Quite the read.  As the heat is on, the divisive stuff has to go.  Its life and death serious now,  and unfortunately, the current hate and brutality and violence is killing us.  I lost a friend to an overdose last week and a facebook acquaintance in north carolina to suicide.

This place has apparently come a long way.  Its time to make a difference in peoples lives and stand in the gap for the ones who are struggling.  That starts with self esteem and finding ourselves, and moves into reaching out to others.

Light a candle for the fallen my dears, and live your truth.

Satin Joy

I enjoy being very social here and in real life.  Diversity fascinates me.  I love meeting queer and transpeople and am active with several groups.  It seems to me that the younger folks i meet are creating new labels for identity and are equally comfortable with no labels at all.  "I'm just being me, you be you, you're best at that"  This seems to be our future unfolding and part of what is changing here and IRL.  If some people need or feel more rigid confines for expressing their gender identity they can go for it and find lots of company.  Transgender is a very big tent.  Instead of making smaller circles that defines others out.  We can draw ever larger circles that bring all of us IN.

There is more that we share while divisions are often manufactured and manipulated for what ends?

Quote from: AnxietyDisord3r on June 04, 2016, 12:16:52 PM
I'm new to this forum but not to the queer community. I found out about non-binary in the late 1990s, but my only real exposure to that was drag queens (of course, drag queens are not all the same gender). Though I did meet some gay-identified nonbinary ppl through the gay community. Now in 2016 I have a close friend who has just come out as NB. My local trans support group is run by an enby (and self-described Aspergian).

On tumblr there has actually been a fad (and a lot of fighting, too) over non binary identities. Some of that has spilled onto Youtube.

You know how back in the day gay people would often come out as bisexual first because it sounded less bad than being a ho-mo-sexual? (Settle down, bi people, I know how that sounds.) Well, these days, many young trans people come out as non-binary first because it seems less likely to upset their families (yes, weird, I know) and also because these kind of excessively everything transsexual narratives are out there which confuse a lot of young people. "Yes, I knew when I was two that I was a boy, never been girly, set dresses on fire, blah blah blah." There is a lot of patrolling and policing going on as to who can claim what label. I was dismayed to see after trans* for the umbrella get popular (to include the dysphoric and the non dysphoric) and then a couple years later get scrubbed out like we were living in 1984 as double plus ungood transmisogynistic speech.

Well, the bad thing about binary people thinking they are non binary at first is that they will turn around and assume anyone who identifies as non binary just hasn't been educated yet on how they are actually binary and they need to transition exactly the same way they did.

Also, there's been a backlash against 90s vintage queer theory (which I think kind of uses non binary trans people to make a political point at the same time that it shames binary trans people) and that has spilled over into members of the community talking bad to one another and getting rather paranoid and wingnutty. If you want to get really depressed, pour yourself a stiff drink and google truscum/tucute. Just a bunch of mostly trans, some cis, people in a circular firing squad of marginalized sexual minority folk.

Still thinking about this.

Labels can create divides.  Gender dysphoria is rough and maybe they anchor.

I prefer to ditch the labels and have a gender of my own understanding that has no limitations.

Nero died?

I didn't know that. We had a complicated history but that's hit me.

Quote from: Pica Pica on June 16, 2016, 02:59:05 PM
Nero died?

Sadly, yes.

Nice to see you here, it's been a while...

I was here a lot before that last NB section shakeup, and there are a lot of people no longer here that I miss from it.  That is part of the reason I have been scarce.  But maybe I am back more now. 

I think at the time there was a lot of B/NB inadvertent invalidation going on.  With binary folks trying to force a one size fits all model on NBs when there is a need for us to experiment, compromise, and balance, which wasn't good.  And NB folks in their slower, more winding paths, trying to find balance and compromises in their lives, triggering the binary trans folks, who often have had to fight against family or society trying to compromise when they absolutely cannot.

It does seem like the tensions are much lower and that is good! 

Hopefully we can have the introspective weirdness and wandering through the unicorn forest and have everyone get along.  As long as we can respect that there is no one size fits all solution, and that everyone's path is different it will be great.  I'll adamantly defend NB as a legitimate thing to my binary friends, acquaintances, GT, and Endo, but with my next breath I will just as fiercely defend my binary brothers and sisters who must get to their endpoint with absolutely no compromises from those that try to make them compromise.

I also think even for binary folks a healthy non-binary section and perspective are a very good thing.  Some people need a halfway point to figure themselves out and find their way along to the other side.  (Or the social cover of moving slowly as their family adapts)  And we must lovingly help them find their way to the binary-trans side.  At the same time we need our binary brothers and sisters to understand and respect that NB really is a thing, and not force their own paths, endpoints, and narratives onto it.

I still consider myself NB, but I am lined up for for HRT and likely full social transition.  But even if society sees me as female or a transwoman, I'll always have some options that binary people wouldn't, and there will be things that binary trans people MUST do, that I shouldn't do.  I'd never have gotten so far with out this and other NB resources, at best I'd be stuck in an extremely bad dysphoric place, if alive at all.  There needs to be more information out there, and GT's need to know more about it too.

I think labels can help us understand and help ourselves and each other better, if we don't take them too seriously and act lovingly.  We just need to cling more tightly to the umbrella that we share than hair splitting that pulls us apart.


- Jaded Jade

Well said Jade.  My journey has been a very social one and I frequent trans groups and events.  One perspective is that younger people are less likely to utilize a solid goal oriented label and fluidity is more the fundamental floor.  And why not?  It would seem that teens and younger people are appropriately trying out and experimenting with roles and creating their identity as they grow.  They also seem more likely to have support from peers and family.

We can applaud a boi who wears lipstick and skirt if they choose or a grrl that allows themselves to present in combat boots and a jeans wardrobe too.  More importantly they can imagine and feel themselves in greater control of their destiny.  We can welcome those willing and able to push this envelop open that we might all take deeper breaths and feel the freedoms.