I have complicated feelings (yet again) about #NonBinaryPeoplesDay. I’m happy for those who find power in the label and communities that have rallied behind it, but I still feel just as distanced as I did years ago.

I came out as genderqueer before I came out as a woman, and both those terms continue to have a great deal of meaning for me. But over the past few years I have found womanhood and trans womanhood specifically to be much more relevant political communities to rally around.

This is partially because the specific forms of transphobia I experience tend to rooted in transmisogyny, and I’d rather organise with those who have a good understanding of that. To many people’s surprise, this has included many cis women and not enough TME non-binary people.

Much of the political demands I see from self-appointed representatives of “the non-binary community” are focused around legal/administrative recognition, microlabeling, representation for representation’s sake etc. Much of this I find to be boringly liberal.

Much of the building around non-binary identities is wrapped around this idea of expanding the gender binary into a gender triad, to be able to be put into three boxes rather than two. I feel that this goes against the ways in which I see my own political non-binary identity

Seeing “non-binary is valid” infuriates me, not just because it is wet, but because it is false. At least in my opinion, the whole point of being non-binary is to destroy the concept of validity.

I have seen many non-binary people try and talk about “binary trans privilege”, and I will concede that some trans people who can sell a plausible narrative of transness to cis people based on gender essentialism attack non-binary people because we break that model.

The thing is, many non-binary people are starting to do *the exact same thing* around constructing palatable non-binary identities. “Non-binary is valid” or “non-binary is non-binary” fall into this trap imo.

Controversially, non-binary isn’t non-binary, in the same sense that women aren’t women. These are (rather than cohesive identical identities) terms under which people with a wide variety of different experiences organise based on some similarities.

Its worth thinking more critically about what “nonbinary political demands” could even be, separated from wider movements for trans/women’s liberation, decolonisation etc. “Non-binary rights” is an oxymoron, it is trying to fit a slippery, ill defined group into a legal framework

Also, given I’m in a “pissing people off” mood, shout out to the they/thems who refuse to use neopronouns for myself and others who use them because their “non-binary politics” begin and end at their own comfort xoxo

If you’re going to be a radical pronoun warrior, at least stick to your principles xx