"Why I came out to President Obama before I told my parents"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36120876/why-i-came-out-to-president-obama-before-i-told-my-parents

Not going to lie, I thought she was going to come out as a gay muslim.

Maria, a Pakistani-Muslim, wants to be referred as 'they' and/or 'their'.

She doesn't see herself as male or female, but instead as 'non-binary'.

I understand that concept, but what I don't understand is how people like they (I guess) throw away their biological sex in favour of a easily confused gender label?

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Reply 1

TearsInRain

I came in front of Barack Obama and then later my parents.

Wtf is non binary?

Original post by Mathemagicien

Good on [non-binary pronoun here]!

Good on xir

Reply 4

Dodgypirate

Original post by M14B

Wtf is non binary?

You know how there's "cis" (i.e being born in the right body) "trans" (opposite of cis)?

There is apparently "non-binary" which is you are neither male nor female.

At least this is what I understand.

And people who are non-binary, like the person in the article is, you are to be referred as "they" and "their".

Reply 5

claret_n_blue

How do you not associate with either sex? I can't get my head around it.

It's not like she's "half and half" or anything. I'm really confused. This is the first I've heard of this.

Reply 6

Dodgypirate

Original post by claret_n_blue

How do you not associate with either sex? I can't get my head around it.

It's not like she's "half and half" or anything. I'm really confused. This is the first I've heard of this.

It's all very Tumblresque...

I've heard about it here and there, but never really in Mainstream Media.

Things like gender-fluid are becoming more mainstream too.

P.S non-binary is when you don't associate with either gender.

To most people who don't know about her gender identity, she's a woman... she has tits, she has a high voice and probably has a vagina... her biological sex is female, but she doesn't see that or accept it.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 7

difeo

It's not a real thing

Reply 8

Retired_Messiah

Original post by + polarity -

Good on xir

how the hell are people expected to know how to pronounce that monstrosity of a word

Original post by Dodgypirate

I understand that concept, but what I don't understand is how people like they (I guess) throw away their biological sex in favour of a easily confused gender label?

This bit's always confused me. I can't quite comprehend how somebody ends up deciding that the best life choice for them is to identify as a biological impossibility.

Original post by claret_n_blue

How do you not associate with either sex? I can't get my head around it.

It's not like she's "half and half" or anything. I'm really confused. This is the first I've heard of this.

The standard old argument for allowing people to transition sexes between man and woman and such was that gender and sex weren't the same thing, which was fine I guess.

With this reasonably okay principle in place, tumblr-esque people then took it to the extremes and made gender irrelevant to sex altogether and thus you have people identifying as none-entities and jars of pickled onions.

Reply 9

_Fergo

She is still one person - the right pronoun would be "it", which is neutral.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 10

claret_n_blue

Original post by Dodgypirate

Original post by Retired_Messiah

Wait, so now there is a difference between "sex" and "gender"? I always thought they were the same thing? Like "trans-sexual" and "trans-gender" was just a man wanting to be a woman or a woman wanting to be a man?

At 24 I am so out of touch with all this modern day lingo, what a granddad...

Reply 11

Ladymusiclover

Ooh non-binary sounds intriguing. But I'll just accept that I'm female and live my life as that.

Nonsense

Original post by claret_n_blue

What you said was how it sorta was for a long ass time as far as I can gather. But then people would say that wanting to be the other gender/sex was bad and you should stick with biology because of reasons (those chaps weren't particularly good at justifying their beliefs).

The counter argument to that which people came up with was that gender wasn't the same as biological sex. This was reasonable enough as if you've got a penis but you feel more like a woman then clearly your brain's gone off on a different tangent to your bod, so it makes sense to adopt this theory in order to comprehend how transgenderd-ness (that word doesn't look right at all jfc) and transexuality.

But then people kind of threw in weird stuff on the gender side of things and uhhh... hm.

Reply 14

SirMilkSheikh

Another stupid term. She can call her self whatever dumb word she wants to, but I'll continue to call her a woman if she looks like one.

Reply 15

username1177050

whats this nonsense anyone want to fill me in?

Reply 16

Dodgypirate

Original post by neal95

whats this nonsense anyone want to fill me in?

The TL;DR version of this is.

She claims to be 'non-binary', which means that you're not male and you're not female... in terms of gender.

Of course she was born female because anatomically you can tell she's a woman, but she doesn't feel female or male.

It's a really difficult concept to wrap one's head around. I myself can't even.

Reply 17

Asolare

Okay so hold the **** up what is the difference between sex/gender, I assumed gender referred to masculine vs feminine and sex = biologically male or female.

By the definition I understand you literally cannot be ****ing genderless. You can be both (androgynous) but you can't be none wtf I don't get this **** anymore.

I don't understand any of this ****.

Reply 18

Dodgypirate

Original post by Inexorably

Yeah, I think it's confusing to most people.

From what I understand, gender is how you feel and sex is how you're born.

I was born male and I "feel" male. She, or should I say 'they', doesn't "feel" male or female but was clearly born a woman.

Androgynous is not being both, I don't think. Androgynous is being a feminine-looking guy... a guy that could easily be mistaken for a woman. Or vice versa.

There's also gender-fluid which means you swap gender every once in a while.