You’re nobody until somebody calls you an enby
By: Elizabeth Kyrzyk
Tags: Language, Gender Identity, Gender Roles, Nonbinary, Linguistics

There is no such thing as non-binary. Until there is, at which point there can be no such thing as anything else.

If non-binary exists as a category, then no other categories really can.

I don’t mean, “exists” in the objective sense: this is a category defined by what it isn’t much more so than by what it is, a state of non-being. Or of actively not being something, rather than actively being it.

You can’t be it, because its purpose is to contain the undefined, or the undefinable; it is an umbrella term meant for many variations upon queer, transgender/transsexual, genderfluid. And the list goes on. Ultimately it had become clear that such a category was needed, because for some reason genderfluid and genderqueer, in the cultural landscape of the late twenty-teens, just wasn’t going to work anymore.This is because popularly, the language has become increasingly defined and influenced by postmodernism and its pursuit of reordering, recoding and generally undoing the language. Why is this? Because language is power. Language is category. Language is inclusion or exclusion in a society which also conveys, carries, and necessitates category, and postmodernism must work to undo this system as well in order to be carrying out its aims of undoing. Why does it aim to undo? That is another question for another topic. But as the language is, necessarily or not, undone, so too are categories of gender and sexuality, along with many other categories: in this case, non-binary exists because it has become popular, has been adopted, has become a word that is now in use widely. And one that more importantly is taking hold of the modern imagination, is creating a space where there wasn’t one. And there wasn’t one, because there didn’t need to be.

Non-binary isn’t real, there’s nothing there –- or there is, at least, the supposition that that something it is used as a euphemism for is optional, as there may be any number of things under the umbrella, but as easily there may be a blank space for you to consider while you know, at least, that you reject the default category, or the supposition that these categories must exist. And you by definition can’t define an identity based solely on what something isn’t, at least as far as humans are concerned…black holes are another matter. But the non-binary black hole is expanding. It is a protest against the idea of gender existing, of sex existing. People that previously would have sought inclusive social identities in the form of gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexual, and queer, and two-spirit identities are now turning to their rejection of the supposedly dominant binary model to define who they are. Is this queer erasure? This is what we have to ask ourselves, now before it’s too late. Is it more queer erasure, or is it more an erasure of socially definable intimacy itself — in that you, don’t, increasingly, have to consider your relationship to sexuality, yours or other people’s, in order to adopt this label. Thus, it is something you can do without considering any of your relationships, potential or existing, to others — it is an individual act and will remain so as a lived identity, as an acted-out identity. In an age of individualism and chronic loneliness, this makes sense to emerge as a modern pathology. Also, in an age when sex itself is being rejected — in favor of a kind of identity politics that creates more division than community, it also makes sense that the fear of embracing the visceral, the personal, the sexual, is guiding us more than the ouroboros-like deep natural darkness of the sex drive itself, the only place where we can count on being sure we no longer, in any sense we can define, know who we “are “anymore, as this ultimate, vulnerable intimacy always threatens as much as beckons with the potential to undo us.

Why is it becoming more attractive to define one’s identity principally as not a sexual identity, as has been the way, in one way or another, for hundreds of years, but as one that rejects the overt sexualization of identity, that rejects the personal locus of, to over-simplify, marriage and relationships as the foundational element of one’s social identity? As we enter an era in which there exists a ferocious debate over whether or not it is morally acceptable for, for example, lesbians to romantically reject transsexuals in a romantic sense on that basis, perhaps it simply seems safer if one’s preferences are more obscured by a thicker, shadier umbrella. But it is also interesting to note that not since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, when it became much less possible to ignore the concept of sexual reproduction as a driver of biological success, and thus uncomfortable human questions took on a new and more public shape, has the conversation begun to shift so noticeably. As gender theory takes on more and more of the cultural territory, much of the surrounding themes of both biology and reproduction returns once again to the mystical, only this time this process is not so much a question of religion, as was pre-1859, but, still, is centered around a conversation that attempts to obscure biology behind a system —gender theory, — of abstract theory that is indeed increasingly enshrouded in mystery, and interested in using quasi-spiritual terminology to explain why, once again, acknowledgment of reproductive realities, and thus symbolically, thematically, that of all variant sexuality realities as a driving force in the world, must aggressively once again be returned to the realm of the forbidden.

