this-is-exorsexism

[this-is-exorsexism]

Hi mod. I hope you're having a good break <3

So, in a game I like there is a character who is explicitly canonically nonbinary. They use he/they pronouns and present masculine, but they are explicitly said to be nonbinary using he/they pronouns.

Nobody sees him as nonbinary. People in the fandom are so comfortable referring to them as a man, or ships with them and women as mlw / straight. Even the queer people. I've seen so many headcanons for them as a trans MAN which. He's nonbinary. And sure nonbinary people can definitely be comfortable being referred to as a man but everyone just seems to use it to slot him into the binary man box. And it feels like you can't correct them because they always respond with something like "well yeah of course he's nonbinary but he still uses masc terms / he pronouns" but none of you ever seem to ever SEE him as nonbinary. Nobody ever uses their they pronouns, and to make matters worse apparently there's not a single time it's used in game either.

It's sent me into a bit of a dysphoric spiral myself as a nonbinary masc presenting person who uses he/they. Will anyone actually see me as nonbinary?

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

the fact that nonbinary people perceived as women but aren't are frequently called "hysterical" or that we're "bitching" about things when we talk about nonbinary issues. it's a way to misgender us but with plausible deniability because "it just means you're unreasonably complaining". it's a way to feminise us, forcing us back into womanhood.

this alone is exorsexism.

but then we have all the people claiming that this is a trans male/masc specific issue as if non-transmasc nonbinary people being feminised is somehow okay.

[this-is-exorsexism]

exorsexism is seeing a video where a person is referred to with explicitly they/them pronouns by the hairstylist and the only thing shown to the audience is the hair, but everyone in the comments uses she/her pronouns for the client bc they got a traditionally feminine hairstyle

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

people saying the yellow stripe in the nonbinary flag represents "people outside the binary".

guess what? the whole flag represents people outside the binary. that's the whole point of being nonbinary. being partially a binary gender is being outside the binary. being between binary genders is being outside the binary. not having a gender is being outside the binary. being nonbinary is being outside the binary.

the yellow stripe stands for those with genders that are not related to either binary gender at all, a group continuously erased out of every nonbinary subcommumity and apparently commonly our flag as well.

"not related to binary genders at all" and "outside the binary" are not synonyms. not only are you erasing who the yellow stripe is for by basically saying it's for all nonbinary people, you're also spreading misinformation about midbinary, multigender, agender, genderfluid, demigender people supposedly being "inside of the binary".

the only way to be inside the binary is to be... binary.

[this-is-exorsexism]

people calling certain sets of neopronouns "feminine"/"masculine" feels exorsexist.

this is exorsexism.

the only neopronouns where i can even remotely understand this are neopronouns that are explicitly modelled after he/him or she/her pronouns, like something like hy/hym or shx/hxr, but even then, it should be up to the individual how they define them.

blanket statements about other neopronouns like this are very weird, like so many people insisting like fae/faer pronouns are inherently feminine.

like there is a difference between "fae/faer pronouns feel like they affirm my femininity" or "i don't like fae/faer pronouns for myself because they feel feminine to me personally" and "fae/faer is a feminine pronoun set".

[this-is-exorsexism]

"i tried looking into vaginal atrophy but everything was about women and i felt really left out."

meanwhile in the same breath they implied that every trans person on testosterone is transmasc.

do you not see the irony? do you not realise you're doing the same thing to other people that makes you feel alienated?

now imagine being neither a woman nor transmasc and basically being left out of EVERYTHING.

ah yes, the two genders of vagina-havers: women and transmascs.

[this-is-exorsexism]

(Sorry if this has been said before, I did a quick search and didn't see anything)

"I'm not a man or a woman"

"so you're a child?"

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

don't worry about it, the person themself has been exorsexist under another post of mine anyway, they are not acting in good faith either. they think this blog is trying to create a grand conspiracy by talking about exorsexism.

also even if OP was nonbinary, it doesn't excuse completely shittalking nonbinary language. some people are out there comparing nonbinary language to literal slurs and think it's okay to say that because they're nonbinary themselves. well, guess what! nonbinary people can be exorsexist and unfortunately the person we reblogged from is a prime example.

