What is Non Binary? Tearing Down Your Gender Construct Walls

If your seeing this post then chances are you searched the web to find a way to better understand what Gender Constructs, Non-Binary or Non-Conforming are. Congratulations, the first step to change is admitting that you have a problem. Now I'm not saying that because you are unsure about the political correctness of pronouns and gender that you are a bad person. On the contrary I believe that the fact that you are reading this now makes you better than most people of our world today because you are looking to educate yourself. There are many people who go about their lives with concern for only themselves, never truly knowing the other side of the story. Our entire personalities are built on only what we have experienced. From the moment of birth we are learning and building ourselves based on what is going on around us. And if we are not exposed to something in that time we can often breed what I like to call ill-advised dislike. When you were a child and someone offered you a food that you never had before, what was your go-to response? "I dont like that". Don't be ashamed, it is what most people do. It is a defense mechanism. However as we get older we branch out, try new things, and learn.

To make this more real I will give one of my own personal examples. Many gay people in rural states go through adolescence with a lumbering fear of coming out because homophobia is still very common in small towns. Trust me I know, I was one of them. And just like all those kids, over-time I programmed my personality with defense mechanisms that could protect me from that hate. One of those defense mechanisms was... you guessed it, homophobia. I convinced myself that I despised anything to do with LGBT because I believed that if I showed interest in anything of that nature, I would be outed instantly. So I avoided LGBT culture like the plague. This made me a very uneducated person. I knew nothing about my community. Gender fluidity was a foreign concept to me, so by default I disliked anyone that didn't stick to their gender approved appearances. Then Rupauls Drag Race aired in 2009. This gave me an opportunity to learn about my community in a safe space (my home in front of the TV with no-one else around). And as my understanding grew, my dislike dissipated.  I related to these people, therefore I saw them as people. That is what I am going to ask you to do now. I do not know you, who you are, where you come from, or why your here but I can try to help you by making the subject relatable. No human on our planet can truly understand something unless they can relate to it.  Think about it, when you hear a sad story from a friend, or think about a lottery winner, where is the first place your mind goes? You are thinking "what if it was me?". When you are watching a horror movie, that moment you get scared you are placing yourself in the victims shoes, right? So that's what I'm going to ask you to do right now.

🚺What are Gender Constructs?🚹

Gender Constructs are the ideals of what a person of a certain gender should and should not do. For instance, you are throwing a baby shower for a friend and she is having a girl. What color are you using for the party supplies? Pink right. Why? Because that is just how its always been done. Pink is for girls and blue for boys. How about this next one. You take two children to the park, one boy and one girl. They are running around (as kids do) and they both fall and scrape their knee at exactly the same time 20 ft apart from each other. Which one do you run to first? Most people would say the girl right? Because Boys are "tougher" and girls are "delicate". Why do you think in that manner? Men, when you were a child do you remember hearing the phrase "crying is for girls"? Women, do you remember being forced into an uncomfortable Sunday dress for church that you hated? Where did these rules come from? They are what you were taught from childhood. These ideals have been embedded into our society over time but they are always changing. Think about old European art. The noblemen are wearing puffy skirts and tights. Back then only men were used in theater (even for the female parts). In American history the presidents wore curly wigs. Even Jesus✝ wore a robe that by todays standards would be considered a dress and "inappropriate" for men. I can go on and on with these types of examples. So why have we narrowed our ideals so much. Well that's mostly due to the fact that for the better part of human history LGBT was a crime and was punishable by chemical castration or death. So people learned to filter out their choices to avoid being misconceived as being LGBT.  So these walls are basically just widely used defense mechanisms.

🔒You Have Gender Walls!🔒

Think about the choices you make in your life that are based on gender ideals. Most people choose their clothing not based on what they want, but instead how it makes them look. How the world is going to see them in those clothes. Are those high heels something you would choose to wear based on making your life easier/more comfortable, or are you wearing them because "that's what beautiful women wear" or "that's what is appropriate at the office". When you are shopping for your kids clothes do you take them to both aisles so that they can choose what they truly like, or are you taking them to the corresponding "boys" section and choosing for them. Most children go through this. I once worked with a woman named Sarah. Sarah is a good person and a mother. Sometimes Sarah would bring her son into the store where we worked so that he could pick out a new toy. And every single time she brought him in, he would pick out a girls toy because that is what he really liked. But Sarah like many other parents wanted to instill the basic gender ideals with her child. So she would always take the toy away from him and tell him "that's for girls, you are not a girl". Now she was only doing what she thought was best, but was inadvertently robbing her son of his personal expression. The lesson that he learned from this is that he should hide what he loves so that he can be "normal". And it will change him for life. By the time he is a teenager he will have been forced into submitting to only act like other men, instead of just being himself. What are we, if not a culmination of the things that we love? If we are hiding something that we love so that we can "fit in" are we truly being ourselves? Men, when you see a woman wearing a flowy dress, dont you think to yourself how comfortable your boys would be if you didn't have to wear those restricting jeans? Are you denying it to yourself now? That's because you are putting up a defensive wall so that you will not be seen as less masculine, and it is not your fault. Its a widely known phenomenon called toxic masculinity. But anytime you think to yourself "I cant do that because I am a man/woman" I want you to ask yourself instead "what if no-one would judge me for that". Who would you be, if you felt accepted doing the things that could make your life better. What amazing things could you experience if you were to try a hobby or activity that is predominately for the other gender? If you integrate this mindset into your everyday thinking, you will quickly learn that you have a lot of gender walls. All based on other peoples conception of what your gender should be. And if you were to break them, you would find more enjoyment in your life because you would be living for YOU and only YOU.

