Post Aw85WcFYZGoXA2cLFQ by platypus@glammr.us
(DIR) More posts by platypus@glammr.us
(DIR) Post #Aw7y6LNJzBq5cHm5vE by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T15:00:59Z
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I really wish someone had told me that sometimes people are non-binary when I was growing up. I'm not non-binary myself, but it would have made a big difference. I'm biased but I suspect this isn't uncommon. There are so many stories where the theme of "be a man" or "be a real woman" is central. And so many people I know have told me the most painful parts of growing up related to having their ability to correctly do gender questioned or belittled. Why.
(DIR) Post #Aw7yOEkjLYVqI2FwsS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T15:04:13Z
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I knew non-binary people growing up be no-one had a word for it. We would say "They're like David Bowie." But, we didn't know if that meant you were Homosexual(oh no) or what. I was able to read and learn more in my teens, but simply knowing that gender isn't binary would have been very helpful and saved a lot of time and angst.
(DIR) Post #Aw7yQYUOwB0s55iwPw by farah@beige.party
2025-07-14T15:04:38Z
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@futurebird This đź’Ż
(DIR) Post #Aw7yZcat2u8DPx53YG by Kierkegaanks@beige.party
2025-07-14T15:06:13Z
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@futurebird “Be yourself… not like that”
(DIR) Post #Aw7ycEuJZJvgp7PrKC by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T15:06:45Z
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I was shocked when I found out how much hate non-binary people can face. Because, it seems like such a non-threatening thing. But, I think it's exactly that clarity a sense of normalcy that terrifies some people. Who would I be if I wasn't the girl who is terrified that people will think she's "too muscular?" Who would I be without that shame and pain?Who would my brother be if not terrified that playing chess made him seem "gay" (which means not like a guy)(spoiler: a happier people)
(DIR) Post #Aw7ymxUQfPM3zPQ4no by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T15:08:41Z
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It's a little frustrating to recognize how much time I wasted worrying about things that didn't matter. Worrying that there was something wrong with me that meant I'd never fit in. Judging others and enforcing the same petty worries on them. But these fear are ugly little pets we do not need to care for and feed forever. Let it go!
(DIR) Post #Aw7youwz4z5mh0i5bs by pussreboots@sfba.social
2025-07-14T15:09:02Z
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@futurebird the only argument I got in with my grandmother was over my desire to use they instead of she. Beyond that I didn’t have a term for myself and certainly wasn’t comparing myself to Bowie. If someone had I wouldn’t have understood them either.
(DIR) Post #Aw7yqHv9A580DvVK2y by RiaResists@mastodon.social
2025-07-14T15:09:10Z
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@futurebird Babies are tenderized before they’re even born. Then they’re born right into their assigned gender. Interesting doc called “Tough Guise” by Jackson Katz is a good introductory piece. It’s probably outdated but it’s good. https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/tough-guise-0
(DIR) Post #Aw7yumxxg49lfRy0fY by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T15:10:05Z
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@pussreboots As teens in Ohio that was the only thing we had to grasp on to. It doesn't really make any sense. It's funny looking back on it.
(DIR) Post #Aw7yykmRkJ7A2yTHsG by pussreboots@sfba.social
2025-07-14T15:10:45Z
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@futurebird I didn’t come across the term until my 40s. I told my kids first and they were totally chill with it. That was a huge relief.
(DIR) Post #Aw7z3txp1sl3ydFNOS by Nezchan@wandering.shop
2025-07-14T15:11:42Z
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@futurebird I thought we called them androgynous? At least that was the term I used to hear in the 80s.An insufficient word obviously, but it was something.
(DIR) Post #Aw7z5uGCtj8vTYnoGW by phryk@mastodon.social
2025-07-14T15:11:35Z
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@futurebird please get jacked so that if we ever meet, you can pick me up and carry me around. :3
(DIR) Post #Aw7z7FnkIKHuZc8GZ6 by pussreboots@sfba.social
2025-07-14T15:12:19Z
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@futurebird I think I was the only teen listening to Bowie in extremely wasp suburban San Diego.
(DIR) Post #Aw7zkern2K6vbboUXg by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T15:19:29Z
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We sometimes say "Someone being gay or trans doesn't effect your life at all." Things along those lines.Thing is, this isn't totally true. There *is* an impact. A good impact. A healthy. Trying to enforce ideas of gender and sexuality that don't align with the complex way that we really *are* has an impact on everyone. If being non-binary is "wrong" then not being a perfect match for your gender is wrong. Maybe some people are scared of who they would be without the fear.