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

I was non binary, and then discovered I was a trans man.

I’ve noticed that people never called me by my preferred pronouns, they always called me she, or him.

Even my partners got it wrong.

But now that I’m on the binary, I haven’t been misgendered once.

It seems to me as if people respect me more now that I submit to their standards.

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

it also scans like many adjectives and most adverbs and many nouns that happen to end in -y or -ie because that's how english works, like creepy, daily, sadly, hobby, eerie etc. this "it's inherently diminutive" argument makes zero sense in a language like english where your every day word ends with that sound. no one would say that any of these words are "diminutive" or "cute" or whatever, it's no coincidence that this word gets singled out as somehow childish and infantilising when it follows the pattern of regular english words.

also, calling exorsexism a grand conspiracy (and putting these words into my mouth) is wild because exorsexism is a real systemic issue and you're just this close to saying nonbinary oppression isn't real by copying language from the alt-right.

"enby is the equivalent of boy/girl."

this is exorsexism.

"enby" is the phonetic spelling of "NB" which is sometimes used as a shortening of "nonbinary". it was never meant to be limited to a certain age, but a noun for nonbinary people in general. exorsexists saw us have language again and decided to infantilise adult enbies for using the term. exorsexists controlled the narrative about us once again and decided the term is infantilising for adults. the misconception stuck, and is unfortunately often repeated by nonbinary people who don't like the term "enby" for themselves. you don't need a justification to not want to be called a certain word, especially not if it means spreading exorsexist misconceptions.

(people also assume it's for kids because they think nonbinary language has to mirror binary language exactly and that we can't possibly have a noun for nonbinary people regardless of age.)

[this-is-exorsexism]

I'm nonbinary, transmasc and use he/it pronouns. (she/her in public/professional/medical situations) My whole family knows this.

My dad refuses to use it/its for me. He's a transmedicalist binary trans man, and thinks it/its is "dehumanizing" even though using MY PRONOUNS affects literally no one and it's not my god damn problem if it "makes him uncomfortable".

Unfortunately, he constantly refers to me with they/them pronouns. I haven't used they/them in a few years. I've corrected him tons of times. He rarely uses he/him for me.

Both my sibling and my dad once got unreasonably upset because I told them I don't like a lot of gender-neutral terms, e.g. "sibling". They said my preference for masc terms doesn't matter because it's fine to use neutral terms for everyone, which is just ridiculous.

I'm fully convinced they both believe that I HAVE to be fine with all this because I'm nonbinary.

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

i am tired of fat cis women acting like all their experiences are specific to fat women. shitty men obsessed with fat bodies is not exclusive to fat women. harassment over fat bodies is not exclusive to fat women. body shaming is not exclusive to fat women. body policing is not exclusive to fat women. sexual harassment is not exclusive to fat women.

try being fat and trans. try being fat and nonbinary. try being fat and intersex.

i mean even fat cis men experience a lot of these things, but these cis women act as if fatmisia is just a form of misogyny and thus doesn't really affect fat people who aren't women, and especially not fat men. they act like fat women are the most oppressed group in the fat community when they hold privilege over many. because let's be real: when they talk about fat girl issues, they usually don't think about fat trans and intersex women, as even they are incredibly invisible in the fat community too.

i have a tiny instagram account, and when i compare hate comments to large accounts of fat cis women, i get more, always targeting me for being both fat and nonbinary, as well as visibly disabled. yet somehow this is a "fat girl thing" according to them. i know we say the nonbinary stereotype is white, thin and vaguely masc, but every time i dare to exist, people make a point of saying "we always look like that", by which they mean fat, and knowing how they think of fat people, particularly fat trans people, they mean ugly and as if we don't know how to take care of ourselves. the intersection keeps being erased even though it's important, because not only have we failed at thinness, we also failed at gender, and other norms too if we're part of more marginalised groups.

i mean heck, my cis male partner has been denied both jobs and medical care because he's fat. god knows what he'd experience online if he were more of an online person.

this is one of these things that is very much not exclusively exorsexism but part of it definitely is. it's just feminism having gone into a weird direction where all oppression is supposedly just misogyny and if you're not a woman you're probably not oppressed by this.

