Marina Martinez-Bateman
Anybody feel like chatting about how the theory/reality of an inherently non-binary gender structure actually makes all humans "non-binary" regardless of identity and how does this related to people who currently identify as NB? If yes, I'll be here.
Apr 15, 2017 at 8:15pmWeb
Show threadit's B! Cavello 🐝Apr 15, 2017
@Marinaisgo Curious what you perceive to be this "gender structure"
Like do you see it as societal? else?
Show threadMarina Martinez-BatemanApr 15, 2017
@b_cavello at this point, I'm thinking purely a cultural construct. Given trans and intersex people, it's not biological.
Show thread"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Apr 15, 2017

@Marinaisgo I have thoughts. Also have neglected chores. Will, however, throw one thought into mix and look forward to seeing how this thread develops:

I identify as ternary, moreso than NB. Whatever my third gender might be termed, it doesn't fall anywhere on a linear "spectrum" bounded and defined by our culture's two assignable genders.

The anchoring of NB in terms of binary poles seems a rather (un)queer way of not identifying with a binary, from where I'm standing, anyway.

Show threadMarina Martinez-BatemanApr 15, 2017

@beadsland I totally agree re the lack of queerness in NB insofar as it serves to uphold the concept of the gender binary through opposition. In order to have non-binary people, you must have a real binary to be not of

But we live in a world where the majority of peopl take the gender binary as universal fact. The concept of non-binary doesn't compute, even to a good number of trans and other LGB people. So how do we explain there's no binary in the first place?

Show thread"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.Apr 17, 2017

@Marinaisgo Am not sure that explaining is most productive mode to pursue. Binariness is so ingrained in out episteme, even apart from the specific case of gender, that we may want to look to demonstrating (again, rather than explaining) broader enumerations in thinking more generally.

Am thinking of Deleuze reading of Hume's conjunctive: How to recast our culture's ever-present "or" with a proliferation of "and" in the course of lived discourse? How to queer binarinormativity?

Show threadMarina Martinez-BatemanApr 17, 2017
@beadsland That does seem like it would be the practical real world solution. Rather than trying to turn the tides of perception on a theoretical level, just demonstrate the conclusion. In other words, be more openly queer.
Show threadBerthavlixApr 15, 2017
@Marinaisgo We were just talking about this yesterday! I thought it would be nice if we could just do away w gender and use neutral pronouns and forms of address. But my daughter said it would be impossible bec of history and people's need to categorize themselves and others. She also made the point that it would be a lot like people who claim to not see color--denying identity to some people, and being a kind of NB cultural appropriation.
Show threadMarina Martinez-BatemanApr 15, 2017
@Berthavlix I had't thought of that the 'I don't see color angle'. If I think about it that way, race is a mostly fictional cultural construction and yet, I wouldn't dream of trying to erase people's racial identities, even as more and more people are identifying as mixed race.