As a society, we like to discount ideas by saying they’re new. If it’s the newest technology, everyone wants to be in on it, but not so much for social movements or ideas.
When I was a kid (growing up with a mom who was an astrologer), I was baffled by the idea that astrology was New Age. How could something that was thousands of years old be called new?
Astrological ideas first emerged in Mesopotamia about five thousand years ago, the twelve houses were developed in Babylonia about three thousand five hundred years ago. Astrology is many things, but new is not one of them.
Non-binary is also not a new thing.
The first instances of non-binary people were recorded in ancient Egypt around 2000 BCE, later ancient Hindu scripts around 400 BCE spoke of three genders. Many indigenous cultures all over the world have had gender systems that did not focus on a binary model (some with as many as five recognized genders).
The current binary model was spread around the world through colonization. The binary model of gender was an important tool in firmly establishing a patriarchal system across the world.
The patriarchy is a system built upon the dominance of man and the subordination of women. In a patriarchal system, there’s no room for those who don’t fit in the binary.
I am non-binary. I was first aware of being non-binary when I entered the school system over forty years ago and was suddenly expected to line up as a boy or a girl.
Except that I wasn’t.
I understand that non-binary might feel new to cis gender people who have never had to wonder why they don’t fit into the box they were assigned.
But, non-binary is not a new thing.
It is new that there is room being made for us within society. It is new that I can tell someone that I’m non-binary and they know what I’m talking about. It is new that there are places where I can use a public bathroom without feeling awkward, uncomfortable and unsafe (because it’s for all genders).
But, it’s not new that I exist.
I am who I feel inside. I’m the same me that I have always been. I’m not a fad or a trend, I’ve always been me, a non-binary person.
When the doctor said, “It’s a girl!” He was wrong. I tried for a very long time to live up to those words, I wanted to fit into the box I was assigned. Being non-binary was not my choice, but it was always my reality.
How do I know? I hope if you ask this question of me or of someone else who presents outside the gender binary, that you’ve first asked this question of yourself.
If your answer is your body parts, then ask yourself if your external reproductive parts were to change because of illness or accident, would your gender change along with it?
Are you more than the sum of your external reproductive organs?
I believe you are. I believe that if everyone were to spend a little more time getting comfortable within their own skin, they would need to spend less time policing other people.
My gender is not a threat to you. My gender is not even a threat to the patriarchy.
But, your acceptance of my gender could be. If we could all move to a place where we accepted our own gender and that of others, we could maybe truly move beyond the patriarchy. We could live in a world where equity wasn’t just related to your business or your mortgage, but where it describes the way in which we showed profound respect for one another.
Now, that would be new.
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