Do any of us really believe in the non-binary nature of gender? You may be thinking to yourself, of course I do! And I think that too, but let’s delve a little deeper and see if we really do believe. There are many of us who know theoretically that gender exists on a spectrum, however, the reality is that we live and participate in a gender binary world, even when we don’t realise it.
The truth is, even though we may be ‘accepting of LGBT people’, we are actually forcing those who identify with the community to be part of the gender binary system, and by ‘we’ I include even members of the LGBT community. This may be controversial, but hear (or read) me out.
If an individual is born male but doesn’t identify as one, as a society of people who accept, we assume that they then identify as female. Because, if not male then what else could it be? So when someone decides that they feel more female than male, they have to jump into the deep end of feminine traits with both feet forward! It is perfectly okay to feel more female than male, but not fully female. Because as we already know, gender is not binary! So one doesn’t have to be male or female, they can be either, or both, or none! However, the society we live in has taught us to automatically categorize people into a binary and therefore we find ourselves accepting it more when others conform to either one of the gender ideals, than when they do not.
This partial acceptance is prevalent even within the LGBT community. People who are cis-gender lesbian and gay are more accepted in society than those who are genderqueer or genderfluid! Individuals who are bisexual face far more stigma, even from within the LGBT community, than lesbians and gays do, because again, you either like a girl or you like a boy, that’s a binary, but liking both means that your sexuality goes against that very binary that has been ingrained in us. And then comes the transgender group, who experience much higher rates of stigma and bullying and show much lower levels of mental well-being than any other group in society. Why? Because their identity pushes the boundaries of our binary mind more than anyone else.
Think about this, and ask yourself. Are you truly accepting? Or are you only accepting of people who fit into a preconceived binary? Do individuals have to mould themselves and fit into a gender binary system they don’t believe in, just to gain your acceptance, or do you have to push your boundaries further out to accept someone who is on the gender spectrum you currently believe in only theoretically? We fall back to a space of gender binary because it is familiar to us, it is what makes sense to minds that have been taught from infancy about male and female and nothing in between. The reality of the spectrum is harder to accept than we realise, because it is new to so many of us, it’s not something we’ve grown up learning, and so we need to go through a process of unlearning and relearning on our own! And that’s not easy, but it doesn’t even begin to compare to the experiences of those who find themselves living on a spectrum while a majority of us live in the binary.