[this-is-exorsexism]

My Grandmother helps me medically transition but insists on saying its just me in a "lifestyle" and tells me she doesn't believe it exists. I try to tell her that I'm not a binary trans man and she refuses to listen or accept the possibility. She also said I'll be considered cis to her until I start physically changing and constantly misgenders me on purpose.

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

the fact that "gender abolition" coming from within queer spaces always seems to target concepts associated with nonbinary people. there are always complaints about "the growing number of pronouns and nuanced identity labels". and who is creating these? those of us who have been left behind by binary gender categorisation. even they keep telling us none of this is "worth the effort". not to mention they always bring up the violence of the gender binary - which is correct, but the gender binary is not synonymous with gender itself. this argument also always leads to people talking about how (some) nonbinary people are upholding the gender binary by...having genders.

they also always link gender with orientation, talking about cis straight men and women as the ultimate genders as if queer people are somehow collectively genderless. many lesbian, gay and bi+ people indeed have genders. and it doesn't even have to be related to who we are attracted to at all because ace and aro people with genders exist too. to act like gender is only about reproduction is wild, and proves that you have gender confused with sex or gender roles. they also always try to define gender only by violence, like womanhood being defined by misogyny and nothing else.

besides, gender abolition is part of TERF ideology. it ultimately mainly benefits cis people who see their gender and sex as synonymous, project their gender onto their sex and pretend they totally don't have a gender, trans people whose transition is only about their sex and maybe some genderless people and people who don't have a strong attachment to their gender. sorry to say that though, but just because you happen to not have a gender or not care about it, doesn't mean we all have to be the same. we can remove the pressure for people to have a gender without turning it into pressure to not have one.

gender abolition will inevitably lead to people claiming if gender doesn't exist, neither do trans people, and use this as an excuse to strip us of our rights even more. or they will only accept people as trans who medically transition, which i know many of you all are in fact very okay with, and everyone else can fuck off i guess.

a deeply gendered fuck you to all gender abolitionists. you either are or sound like radfems.

[this-is-exorsexism]

When people refuse to use it/its pronouns for me because it makes them uncomfortable.

this is exorsexism.

[this-is-exorsexism]

this is not exclusive to exorsexism but rather transmedicalism in general, but transmedicalist ideas are strongly connected to exorsexism, so i'll post this here anyway:

the fact that being trans and not wanting to medically transition (or even otherwise hide your sex characteristics) is not presented as an option.

not being able to because of age, money, safety, medical reasons or similar? always considered as valid.

simply not wanting to? still actively demonised at worst and completely erased at best.

i've seen way too many people who would not align themselves with truscums still only list "not being able to" as a valid reason for not medically transitioning or even binding, tucking or similar. never not wanting to.

the go-to defense to "if you're a trans man/nonbinary, why do you have visible boobs?" is always something like "not everyone can afford surgery" or "not everyone can bind", when there are in fact trans men and nonbinary people who simply don't want to.

the go-to defense to "if you're a trans women/nonbinary, why do you have a beard?" is always something like "not everyone can afford laser hair removal"/"not everyone can shave", when there are in fact trans women and nonbinary people who simply don't want to.

the gender nonconformity accepted in trans people is a very specific kind, one that follows a cisnormative pattern. people say "support gnc trans men" but they usually only mean trans men who wear dresses and have long hair but have otherwise transitioned in a way that is considered "appropriate" or at least desires to do so. they hardly ever mean trans men with unbound boobs, no beards, high voices who don't want to change these things.

people say "support gnc trans women" but they usually only mean trans women who wear suits and have short hair but have otherwise transitioned in a way that is considered "appropriate" or at least desires to do so. they hardly ever mean trans women with flat chests, beards, deep voices who don't want to change these things.

the gender nonconformity you will accept still follows a cisnormative standard of what male bodies and female bodies are supposed to look like. this doesn't mean nonbinary people get more leeway because there is no standard of nonbinary bodies - it means we'll get binarised and erased no matter what.

the talking point has ever so slightly shifted from "you need to medically transition to be trans" to "you don't need to medically transition to be trans - but you should want to.

the talking point has slightly shifted from "you need dysphoria to be trans" to "you don't need dysphoria to be trans - but you should have the kind of euphoria that drives you towards medical transition or at least otherwise changing your body shape".

and people choose to only hear the first part ("you don't need to medically transition/have dysphoria to be trans" and ignore that the current attitudes towards medical transition have barely changed, people just slightly changed the language to make transmedicalism more acceptable to the masses.

