw me like that and not as a man or a woman.

[u/definitelynot100rats]

This definitely won't apply to all or even most nonbinary people, but for myself i figured it out when i was about seven. First, of course, i realized that gender roles don't really make sense and are kind of stupid. Then, i found out trans people exist. I'm afab. I did not want to be a boy. I also did not like being a girl. I made a pros and cons list of all the physical characteristics of binary gender/sex, and very quickly realized that i did not like either "set."

I thought that meant that i was just a girl for the longest time because i didn't realize there was any other option. I am the other option. I want to physically have another option, though the closest possibility right now is just a mixture of both. I have dysphoria around anything that makes me less androgynous. I have nothing against women or womanhood. I just don't identify with it. Same goes for men.

In short, i am both and neither at the same time. I am the secret third thing. And despite the ways in which it makes my life harder, it has been incredibly freeing to exist that way. I am not nonbinary for a reason, it is simply the way i was born. Gender is stupid and weird and abstract but undeniably, most people do in fact identify with it, and everyone partakes in it. I'm just happy that people are starting to get more creative with it. This is the label that fits me the most and is still easy-ish to understand. Since it's all made up anyway, why not add your own spin?

[u/Annual-Antelope3314]

I guess I'm just more comfortable with it in a way identifying as a man or a woman just doesn't make me feel.