Just an alternative here. You don’t have to explain your gender, you just have to explain how you want to be treated.
Good idea!
While David Bowie was not non-binary, he was an icon of androgyny and I’ve found that to sometimes be a good place to start discussions about the vast in-between spaces. It also helps keep the conversation from starting with “kids these days” because Bowie has been fly as fuck since way back when.
I like it!
“Someone who doesn’t want to be 100% a man or 100% a woman. Imagine gender wasn’t a single choice, but a slider from 100% fem to 100% masc, and you could pick where it sat each day.”
I’m missing stuff but that’s how I would explain it to my nana.
Is there a way to mix in the old concept of Tomboy into the conversation since that’s something older folks would maybe understand?
This popped in my head the other day when I was randomly thinking about how non-binary identities have existed since before everyone called it that.
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There’s also “too old” in the sense of “too old to give a shit”. I don’t think my grandad “gets” me being trans, but he had definitely decided he is too old to care and was like “Okay, name, pronouns, got it, don’t bother explaining” and proceeded to be the only family member who was perfect at it.
(It’s actually kind of fascinating to see what language he comes up with on his own. Somehow, he has never learned what “transition” is and says things like “When he was being a girl…” which is simultaneously “getting it” and kind of cringe.)
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Yep, if they’re resistant you immediately alter course and say in America we believe in freedom, freedom to live however they want, that no one should tell them how to live. Watch them try to figure that out
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lol, would be easier to explain quantum mechanics to a cat
Leave cats out of quantum mechanics, please. They have suffered enough.
- Schrödinger’s cat
Heh, yeah.
“Someone who doesn’t identify as male or female” has worked with my boomer family.
The main problem you’re gonna have with this is explaining to them the difference between gender and sex, how gender is really just a social construct, that sort of thing. Get them on that first, then the suggetsions of some of the other commenters will probably go down a lot easier.
