There are many people who claim that they are not stereotypically female nor male, and whose gender identity shouldn’t be placed as either masculine or feminine. They claim to be non-binary. These are the people who have declared personal pronouns in the “they/them” category. Using “they” or “them” is a tool of convenience in conventional speech for cases in which the sex of the subject is not known. The usage has evolved from a time when the masculine pronouns were used by default, in recognition that women exist in our temporal plane.
Linguists point out that the pronoun they is, in fact, a third person singular form widely used in colloquial English when a person’s gender is unknown or simply unspecified, tracing the usage back several centuries (Grey, 2015). In casual conversation, you would sound perfectly natural saying “Somebody forgot their coat.”
Using “he or she” gets to be unwieldy if used throughout an article, so “they” is properly used but I maintain it should be used with care because it can lead to confusion. If the sex of the subject is known to be male or female, it certainly should be dropped. The words “sex” and “gender” are not synonyms, but too often gender is placed where sex should be. Non-binaries claim that their gender non-identity needs to be recognized rather than their sex when using pronouns. Since there are no ready pronouns, we are to adapt the plural indeterminate pronouns while writing about or referrring in the third-person to anyone who so identifies.
Let’s step back, again, to see if we can unpack what we are dealing with in non-binary identities. This is difficult, because we need to be able to contrast a non-binary person with a binary ideal, or someone who fits the gender expectations of their sex. Who are we to use for our formal binaries? When we go to experts for help, we only find more confusion. Here, for example is an article meant to clarify, but I come away from it even more confused:
One reason for all the attacks against them has been widespread conflation of the words gender and sex, even by many experts. So-called gender-reveal parties, where an unborn child’s sex is announced, are among the most common and glaring examples of this communal confusion. It is impossible to reveal the gender of an unborn child because they have no gender, only a sexual categorization.
The Trans Journalists Association style guide asks that we avoid the terms “biological sex,” “biological gender,” “biological woman,” “biological female,” “biological man,” and “biological male” because they feel constricting and offensive to many in the LGBTQIA+ community. From a scientific perspective the terms “biological gender,” “biological woman,” and “biological man” make no sense and should never be used. However, the terms “sex,” “female,” and “male” are scientific and refer to objective biological traits. Those characteristics are, among mammals, determined at fertilization by the underlying chromosomal makeup. People are, with some exceptions, either male, inheriting an X chromosome from their mother and a Y chromosome from their father, or female, inheriting an X chromosome from their mother and an X chromosome from their father.
Gender reveal parties are stupid, let me just say upfront. Don’t invite me. I don’t want to be witness to a pink or blue environmental disaster to find out what sex your child will be. And yes, pink and blue are related to gender expectations. At the time when the fetus is still in gestation mode, you don’t know what their1 personality will be so you can’t know if they will present mostly masculine or feminine once they are born and display their personal traits.
The second paragraph introduces the confusion that befuddles so many people unnecessarily, and also introduces the control that the TQIA+ seek over our language and word avoidance.
The article does make an effort in separating sex from gender, but is ultimately unhelpful because it does not add any precision to the debate. It points out that self-perception of gender is often in conflict with the perception of how individuals experience conflict between their desires and the expectations that they have on them.
In order to establish that there is the negative form as “non-binary” then we need to know more specifically what the positive form of binary actually is.
Who personifies the binary best? On the masculine side is that Andrew Tate? Not being one to follow masculinity gurus in order to learn how to get rich, seduce women and control them through demeaning them while smoking fat cigars and expensive brandy, I don’t count him as an ideal of anything. On the rare occasions that I do order pizza I am sure to put the box in the recycle bin. Tate has been arrested for rape and sex trafficking in Romania, so I don’t see him as one to emulate.
And on the feminine, do we have an ideal form there? In a conservative, misogynistic mindset the feminine form wouldn’t even have a first name of her own. She would be referred to as the Mrs. of her husband. My grandmother’s official name at the post office was Mrs. Leonard Hanson. This was how we addressed our “thank you” letters, and how her name appeared in the captions in the newspaper when she retired from teaching. She did all the things that women do, and did them well. She baked, cooked, hosted parties (no alcohol,) read stories to us, rocked us to sleep as babies, made up the trundle bed when we stayed over, and corrected us when we crossed a behavioral line. The one thing that she did that separated from the feminine ideal was that she worked outside of the home, but it was in a woman’s job so that allows for some wiggle room. She didn’t wear pants, though, except for the slacks she wore while doing household chores.
In contrasting been binary and non-binary identities, we don’t have a clear enough definition of what is meant by “binary.” In binary computing, this is rather simple. A logic gate is either open, or closed. In sex, one is either male or female. In gender, one is not so easily blocked as either masculine or feminine. Masculine can mean “cowboy,” with the pickup, bill cap, and chaw; it can mean ruthless lawyer who’s always a step ahead of the opposition, or any number of self-described “alpha male” archetypes. Feminine can mean torch-singing chanteuse in tears over the man who treated her wrong, while dressed in something slinky; it can mean any sort of woman who has the power to do things but uses her capital to support her mate, or as I see in so many dating profiles it can be “comfortable in jeans during the day and a little black dress for a night on the town2”
Femininity and masculinity are not binary because they are based on subjective perceptions of where one’s personality sits in comparison to a constantly changing landscape. If someone presents to me as “non-binary” and wants me to use “They/them” pronouns, I’m tempted to say that they should just wait five minutes and a shade of femininity or masculinity will fit them. Since gender is constantly shifting with popular culture, all of these kids who think they are outside of some norm, will eventually find themselves within it.
Nobody fits an archetype, much like there is no “Great American Novel.” They are Platonic Forms, used for comparing who we are to an abstraction. “Alpha Males” claim to be the ideal form of masculinity, and I’m not really sure what the “feminine” form is because in a patriarchy that’s defined according to men and men’s tastes vary widely so that the Good Wife and Helpmeet may not be the same ideal as the Concubine. Some trans ID men just consider the feminine to be merely the hole waiting to be filled by the phallus, “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.”
From Harry Styles to Gal Gadot, from David Bowie to Chrissie Hynde, and from Prince to Joan Jett, there have always been examples of people who would rather shred the masculinity-to-femininity script and be themselves. We don’t need gender labels, even those of us who want the non-gender label.
Your sex is still important though, you can’t get rid of that.
This is proper us of “their” in writing about an undetermined sex.
I really don’t know what this means or if they think it makes them special. That phrase and the word “sassy” are both left-swipe indicators, because they are superficialities that grind my gears.