(DIR) Post #Aw805QazI5yfQTrGAi by Bfordham@infosec.exchange
2025-07-14T15:23:12Z
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@futurebird I’ve thought about this a lot. I was a shy, sensitive child. A lot of issues in my life stemmed from trying to “man up” and it took me until almost 40 to start working through a lot of that.My dad as a “man’s man.” Born on a farm, former marine, construction worker from a family of carpenters. Ran his own business, was well respected. Physically strong from a life of manual labor. Thing is, he *never* pushed me toward any of that. He encouraged me to learn, go to school, and overall be myself. I mean he wasn’t perfect, but he was a great dad. I mainly learned to cook from him, and he taught me to sew buttons and such (which he learned in the Marines lol).And I *still* fell into the “be a man” trap. The force of that is so powerful and hard to avoid.
(DIR) Post #Aw80C4Af3zipu8i3Ky by PalmAndNeedle@norden.social
2025-07-14T15:24:24Z
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@futurebird thy. Well said :pridecat:
(DIR) Post #Aw80DqqzY0wVBHMPaa by dpnash@c.im
2025-07-14T15:24:44Z
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@futurebird >Who would my brother be if not terrified that playing chess made him seem "gay" (which means not like a guy)Which is remarkable, given how much of a misogyny problem the chess community has had over the years, especially at the professional level.Can't win either way. Men are supposedly somehow unmasculine if they play, but lady brains supposedly can't hack it either.
(DIR) Post #Aw80FSJRlHWneCR2Bc by dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-07-14T15:24:57Z
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@futurebirdAs a kid I definitely had a kind of "I'm not gonna worry about what these shallow fools think" attitude. Its not an easy attitude to maintain. Moving from Oakland, murder capital of the 1980s, to sheltered suburbia with children of rich surgeons or whatever... It was hard to give any credence to people who were so much less aware of the reality of the world. My kids are in Pasadena public schools so they dont grow up as annoying sheltered prigs. Seems to have worked so far.
(DIR) Post #Aw80GRsIsIegZyDEUC by louisa_@mastodon.social
2025-07-14T15:25:02Z
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@futurebird I also would have loved to know the term as a kid. Not knowing it meant I had to reconcile what I was physically (a girl) and how I felt (not very girlish). Thankfully my family didn't insist on any performative femininity and we didn't have a lot of money so wearing my brother's hand-me-downs made sense. Eventually, my definition of womanhood expanded to include me ("I am female & I am like this so therefore women can be like this").Not sure what would happen if I was young now.
(DIR) Post #Aw80P5hWgaW4PlIC6S by lapis@elekk.xyz
2025-07-14T15:26:44Z
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@futurebird I am non-binary and I relate to this so hard.I was really into webcomics (still am) as a child and stumbled onto several webcomics about the trans experience.I hope this doesn't sound cruel, because these authors tended to embrace their identity in the comic (ie: trans woman writes about trans girl, that sort of thing) it sort of reinforced the binary in my head? To be clear: I do not blame these authors and artists. But it basically had me going "I have extreme amounts of empathy for these people, but I do not have this problem. I don't like being a girl, but I don't Want to be a Boy, so maybe I'm just really empathetic (I mean, I am, but that's beside the point).I think I only discovered non-binary was a thing because of Mastodon? Like I had had a tearful session with a therapist in 2016 or early 2017 of "I don't feel like a girl but I'm not a boy I don't know what I am I just want something neutral" and I'm not sure she had the word either, or if she felt it wasn't her place to suggest it?But your point of "like David Bowie" really reinforces that we have always been here, we just didn't have the language for it or the language wasn't up to date yet (an example I hear is when people complain about autism dxes going up and surely there's a cause beyond "people that are autistic getting diagnosed" and it's like Autism as a DX has existed like, 90 years, these people existed before then, you just thought they were the weird neighbor that was really obsessed with street cars or something. )
(DIR) Post #Aw80niDt777oq2AaPI by rlstone4dems@mastodon.social
2025-07-14T15:31:05Z
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@futurebird Perfectly said, myrmepropagandist.. Being around those who are different is a beautiful thing. It's when you start being ONLY around others like yourself, is when you start to realize how narrow minded you are. And we know what that can cause (Bigotry, racism...etc)
(DIR) Post #Aw81BB7TqJXF7VMVvM by f800gecko@mastodon.online
2025-07-14T15:35:26Z
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@futurebird Sex ed overall remains abysmal everywhere.