🤷‍♀️So What Is Non-Binary/Non-Conforming?🤷‍♂️

Binary loosely translated is "consisting of two". In this case I'm referring to the two types of "gender". So when someone says they are Non-Binary, it means that they do not believe that gender can be placed into only two boxes. And though you may not believe it, they are correct. Click on the links below and take a moment away from reading this to search a few things. 

• intersex
• hermaphrodite
• gonadal dysgenesis

Welcome back. As you can see there are many gray areas with "gender". And that means that many people dont fit in one box or the other. Are they still people? Did you say yes? Of course they are. But those two gender boxes that people have constructed over time make them feel very excluded. They are referred to as "birth defects" but that is how God made them. Do you believe God makes mistakes? All fetuses are female until about 5-6 weeks. We are comprised of complex chromosomal combinations consisting of many different genes, but we all start out with the same blueprint. Now think about the 100 trillion synapses in the human brain. Do you feel that you can place all of those synapses that make us who we are into two different types of people? Could it be possible that in the womb your body developed into a female but your mind developed into a male? In my personal opinion I believe that this is what makes someone trans. But on that same note... if they were never taught what a girl/boy "should be". Or if they never heard the phrase "that is only for girls/boys", would they have still developed the mindset "I should have been this" "I am wrong because I dont fit" "I need to change my body to be accepted"? Why do you believe you are in the wrong body? Because you are trapped by the binary confines of gender, "I have to be this" or "that". If you grew up in a world where it was OK for you to just be yourself, would you still feel the need change to fit into one of the two boxes? Why do you need makeup? If you are a woman it shouldn't matter what you look like on the outside or what body you were born with. But you do those things so that you can look like what people say a woman/man should look like. Again using other peoples conceptions to determine your choices. There are many different ideas of what "non-binary" means. For me, non-binary is a choice. I consciously make the choice not to participate in gender rules.Those rules do exclude people and I believe no-one should be excluded from the human race. And sticking to the rules could inhibit me from doing, saying and wearing what I want to, which wouldn't be ME, it would be what other people want from me. Consider how free you would feel if you weren't held back by gender and judgement.

👍PRONOUNS?👎
.So were going to talk about pronouns. This could get confusing so try and stay with me. Since birth you have been addressed by a particular pronoun. HE or SHE. And so you also use pronouns for other people because that is what you are used to. What about people that are both genders ...or neither gender? What do you call them? You should try to eliminate your use of pronouns. When you address someone with a pronoun without knowing what they identify as, you are assigning one to them based on how they look or sound. This happens to me a lot at the drive-thru. They call me ma'am because they cant see me through the order box. They are trying to be polite by saying "Thank you ma'am" but they could have just said "Thank You". It doesn't upset me because it is not their fault. That's just how they were raised. Funny, another gender rule ingrained into us as children that it is the polite thing to do to address someone as Ma'am or Sir. Even though you are assigning a gender to a stranger. Every time you say a word like he, she, her, him, ma'am, sir etc. you could be hurting someone unintentionally. You may think, "I am making his day by calling him ma'am because he is trying to look like a woman". That cannot be further from the truth because not everyone wants to be placed into a pronoun. Which is why most non-binary people prefer the pronoun "they". Because "they" does not denote masculine or feminine. The use of "they" can be very confusing so the Rosetta Stone of pronouns is just to not use them at all. Instead think of people as just people and not male or female. It will be very hard at first because you will find that gender assigning pronouns are embedded in your brain. Just think before you speak (never a bad rule in any situation). 

⏰CONCLUSION⏰

 I may not have changed your mind on your gender system. But I hope that I have at least spread a little light on the subject to help you better understand the people that do not take part in it. 

At thornmicheals.com we pride ourselves in creating a safe retail space for all gender identities. All of our clothes and accessories are located in one collection. So you choose what to wear not because it was designated for your gender, but because you like it. Thank You for reading.

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