No, I don’t find your comment bad If not I would have flagged it. It was that I didn’t agree lol. My real name is Tamara but like Tami or Tama sounded cheesy as hell people called me Mara and mara I use. And don’t worry When I am offended is easy to see as I tend to be quite direct and effusive in say it.
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Ok, I would like to express my opinion on the subject but I want to make it clear it’s not an attack to anyone it’s just my thought and I’m almost sure I am wrong.
What I never really understood about non-binary is why do they endorse the binary system. I am a straight male but not because I like football and playing call of duty instead of liking dancing and playing with dolls(these are extreme stereotypes I used to make a point). I see myself as a male just because… u know… my junk!
So basically everytime I hear someone say “I’m not binary” what I hear is: “I recognize there is a system of stereotypes that divides males and females by their behaviour in society, I endorse it recognizing that being a female is playing with dolls and being a male is playing with lego but I want to do neither/both.”
If we are all trying to kill those stupid stereotypes of male and females why should someone say that because I am male I shouldn’t play with dolls otherwise I should call myself either female or non-binary?
What am I missing here? Because it’s kinda obvious I’m not understanding something important on this matter. 
*** in response to the post below ***
Ok, I understand that I rushed a bit too much, you are right there is a big difference between acknowledging and endorsing.
But I still don’t understand why is there a need to create a third option in genders when we all aim to establish that biological gender should have nothing to do with any person’s behaviour!
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This is a good discussion that we are having in the community.
With that said, I would like to go over some ground rules to make sure this discussion remains productive and helpful.
1st: Direct your posts to the thread’s topic: What makes you feel like a …
2nd: Once you share your views, please take a break from reposting those views again and again, even if you feel prompted to doing so because of what someone else says.
3rd: Use positively charged terms in place of negatively charged terms whenever possible and if needed forgo the negatively charged terms all-together.
Thank you in advance for keeping this discussion relevant and helpful in the quest to write a Choice Script game.
Edit:
…
The first quote is inaccurate – they are not endorsing it but acknowledging it.
As you say in the second quote – they may recognize it but that does not mean endorse it.
This dichotomy is evolving as we live – states are recognizing alternatives to the binary that once solely existed.
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Good for you! Genuinely. I regard my own junk as a fun part of my body, full stop. Not as anything confirming or indicating my gender. But that’s just how I feel about it and lot of people feel a lot of different ways about their own.
as @Eiwynn said, recognition/acknowledgment definitely do not equal acceptance/compliance/tolerance. The gender binary exists, it is (roughly) this idea that you express here: there’s boys, who behave and look like this, and girls, who behave and look like this. Non-binary people do not relate to those standards or identify with them.
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Now to answer the thread’s opening question, since I’ve inadvertently joined the discussion:
I feel like me, and part of me is that I am a woman. This part of me has always been a part of me, from the earliest I can remember, and it did not matter if I played with Barbie dolls or my brother’s Hot Wheels.
The clothes I wore when growing up and the clothes I wear now do not make me “feel” a particular gender; they may enhance me feeling better or worse about myself, and closer or farther to certain defined characteristics that are often associated with gender, but they do not change the fact that I feel like me.
So the answer to the question is: I make myself feel like me.
I hope this answer, although unexpected, might help you as a writer, write better characters.
Edit:
You are conflating gender with biological sex.
This is why a third option for gender is needed.
I think @Jenna_V states this earlier in the thread somewhere:
Edit 2:
There needs to be a third option because the existing two classifications that exist within and throughout our governments and society (in America) are not enough.
Other societies, like India and Samoa may have different classifications, rules and governmental infrastructure to deal with “other” genders outside of those used in the US but until recently, in most places here, there is very little to no ability to operate outside of the existing dichotomy.
Edit 3:
I am showing the need (in the US) for a third classification to modify the existing dichotomy of classification currently in use here. My use of this “third” classification is not meant to define anyone on the non-binary spectrum.
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But can’t you see we’re 100% the same on this subject? That part of me tells me only my biological gender, it has no place whatsoever in deciding what’s my personality or what I like or I don’t like! As you said it’s just a part of the body and nothing more!
