after making a nonbinary inclusive tweet yesterday some people said things like “nonbinary people aren’t trans because trans people go through worse.” thinking like this is based on a lot of wrong assumptions so as a nonbinary trans man, I wanna address why it’s wrong (thread)

the first wrong assumption this idea is based on is that trans and nonbinary are two inherently different identities tied to different experiences & struggles, so let’s first talk about what the labels “transgender” and “nonbinary” actually mean.

trans(gender): having another gender identity than the one you were assigned at birth

nonbinary: having a gender identity that’s not exclusively 100% a binary gender, meaning male or female

I’m sure you can already tell that these two identities overlap, because no one is assigned nonbinary at birth. being nonbinary means the person realised their assigned gender doesn’t fit them or that there’s more to their gender identity.

people falsely assume there’s 1 unified nonbinary experience, which there isn’t. nonbinary is a spectrum with many identities, some of which include one or both binary genders in whole or in part, or don’t relate to the binary genders at all. there are many ways to be nonbinary.

I’m a nonbinary trans man which means for me 1. I’m nonbinary 2. I partly relate to the male gender 3. I wasn’t assigned male at birth. I’m transitioning, I go through the same medical treatments many binary trans men go through. I face the same oppression binary trans men face.

but there’s also not 1 unified way to be a nonbinary trans man. I’m sure there are many people who share that label with me but not all my experiences and THAT’S OKAY. labels are just meant to give you a general idea, they’re not inherent to a person. here’s a thread about that: https://twitter.com/workingdog_/status/1029953803494277121

some nonbinary people transition medically and/or socially, some nonbinary people don’t. but guess what: that’s also true about binary trans people. transition is not a requirement to be trans, struggling isn’t either. but believe me, nonbinary people struggle too.

get rid of your ideas what a trans or nonbinary person ought to be, we will never all have the same experiences. if you take oppression as the defining feature, I’ll have to tell you that as a white trans person I just don’t face the same oppression as BIPOC trans people.

trans is an umbrella term just as nonbinary is. there are many different people in the trans community and honestly that’s the point. if you want all trans people to fit a uniform mould, you’re no different from the people pressuring us to be cis.

here’s something that might confuse you: some nonbinary people are not trans. and that’s okay too. as I said, the nonbinary label is a big umbrella with lots of different experiences and some nonbinary people‘s experience of their own gender doesn’t relate to being trans.

unfortunately the reason why some nonbinary people aren’t part of the trans community is not because they wouldn’t identify with the trans label given the chance, it’s because they’ve internalised all the “nonbinary people can’t be trans” talk. I know I did when I first came out.

nonbinary people are part of the trans community and we deserve to feel welcome. nonbinary trans people aren’t intruders overrunning the trans community, we inherently belong. inclusion & solidarity are the key. I’ll refer you back to the tweet that made this thread happen: https://twitter.com/confusedophan/status/1317857810391191555