Parker with the pizza.

[Jordan Lee]

After a lifetime without such terminology, I first learned about the term "non-binary" from the comments on a YouTube posting of an insurance commercial, of all places.

The ad campaign featured an insurance agent named Jake who always had customers going to outrageous lengths to try and give him free stuff and other unwanted favors to thank him for saving them money on insurance.  Silly premise, but after all it's a TV commercial.

This particular one featured a pizza delivery driver named Parker, who I would now see as probably non-binary with their short haircut and baggy unisex clothes.  I would even now refer to Parker as "them."

At the time I saw "her" as a "tomboy," and a pretty one at that.  Had me thinking, "If I was 30 years younger..."  And I dared to state this interpretation of the fictional character as I saw her.

I was once friends with a woman my own age (then pushing 30) who dressed and kept her hair cut exactly like Parker in the commercial.  At a glance one could easily have mistaken her for a teenage boy.  She was as annoyed that people mistook her for a lesbian as I was that they mistook me for a gay man.

I was clearly the only one there who saw this character in that way.  Some commenters claimed to be fans or even personal friends of the relatively unknown actor who played them, and insisted that this actor was non-binary and I had no place projecting my own fantasies onto them.  (By finding them physically attractive and stating so.  Or by interpreting a fictional character from within the framework I had, which was evidently different from their own,and for sharing that.)

Never have I struck such a nerve simply by interpreting a fictional character differently from someone else.  Especially when I said that "they" sounded plural to me and was being used in a singular context.  The internet at large isn't nearly as nice as this forum.

The experience also made me think that "non-binary" must mean either genderless or androgynous.  Just the way I perceived my new vocabulary word as being used.

And that's why I've been a little shy to express my own personal truth which varies from the exact paradigm I've seen other people as passionately arguing for.

[Lori Dee]

Thanks, Jordan for sharing your thoughts on this.
My thoughts on the term "non-binary" means "outside the binary". So it could be male, female, both, or neither. I could be wrong but I just view it that the label on the pigeon-hole doesn't fit, therefore none of the above.

[Asche]

Non-binary, like binary gender, isn't about how you look.  After all, there are cis men who are frequently assumed to be female, and women who look masculine or dress masculine but are still cis women.  Non-binary is about who you see yourself as.

Trans people who see themselves as women (or girls), full stop, the way we imagine cis women feel, are what we call binary trans feminine.  Just as with cis women, they may have bodies that kind of look masculine, or dress in what we think of as men's clothes, or have deep voices, but they're still women.  The same is true for binary trans men.

Non-binary is when neither of these really applies to you, and there are all different ways to not be binary male or female.  I know some AFAB non-binary people, and they have non-gendered names and want to be referred to by they/them pronouns.  My therapist is AFAB, but is "neutrois" -- no gender, but is generally referred to with she/her pronouns, I assume because in her profession, asking her clients to use they/them would be a bit much.  She dresses in clothes designed for women, but generally not particularly feminine.  Me, I'm AMAB, but though I live as a women, I don't say that I am a woman, because I reject society's gender nonsense (but have to live with it), but if I have to be taken as one gender or the other in my daily life, I'll take female.  Hence, pronouns: "they/them or she/her."



There are also non-binary people who feel more male some days and more female others.  Etc, etc.

[Lori Dee]

@Asche

Thank you for that.

I was hoping you would chime in on this since it really is outside my realm of expertise and experience.

[Jordan Lee]

Thanks, Jordan for sharing your thoughts on this.
My thoughts on the term "non-binary" means "outside the binary". So it could be male, female, both, or neither. I could be wrong but I just view it that the label on the pigeon-hole doesn't fit, therefore none of the above.

But I don't see manhood as a pigeon-hole.  It makes me no less of a man, nor less hetero to know that some portion of my soul is that of a woman.  In a coming out page on my personal website, I couched that in a neuroscience metaphor written by a layman for laymen.  Scientifically, it lies somewhere from a gross oversimplification at the very best to utter hogwash at the very worst.  But it works as a metaphor:

Some bits of the human brain are wired slightly differently in male humans than in female humans.  And vice-versa.  A good fourth or more of those bits of my brain are wired as female while the remaining larger portion are wired male...

And that's just fine with me.  Just not for society at large where I've lived before.

[Jordan Lee]

Non-binary, like binary gender, isn't about how you look.  After all, there are cis men who are frequently assumed to be female, and women who look masculine or dress masculine but are still cis women.  Non-binary is about who you see yourself as.

I see myself as a hetero man who is not entirely cisgendered.  Some part of who I am inside is female and I can't possibly deny that to myself.  But I'm a man still the same.

Trans people who see themselves as women (or girls), full stop, the way we imagine cis women feel, are what we call binary trans feminine.  Just as with cis women, they may have bodies that kind of look masculine, or dress in what we think of as men's clothes, or have deep voices, but they're still women.  The same is true for binary trans men.

We walk together that paragraph.

I'm both romantically and sexually attracted to biologically assigned cis women.  I'm only romantically attracted to trans women.  I want to say any sexual desire on my part would have to grow out of romantic love.  However, since starting to come out, I've explored trans porn and found that I can respond to the anatomy but only if the actor convinces me non-verbally that she is, indeed female gendered (at least majority female like I'm majority male.)  It only works for me then.

I had already done the soul-searching to know I'm OK with a fully transitioned trans woman who was assigned male at birth.  I had a past girlfriend who for reasons I won't get into here had me seriously thinking she was fully transitioned trans.  That is, until she had a period during the time we were together.  I literally saw the blood coming out of her and knew that no surgeon would deliberately duplicate that aspect of it.

Therefore, I still consider myself to be hetero as opposed to bi despite (now admittedly) having curiously experimented in my youth.

The "false gaydar signature" emitted by my gender and my then youthful good looks were all it took for me to afford to pick and choose my partners for a few experimental walks on the wild side. (Yes, I'm convinced that's what that song means.)

That was 35 - 40 years ago and the data has all been processed.  The experiment yielded negative results and only somewhat limited positive with one very feminine gay man who really had game.  Suffice to say we both got our rocks off and he greatly enjoyed it.  But that was within the margin of error.

Non-binary is when neither of these really applies to you, and there are all different ways to not be binary male or female.

Bringing me back to the headlines of my coming out page:  I'm not entirely cisgendered.  Nor entirely inter-gendered.  So what does that make me?

In my case I could neither deny being hetero and male by identity.  Nor could I ever continue to pretend to be cis-gendered when I absolutely am not.

Seems every little nook and cranny of any system has some of us who fall into that void.  Meanwhile, I insist on identifying as a non-binary hetero male, for lack of a better way to put it.