#nonbinary stereotypes

[aromanticduck]

"Yeah, I understand the nonbinaries! A she/they is when a girl is quirky. A they/them is when the quirky girl has short hair and is a tomboy. A he/they is when the short hair tomboy girl wears men's clothes and has a boy name. Nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth? Nonbinary people on HRT? Neopronouns? That's scary, I don't know."

[rjalker]

It's 2023. Biological essentialism isn't progressive.

It's one thing if there's literally no humans in your setting at all. In which case you can do whatever the hell you want. Go make that wolf nonbinary.

But if your setting does have humans? Especially if your setting is dominated by humans? And the only nonbinary characters that we get to see, who actually matter to the story, are all nonhuman animals, robots, aliens, or shapeshifters?

You're literally just perpetuating biological essentialism and saying that you think it's impossible for a real human person to be nonbinary.

Real human nonbinary people are not aliens or animals or shapeshifters. And guess what. They're literally still nonbinary. They have real human genitals and guess what. They're still nonbinary.

Stop praising biological essentialism as the epitome of nonbinary representation when it's literally just saying that real human people can't be nonbinary because they're not literal shapeshifters.

You can have nonbinary nonhumans. But if there are humans in the setting you literally fucking must also have nonbinary humans unless you just want to advertise to everyone that you're exorsexist as fuck.

This is not representation. It's literally just bigotry. And everyone needs to stop cheering for it like it's the most amazing thing ever.

[Image description start: Black text reading, "'Are you a boy, or a girl?'" in a pixely font like from the original Pokemon games. Below this are two sections. One is labeled, "Positive representation", and shows a stick figure smiling and responding, "I'm a shark!". The second section is labeled, "Literally just biological essentialism masquerading as progressiveness:", and shows a shark sticking its head out of the water to reply, "I'm a shark!". Below this split is more text that reads: "If the only nonbinary characters in your setting are nonhuman (including shapeshifters), that's biological essentialism! and that's called bigotry babey! Yes, even if you're also nonbinary!". The words, "even if you're also nonbinary" are italicized for emphasis. End ID.]

Fuck biological essentialism.

It's 2023. If you aren't willing to write main, important human nonbinary characters in a fantasy or scifi setting where humans exist, especially if humans dominate the setting, you're an exorsexist piece of shit, and you should feel bad about it.

If you try to argue that this magically is not bigoted because you enjoy the nonbinary nonhuman characters, I'm going to block you. Read the post again.

[no1totell]

shout out to leverage and especially leverage redemption for unfailingly hyping up these brilliant incredible gorgeous middle aged & older women 🔥

[theslimeologist]

this june lets celebrate bearded women. okay?

[ringenthusiast]

if you want a nonbinary actor to play murderbot but the only actors you can think of are petite afab people then i think you need to reevaluate something about how you perceive nonbinary people and then we can talk again

[uncanny-tranny]

The absolute biggest thing I've learned as a trans guy: there is nothing more masculine and manly than not caring about looking or acting masculine or manly. Growing your masculinity or manhood takes time and care - you have no obligation to let the world water your garden when you can do that just fine (and you can, even if it doesn't feel like you can!)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Mar 27, 2025

The University of Oxford is at it again. Somehow forgetting that its function is the pursuit and production of knowledge rather than ideological propagandising, its authorities have decided to modify the Latin passages of the degree ceremony to be gender-neutral. Bye bye, magistri (masters) and doctores (doctors); instead, graduates will be referred to as vos (you). One presumes this is to avoid causing offence to ‘non-binary’ students who happen to specialise in the classics.

On a purely theatrical basis, this stripping away of grandeur is disappointing. One of the most enjoyable aspects of matriculating at Oxford was that we had an excuse to dress up in black capes, and when I later graduated I was permitted to wear the flowing bright red garb of the doctor philosophiae. If I had climbed up to the top of the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre on that day, I might have been mistaken for an activist from Fathers for Justice.

These anachronistic touches are surely part of the appeal of studying at Oxford. And although a slight modification to the Latin won’t harm anyone – let’s face it, barely anyone would have noticed – it does point to a deeper societal malaise. Like asking someone for one’s pronouns, it’s a little reminder that we are expected to truckle to this intolerant, regressive and identity-obsessed new state religion.

And let’s not forget that the entire notion of ‘non-binary’ is, for the most part, a status symbol for middle-class narcissists. Why should an 800-year-old ceremony be tweaked to satisfy the demands of these little Veruca Salts who wants the whole world to contort in accordance with their preferences? At the time of my graduation at Oxford I was a huge fan of Madonna, but I didn’t insist that the Vice-Chancellor intone: Modo virginis. Tum primum tactae.

Up until relatively recently, ‘coming out’ as ‘non-binary’ was a means by which uber-privileged celebrities could claim some degree of oppression. It was this generation’s most fashionable label, and was embraced by the likes of Same Smith and Demi Lovato. It was only marginally less ridiculous than Danni Minogue claiming she was ‘queer’ and then later clarifying that she wasn’t interested in women sexually, or Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo – daughter of the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo – announcing that she was ‘demisexual’. This is defined as someone who only feels sexually attracted to someone if they have an emotional bond, which means that Cuomo had effectively ‘come out’ as an old-fashioned heterosexual.

One cannot ‘come out’ as non-binary. The metaphor of ‘coming out’ is specifically related to the revelation of an innate characteristic that one has kept hidden due to societal disapproval. Up until the 1990s, coming out as gay involved a degree of personal risk; gay people were disowned, disinherited, fired, and sometime physically attacked or killed. Coming out as non-binary, a fashionable and celebrated identity, bears no such risks.