As the term rises in popular usage it becomes increasingly evident that, from at least an abstract point of view, it must by its very nature replace the former default, and not just the default of heterosexuality, but that of all those terms, such as bisexual, that grew in relation to it out of the necessity to define one’s position relative to this default. The logical conclusion is that non-binary in time, must serve to replace the default itself, to become the void that holds the center. This is because it is the only emergent term that rejects not just every term that previously made up the colors of the rainbow umbrella while also questing to offer an alternative to the entire system. Unlike genderqueer, its closest predecessor, which emerged among activists in the 1990s, it does not suggest its relationship to sexuality, the queer being absent, and as well its relationship to gender. Not gendered or differently gendered, but almost mathematically absenting, it is more extreme and noticeably, most captures the zeitgeist. As so, the likelihood exists that it can continue its ascent until it has become the socially dominant default reference for anyone as yet “undecided,” — at such point in use in a leading way for the fear of being impolite, — and so will continue until this status has been reached, as label fatigue and the fear of misgendering others gathers more and more momentum, as is likely. This prediction sounds alarmist, but is meant as an exercise, a semantic observation: if a non-category both exists and is gaining in popularity, its existence unseats the space available for the others as our language expands. This would be the same process as a number of people growing tired of identity politics relating to race and so undertaking to define themselves principally and socially as “non-racial”, a social practice that if it existed I imagine would first make the most sense among mixed race individuals who were tired of feeling like they had to discuss their race with an increasingly politically demanding and categorizing word, but would eventually come to seem polite or fashionable with more and people, until not to do so would seem not only passé but potentially dangerous.

We need to talk about what this is, and more importantly, what this isn’t. It is not the act of someone who is trying to center themselves on an identity which is defined by their relationships, or projected relationships, with others. Non-binary, though it may be considered a part of the queer community, is not a community in itself. Perhaps in a world where options for everything multiply constantly, it no longer seems palatable to have options that were, in fact, options: just as one grows fatigued of an oversaturated marketplace and considers rejecting consumerism or creating a niche market that is truly that, and just as entrepreneurship soars, there is something remarkably beckoning about a banner that isn’t a banner. Heterosexual is, and probably rightly so, no longer the default, but so now are alternatives to heterosexuality at least semantically passé… non-binary is considered, of course, the least controversial of the new words. As an umbrella term there is no way to “be” non-binary, and as an emergent category of non-ness there are perhaps refreshingly no potentially toxic stereotypes attached to it. As importantly to note, there is no way to become it either, no rites of passage, no aesthetic or social rituals to partake of in order to strengthen it. You cannot display it for the first time at a drag cabaret or have an experience of walking down the street holding hands with a member of the same sex for the first time, showing all the world your love. You don’t have to know what you are to know that you are weary of sexual-identity stereotypes on offer, as you understand them…and so for the over-savvy or naive consumer, option No is perhaps the only enlightened way out that appears, especially if the process of choosing, refining, re-evaluating feelings and identity position looks to be a long process for you, one that may never, honestly, be escaped from. In which case, a label which appears to present this process of questioning and redefining as the foremost quality of the designation, living within this invisible box and not needing to symbolize any of it outwardly or tribally, aesthetically or colloquially in order to gain membership in any society of likewise designated, or un-designated, peers, may seem both inevitable and enviable. And as the opportunity broadens for individuals to live within a socially isolated but very online bubble of community and opportunity, both heightening and distancing their relationships, it makes sense that a category that reflects this isolation, a box in which many constant options of identity and its attendant politics are constantly seen to be part of the modern conversation in which one finds relevancy, and reaffirms the ability of the individual to demarcate themselves within a questioning, rather than a confirmed and socially visible or accountable space, would appear, and feel to many more and more appropriate. Rituals such as changing twitter bio to reflect non-binary status, pronouns included, may feel momentarily enough for someone who lives primarily in this landscape, wishing to find and assert their place in a sea of choices and an echo chamber of voices.