sqbr: pretty purple pi (femininity)
Sean ([personal profile] sqbr) wrote2016-06-04 11:55 am
Entry tags:

Good resources for Non Binary...ness

So I spent the last however many years building up resources and social environments etc so I no longer felt so confused and alone about being a biromantic grey asexual woman. And now feel like I have to start all over again with being genderfluid :( I'm at the point where I don't so much have questions as like....a blank of ignorance I need to sketch out before I even know what the questions are.

I've looked about for spaces by and for non binary people and have found a few but am not sure where to start. And a lot of it seems focussed more on persuading cis people that non binary genders exist, should have legal recognition etc, all important work but not very helpful for my purposes.

I'm increasingly annoyed with the spaces I'm already in for how completely they erase non binary genders. So much feminist discussion which assumes anyone who isn't a woman is a man and vice versa :/ And it makes me feel both alienated and afraid that if I say something I'll be seen as (and maybe even be) not-a-woman-splaining or a special snowflake etc.

The places that remember non binary people exist tend to assume we divide neatly into "effectively men" and "effectively women". And while I do, overall, identify much more strongly with women than men, a huge part of my gender identity is not feeling stuck in any gender box. And regardless I'd rather find spaces that remember the existence of all non binary people, not just the ones whose gender people find it easiest to gloss over. It reminds me a of those conversations which assume all women divide into straight cis women and "queer women" where a "queer woman" is, if not strictly speaking a lesbian, then certainly only really interested in dating women, and definitely not a straight or aromantic asexual trans woman.

I've also found a few places which acknowledge the full spectrum of non binary genders but are only interested in catering to the more strictly feminine (or in rarer cases, masculine) ones. This is less annoying representation wise, but still not much good for me personally.

So does anyone have any recs? Books, websites, blogs, anything. Formal or informal, even fiction if it's got something useful to say (though not just "any good book with some mention of non binary genders"). They don't have to be entirely focussed on non binary people as long as they are genuinely inclusive. I guess what I'd like, to the extent it exists, is an equivalent to the breadth of feminist spaces, but either focussed on or equally inclusive of non binary people.

What I have so far:
Notes from a Wiscon panel on The Pitfalls of Haphazard Gender Inclusion with links to panelists' blogs
Notes from a "Beyond the Binary" panel which includes a bunch of links and the blog it's on.
A post with questions about how non binary and trans people fit into feminism and the "lifeoutsidethebinary" blog it's on.
Chaos Life is a comic created by an agender person which I generally like.

These are definitely something to start with (my browser is a wall of tabs right now :)), but recs would still be super useful.

(Also I need to make a new gender icon this one doesn't quite feel right any more!)

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