[this-is-exorsexism]

I am a nonbinary, androgynous presenting person who uses they/them pronouns. I apologize for this being so long, a lot of context was needed!

I am also a college student, set to graduate this December (hooray!)

My favorite story is my experience with a French Language Professor, an older woman in her 60s or 70s.

This professor, you see, was quite invested in stereotypes of anything you can think of: they painted her perception of the world. This important for later.

She would inject gendered language into everything she could. She would address everyone by either masculine or feminine terms or describe them with masculine or feminine adjectives in both French and English. In fact, when she handed out worksheets for us to do, she would say “boys do the odds, and girls do the evens”, which was weird because we were all adults; A few of my classmates were old enough to be my parents. Being a bit of a rebel, I would just pick which questions to do arbitrarily, and if she called on me to share answers with the class and it was one I didn’t do, I would just say I didn’t do that one, which always obviously annoyed her.

Keep in mind, I told her on the first day of class that I used they/them pronouns and didn’t like feminine terms being used on me, such as ma’am or miss. While she initially seemed amicable about it, she forever insisted on misgendering me and using the wrong words. I would gently remind her, at first, before it began to become obvious that it was intentional, so my reminders became more firm and sometimes even a bit disruptive, if she were lecturing and used me as an example and said the wrong thing.

The problem was, she told me, was that French doesn’t have a gender neutral pronoun, which is why she called me elle/sa (She/Her in French), so I then said if that’s the case, then just use il/sa (il means he, they, or it depending on the context) for me because it would be more accurate than elle. She ignored me. I went home and did my research. Turns out, French does have a gender neutral pronoun: iel (or yiel, I forget, but it’s pronounced like yell) and it’s pretty commonly used. I told her the next day about my discovery and she flat out refused to use it for me because it wasn’t officially a part of the language. See, in France, they have a thing called “the Council” and it’s literally a group of people who decide what words are or aren’t going to be accepted into the official French language. It’s hilarious because its purpose is to keep French “pure” and not letting its speakers borrow from other languages, which is so hilarious because ironically, the people who complain about languages borrowing from one another are the same people who tweet about “le wokisme” (I’m not joking that’s a real word).

So then, we come to the climax of this story of my war of attrition in the name of being respected. One day, I get to class early, as I often did because her classroom was on the 3rd floor of the building and I had lots of narrow stairs to climb. The only other person in the room was myself and my professor. We say good morning and sit in silence as we wait for class to start. Suddenly, she breaks the silence and asks me about my “whole nonbinary thing”, saying she didn’t really understand. I was more than happy to explain it to her because I thought she was finally trying to learn about it so she could start being respectful to me.

Note: I endured two whole semesters with this woman. At the time, a language class was required for my major in order to graduate. I have since changed my major, but it wasn’t because of this, more so because of a change in interest.

So, I finish my explanation of what it means to be nonbinary to her in as simple terms as I could, which wasn’t really necessary anyway; it’s not a difficult concept to understand.

She nods quietly and digests what I said and then says, “well, what you think doesn’t necessarily change what you are. I may not feel like wearing makeup or a dress sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a woman. You were made a woman and there’s not really any changing that.”

I was shocked and I think I said something like “that’s a very reductive way to see a person,” but ultimately, this was about when classmates arrived, who were appalled when I recounted that conversation to them later in the semester when she stepped out of the classroom.

I later dropped her class and reported her to the dean for creating a hostile learning environment. I’ve never taken another French class since and I have somewhat fallen out of love with learning the language.

this is exorsexism.