(DIR) Post #Aw81XltlmS19YgiqYq by oldladyplays@wargamers.social
2025-07-14T15:39:26Z
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@futurebird If the gender binary was a real thing, why would it need so much enforcement?
(DIR) Post #Aw81wfMrCP6mXjCMca by webhat@infosec.exchange
2025-07-14T15:44:01Z
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@futurebird I was lucky enough to be exposed to non-cis gender expression in media, when I was young. Boy George, David Bowie, Suzy Izzard, to name a few
(DIR) Post #Aw83Aei0XsDkVYKH8i by mattmcirvin@mathstodon.xyz
2025-07-14T15:57:46Z
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@futurebird The Man Card is an amazing one-- people keep inventing new rules for manhood I never heard of. The last one that baffled me was "a man doesn't eat soup in public." Stated with great confidence by some Fox News guy. What? Soup? There's a soup rule now?
(DIR) Post #Aw83VnVb1UGXshbNJ2 by JamesWidman@mastodon.social
2025-07-14T16:01:18Z
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@futurebird 100% to all of this thread. And:> Who would my brother be if not terrified that playing chess made him seem "gay" (which means not like a guy)Yeah. There's a lot of stuff like this, to such an extent that in recent years i've been thinking that even binary cis men, specifically in the u.s. (bc i can't speak to what it's like elsewhere) aren't operating with an accurate definition of what it would mean to be a healthy cis binary man. They (we) don't know what that would look like.
(DIR) Post #Aw83aGf4ZjR1SJAM2C by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T16:02:25Z
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@mattmcirvin I don't really buy into much of anything being "manly" but the idea of a guy paralyzed with fear about eating soup or putting on a scarf or any of these other things strikes me as deeply un-masculine, just that level of self-conciseness, you know. And this opinion of mine isn't exactly helpful, but maybe in the right context it could be a little funny. A little dramatic irony.
(DIR) Post #Aw846yEG7yzLqQDZnU by dandylover1@someplace.social
2025-07-14T16:08:17Z
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@futurebird I don't agree with the be a "real" man or woman idea. Everyone has his own own way of living. But ultimately, we are one or the other, even if, as in my case, we lean more toward one (I am a masculine woman but not ftm), simply like things supposedly reserved for the opposite sex, or even completely transition from one to the other. But one cannot be both or none. We are not objects. We are also not plurals (singular they).
(DIR) Post #Aw84GS8EJrXrBzv42C by cwdolunt@dice.camp
2025-07-14T16:10:00Z
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@futurebird My adult daughter is neither non-binary nor transgender, but she has gotten yelled at for going into the "wrong" bathroom just because of her short haircut (autism tactile issues) and not dressing feminine enough (she loves dresses, but only for special occasions).
(DIR) Post #Aw85WcFYZGoXA2cLFQ by platypus@glammr.us
2025-07-14T16:24:07Z
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@futurebird I'm grateful for having a bunch of trans/nonbinary friends. Even though it's also made me realize I'm extremely cis. I experience gender euphoria in the body I'm in and I want that for everyone.
(DIR) Post #Aw85rWznIXrOwkDZFQ by aprilfollies@mastodon.online
2025-07-14T16:27:54Z
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@futurebird I was lucky to hear, “gender is a social construct” from my parents - even though that may have been, uh, more theory than practice. Mostly it meant that “yes, girls can wear jeans, do math, take shop instead of home ec.,” and so on. But since every book I read had a male protagonist, I would go around playing at being Robin Hood or King Arthur. I wish I had had the concept of “gender fluid”, though I still identify as female. I wasn’t being “wrong”, just… flexible.
(DIR) Post #Aw86HFCK5p0dHCL54y by JoBlakely@mastodon.social
2025-07-14T16:31:33Z
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@futurebird YES. I really think this a such a huge part. We are conditioned out of radical self acceptance and love. We cannot accommodate everyone’s idea of what we need to be for them to be comfortable so we create uniforms that say I am the good guy. If you aren’t in this uniform & what it symbolizes, you are the bad guy. When all we need is radical self acceptance which would give us radical acceptance of others. It’s hard to give to others what you won’t give yourself.