Moreover, homosexuality is a verifiably innate characteristic. It is remarkably easy to determine someone’s sexual orientation by scientific means, and to measure degrees of arousal on the basis of erotic stimuli. There is no apparatus in the world that could measure ‘gender identity’ any more than one could hope to measure where someone falls on the spectrum of mods to rockers. And yet we are expected to treat belief in this will-o’-the-wisp as the equivalent of an inherent sexual orientation or racial group. It’s remarkably insulting to minorities who have been persecuted throughout history.

For the sake of the literal-minded, I should point out that when I say that to be non-binary isn’t real, I do not mean to imply that people who call themselves non-binary do not exist. I am pointing out that identity is not the same as material reality; it is all about self-perception. The claim of being non-binary is not even synonymous with ‘intersex’ (not a third sex or evidence of a ‘spectrum’, but rather a developmental condition that results in sexual ambiguity in males and females).

The identity of ‘non-binary’ is based on the notion that one does not feel aligned with stereotypes of male or female. And so it amounts to a reinforcement of traditional ideals of maleness and femaleness. Rather than acknowledging that men and women can behave and dress as they like, to claim to be ‘non-binary’ implies that if men don’t behave like ‘real men’ and women don’t behave like ‘real women’, they are somewhere in between. It’s an oddly conservative form of rebellion.

This is why the Globe Theatre’s 2022 production of I, Joan, based on the life of Joan of Arc, was so reactionary. It presented Joan as ‘non-binary’ because she was powerful, courageous and wore men’s armour. For the woke, female strength and independence is not to be celebrated, but to be explained away. The same goes for the essay on Queen Elizabeth I that appeared around this time on the Globe’s website, referring to the monarch with ‘they/them’ pronouns on the basis that she rhetorically claimed to have ‘the heart and stomach of a king’.

So when former Coronation Street star Shobna Gulati last week claimed to be ‘non-binary’, she was not ‘coming out’; she was simply declaring her belief in a quasi-supernatural creed. Of course she is entitled to do that, but that doesn’t magically stop her from being a woman. But just as a friturier may announce his fealty to Ukobach, the demon in charge of frying souls in the underworld, there’s no reason for the rest of us to play along.

--

If this was the 90s, they'd be goths. If this was the 00s, they'd be emos.

I don't believe you're "non-binary" anymore than I believe that Xians are "covered by the blood of Jesus," or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a grotesque mutant donkey.

I don't believe in a biology-independent disembodied sexed essense "gender identity" anymore than I believe in an eternal Xian soul or Xenu and his thetans.

And I don't have to. That's what secularism means.

If your "identity" is invalidated by me not believing in it, then it was never real in the first place.

What I do believe is that nobody believes more strongly in enforcing narrow, rigid sex stereotypes than the people pretending they're breaking them.

[rjalker]

[ID: A picture of Murderbot in its armour, holding up a sign that reads, "Days since people have lied about The Murderbot Diaries not being the bioessentialist nonbinary/aspec robot stereotype: 0". End ID.]

Lying to people about the representation in this series not being just the same old tired stereotypes isn't going to make people thank you, it's going to make them feel betrayed and pissed off at you because you've fucking betrayed their trust and lied to get them to read books that are everything they wanted to avoid: Biologically essentially stereotypes that say the only way to be nonbinary or aspec is to literally lack genitalia.

I have literally seen so many people who feel betrayed because this fandom lied to them about this shit and now they never want to look at the books or fandom again.

Stop fucking lying to people about this series being more progressive than it really is. The only reason Murderbot is nonbinary and aroace is because Martha Wells thinks the only way to be nonbinary or aroace is to literally lack genitals. It is literally just more biological essentialism. It is literally just the exact same tired old nonbinary / aspec robot stereotype all over again.

Just because you like the harmfully stereotyped character does not mean it's not a harmful stereotype.

And stop lying about "Murderbot actively rejecting gender" it has done no such thing. It is literally just Martha Wells' biological essentialism. Murderbot has "actively rejected" jack fucking shit. It was assigned genderless because of its lack of genitals and just goes along with that because as a character it represents Martha Wells' shitty, bioessentialist views of gender and sexuality.

[bramblebrambor]

i feel like we all need a reminder that we're supposed to be against fictional stereotypes that go out of their way to mock us or villainize us and paint us in a bad light, not real people that just happen to fit into those stereotypes and aren't actually causing any harm to the community just by existing that way.

[cringecat9]

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

trans people have rights

tumblr has betrayed them.

[destroy-the-binary]

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are not always bad. I love laughing with my queer friends about how gay I am because I have Doc Martens and love crystals. However, stereotypes cross the line when you are using them in an all or nothing type of way, like "All lesbians are mascs." or "No bisexuals are monogamous." It alienates the people who aren't the stereotype, and hurts people who are.

Stop generalizing diverse and beautifully complex communities.

[ronithesnail]

As a nonbinary person, the amount of monster i drink is going to mutilate my body far more than any surgery or hrt i get.

[uncanny-tranny]

The funniest thing about my transition is slowly becoming even more of a spitting image of my dad. It sometimes makes me double-take in the mirror because I look like my dad if he were cooler

[corpsephrog]

do i think that gender is not that serious and we should all just express ourselves how we feel like and respect others' identities? yes.

do i think gender itself is a social construct? not exactly.

do i think that gender is something more akin to an art and something that is neurologically unexplainable but was always going to be an inevitability for humans? absolutely.

[korivei]

as its pride month I just want to say a few things:

trans women don’t owe you femininity

trans men don’t owe you masculinity

non binary people don’t owe you androgyny

trans people are trans no matter how they choose to transition and present (and if they can’t currently transition)