AI: Navigating the Non-binary, or: Thar Be Truscum
By Recently on Tumblr there was an uproar about a blogger who had created the term, “circumgender”. The creator explained that while she was assigned-female-at-birth, she should have been born assigned-male-at-birth so she could be a trans woman.
This led to an outcry from many bloggers, particularly transwomen, who found the term transmisogynistic, and rightly so. Many accused the blogger of being cis and wanting to reap some sort of social benefit from being labeled trans. Though they made good points about appropriation, others were seeing the stunt as yet another example of “special snowflake syndrome”, a not uncommon argument from “truscum”, (whom Natalie Reed has named HBSers), or others who have a problem with non-binary people.
A little while and a phony self-injury photo later, the “circumgirl” was exposed as a hoax account. But it got many people talking, and it got me thinking more about gender and self-determination.
In my pursuit to learn more about gender, I have been seeing terms that I have only recently heard of, such as akoisexual, requiessexual, and recipsexual. I have also seen people getting really creative about their gender, such as with selenogender, firegender, stargender, and leogender.
Even more interesting has been learning how queerness can intersect with other aspects of one’s identity. For instance, someone on the internet has come up with kingender, a gender that is “related to one’s kin type”. Other, related terms are drakefluid, videogender, and praegender.
Even those in the neurodivergent/neurodiverse communities have come up with terms exclusive to them, such as gendervague and ludogender.
As I explore gender and sexuality even deeper, I learn more about others and the beauty of human expression. I have many questions about this topic. Here are a few:
Do some genders “cross the line” and if so, what does that mean?
What aspects of non-binary identities should human rights movements focus on? How can queer communities embrace and help legitimize more marginalized identities?
Who gets to decide which genders are “legitimate”? What does it mean for the community to decide versus an individual? What are the outcomes of policing gender identities?
Are people getting too specific with how they define their sexuality?
Who determines whether someone is cis or not? Does privilege come into play?
How do ableism or mentalism interact with neurodivergent-exclusive genders/orientations?
Is there anything inherently wrong about gender play? Why or why not? How do creativity and art relate to gender?
Add your own questions below!
Featured image is the latest non-binary pride flag created by the non-binary community.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
The Afternoon Inqueery (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Queereka community. Look for it every Sunday at 3pm ET.