(DIR) Post #Aw86KImLEf7ZFde0xc by hakona@im.alstadheim.no
2025-07-14T16:32:56Z
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@futurebird Funny and not so funny, I think a lot of violence and misogyni come out of *stupid* shit like this being dumped on insecure teenagers. Norway used to be less hung up on these stereotypes, but it's spreading. From 1970s and a couple of decades on, kids stuff could be found in all colours, for kids. Now it's two sections, one pink and one blue. 1/2
(DIR) Post #Aw86LuRYgTumM8gpRw by whitneymcn@mastodon.xyz
2025-07-14T16:33:24Z
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@futurebird I will say that my kids seem to view both gender and sexuality with much less of a purely binary perspective than I had at their age. I think and hope that may be part of a broader trend?
(DIR) Post #Aw86omylW241bTzciu by Lefty@mas.to
2025-07-14T16:38:38Z
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@futurebird And not being a match to the most extreme stereotype of that gender is also wrong.
(DIR) Post #Aw88GANUj9D5wlB73I by scrottie@anarchism.space
2025-07-14T16:54:45Z
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@futurebird Authoritarian, militant systems need people insecure enough in their station and desperate to prove themselves to be willing to take on scripted roles to do that. That was the great Roman invention... not aquaducts or chariots or anything else.
(DIR) Post #Aw88KKH1sRKznQ8anI by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-07-14T16:55:33Z
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@futurebird @mattmcirvin on level, it's hilarious, but's also tragic. Unfortunately, male-on-male violence over perceived failure to comply with gender norms is not rare. (Having suffered a lot of it in the 1980s, I spent the 1990s and early 2000s thinking it had become rare. But I no longer think it did.) Nor is it rare for people say "well, I can understand why because you used to look a girl when you were younger".
(DIR) Post #Aw89GslLo0TTYeF41g by la_sombra@chaosfem.tw
2025-07-14T17:06:05Z
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@futurebird Firmly agree! So grateful to those that came before me and set the example!
(DIR) Post #Aw89ZEa1QbamR3h5MW by mattmcirvin@mathstodon.xyz
2025-07-14T17:08:37Z
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@apophis @futurebird It's not a time when the representatives of cis manhood are speaking well for the side.I publicly advertise as he/him because in practice that's what I use, I present as very nerdy-masc, and I want to normalize the practice for the sake of people who care about it more; but honestly, I am getting gender apathetic in such a way that if someone refers to me as "they" or "she" I'm not gonna be steamed about it. Unless it's "she" as an insult; then the fact that they consider that an insult is the problem.
(DIR) Post #Aw8BFGQT3UQWHEpWxE by haui@mastodon.giftedmc.com
2025-07-14T17:28:10Z
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@futurebird I like to add the question of "why".Why do we enforce gender stereotypes? Why do we enforce white privilege? Why do we enforce neuronormativity?Because life has no space in our world. Everything must take the backseat to our god, the all mighty mammon.It should not matter what identity one has, what skincolor, what heritage. But we must function. Why? No idea. Because the ruling class says so I guess.And then they use individualism to divide us further. Its all a ruse.
(DIR) Post #Aw8BLKKRSR1G7Qu1lQ by paulc@mstdn.social
2025-07-14T17:29:18Z
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@futurebird I'm a little older. I was fortunate that as a teenager I met my cousin Fegala Ben Miriam, who was gay and definitely not in the closet. I was always told that being gay is fine but still had misperceptions. Knowing someone, even if I met him only a few times, who was a gay activist, was eye opening. He was one of the first men to sue the federal government for the right to marry.What would have helped me would have been knowing about being neurologically different
(DIR) Post #Aw8DUECBpUTxc0Pmts by ColesStreetPothole@weatherishappening.network
2025-07-14T17:28:03Z
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@futurebird This is very well said. I think we're about same age/same region, so I had a similar experience. First encounters with non-binary-ness was through pop culture icons like David Bowie, or the character of Little Horse in Little Big Man—helpful, but with little explanation. A non-binary person in my elementary school had "issues" and received a lot of therapy (and verbal abuse from knuckleheads).1/2
(DIR) Post #Aw8DUPr0U4fTlmb2Y4 by ColesStreetPothole@weatherishappening.network
2025-07-14T17:30:28Z
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@futurebird Contrast that to my kids, who had multiple non-binary people as schoolmates. We had a full vocabulary of concepts to help our children understand. As a result, NBD.
(DIR) Post #Aw8Dvl0rvIhDDDFLkG by tokensane@mastodon.me.uk
2025-07-14T17:58:17Z
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@futurebird I decided to be a Real Small Furry Creature from Alpha Centuri.
(DIR) Post #Aw8Fj8hqikuGq5SftQ by NicolaElle@chaosfem.tw
2025-07-14T18:18:25Z
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@futurebird So much this. Society attaches so much weight to this idea of being a man or being a woman that we drive binary folks to anxiety, let alone the conflicts enby folks experience. When I was growing up, I was taught that boys were boys, girls were girls, and heaven help you if you try to cross that line. It wasn't until I read Bornstein as an adult that I realized just how hazy that line really was, and that it was possible to not call either side of the binary home. Rigid concepts of gender hurt everyone - even the cis.
(DIR) Post #Aw8GzvjWJ7pBTsoUCm by mathaetaes@infosec.exchange
2025-07-14T18:32:41Z
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@futurebird I 100% agree.The same people who insist gender is based on body parts and is instilled at birth, and are so noisy and offended when someone challenges this assertion, also insist on strong, rigidly-defined gendered roles. I strongly believe (a belief reinforced by conversations with the few enby relations I have - by no means enough to generalize across the community, but enough to shape my perspective) that weaker social gender roles may allow people to be who they are without feeling the need to abandon the label. A trans cousin of mine told me straight up that he's not sure if he felt uncomfortable in his body growing up because the parts were wrong, or because of the expectations those parts imposed. He wanted to play sports and be rough, and was attracted to women. Everyone expected him to wear dresses and play with dolls and be attracted to men. So he switched.In other words - if you have a problem with people constantly trying to break out of your box, maybe don't make the box so small and constrictive. I sincerely wonder what an alternate timeline would look like if this social construct had been abandoned back when it became irrelevant, rather than dragged along as vestigial dead weight.
(DIR) Post #Aw8J4Xjv8s9kQGKOtk by ProcessParsnip@mastodon.ie
2025-07-14T18:55:55Z
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@futurebird this and also: I don't see myself as non-binary, I see myself as a woman who is not willing to be confined by horseshit definitions of womanity.To me, people are trying to impose an artificially narrow definition of woman and I am not having it.I guess I'm saying the gender police only made me queerer?
(DIR) Post #Aw8S6JvyLDUhlut55E by gimulnautti@mastodon.green
2025-07-14T20:37:05Z
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@futurebird Oh yes. I definitely was raised to be disguisted of something like that.My own style of being a man has always been somewhat of a cross between masculinity and femininity.Not one time have I felt I had to fight for the right to be considered a man yet still behave like I wanted to.
(DIR) Post #Aw8b2ygPnJOMa95jiy by jstatepost@mstdn.social
2025-07-14T22:15:09Z
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@futurebird @Rejected_cryptid @rejected_cryptid@beige.party
(DIR) Post #Aw8b8s4pGknLpYJswq by Uair@autistics.life
2025-07-14T22:18:22Z
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@futurebird The words "non-binary" and "gender queer" didn't exist when I was a kid, but I always knew I was outside the framing of traditional gender roles. Turns out I'm autistic and just don't give a shit about that stuff. I'm totally straight, but being a man requires too much artifice. I'm content to just be a human.
(DIR) Post #Aw8o3qyXEgSaN2JaJk by libramoon@mastodon.social
2025-07-15T00:43:10Z
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@futurebird gender is a social constructget together socially with those whose gender definitions agree with yours
(DIR) Post #Aw8tIr5Jbwf2pASWPI by Uair@autistics.life
2025-07-14T22:28:43Z
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@futurebird Ummm...the hardest men I've known, who did real time in prison and lived in homeless shelters for years, were the best chess players I ever faced. This might help your brother a lil'.
(DIR) Post #Aw9Dla8zfnaplU9fWa by kindjar@urbanists.social
2025-07-15T05:31:11Z
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@futurebird I grew up knowing that I didn’t fit other people’s ideas of what “guys” were like. I didn’t care that much, mostly, but I always knew I was a misfit in “society at large.” Maybe a widely recognized label like nonbinary would have been useful to me. It certainly wouldn’t have hurt. I’m glad many people are more free to explore and discuss nonbinary ideas of gender now.