Now there are some people that watch themselves in the mirror and don’t recognize their biological identity with the one in the reflection and decide to change it(it’s extremely oversemplified and please forgive me if someone feels insulted by the simple terms I used to describe a very long and complex process), and I support 100% transgender people even if I can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be in their place.
But with non-binary it always feels like there are people in the world trying to fight against the male/female stereotypes and they just cut in front saying “Yeah, that’s your problem straight boy(or girl) who doesn’t want to conform to stereotypes. If you’re not happy with what society expects from you, you can just say you’re not binary and leave all the other guys(or girls) to fight for themselves too!”
But why should there be a third option if we don’t want the first 2 options to exist in the first place? I’m not ok saying: we must have girls playing with dolls, boys playing with lego and a third option for those who don’t recognize those stereotypes
This conversation is so difficoult for me to understand…
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Non-binary isn’t a third option one can just pick. It’s an umbrella category containing thousands of genders, some culture-specific, some including or aligning with binary female or male, it’s not a third option it’s thousands of options.
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Um, actually we’re not. You said you identify as male because of your junk. A major trait of your biological sex matches the gender, meaning you are cisgender–your gender identity matches that which is typically associated with your sexual characteristics. I can see how you’d think we’re making the same point, but the difference is pretty self-evident: you would use that as an explanation for being male. I would never use any part of my anatomy for an explanation of being non-binary.
I hope I’m not piling on, but as Eiwynn said, you are conflating gender and sex. The binary is a reference to the gender binary, these ideas of there only being 2 genders and behaviors/appearances to go with them. Biological sex is a person’s chromosomal make-up and it’s not even limited to just XY (male) and XX (female).
This might be the stem of your confusion. If you think gender identity and biological sex are the same thing, you’re starting off on the wrong foot.
I wanna ask what gives you that impression, but concede that might be too far off-topic @Eiwynn.
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But my whole point is that being a “male” is only ONLY a biological trait. It must never be an identity trait… What I am trying to say is that in the end we all should be “non-binary” because to the hell with stereotypes! So when I say I am male I want people to understand I’m just talking about something biological and nothing else…
I think I’m really terrible talking and explaining my points… 
Yea I think now I’m talking / replying too much… sorry for that. 
WARN: I will answer any reply to my post in private message for a while, unless there is something “new” about the conversation I could say. It would be pointless just keep replying on this post trying to explain my point over and over. It’s just for respect to other people saying their opinion or trying to make their own points, sorry! 
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The modern understanding is that we are all on a gender spectrum – I think everyone who participated in this discussion so far can agree to this.
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If non-binary people leave the one fighting against stereotypes behind it is because they do not want us and make that very. VERY. very clear.
Falling outside the gender binary is not the easy get out of jail for free card. At best it is being forced to live a lie, knowing that the majority of your peers do not actually know you, at worst it is a danger to your life.
It is not an easy way to say, “I just don’t conform.” While discovering I was non-binary was a relief, it did not make my life easier. Just made it easier to understand while I had reacted as I had up untill then.
@poison_mara my personal preference is ze - hir, but I accept all non-binary pronouns.
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Ah, I see you’re conflating many things. As an NB, allow me to explain. (Note : I’m not talking for all NBs, but I’m trying to be as inclusive as possible.)
The simplest reason is that whenever someone asks me whether I am a man and a woman, having to answer one or the other makes me want to vomit. The only time I can deal with it is when filling health forms because I can’t escape the fact that science hasn’t figured out a way to remove these organs without fucking up with my health yet. So, it’s nice to be able to say, “I’m neither”.
An answer that is, perhaps, more related to the point you’re trying to make and your bafflement.
Male and female in terms of science is pretty much a convenience. It’s a way to say ‘version of this organism that produces sperms’ and ‘version of this organism that produces eggs’ in a quick and easy way. It has no real usefulness or meaning other than this. Whether the sperm version or the egg version happens to have other biological traits to it is a dependent variable; it follows evolutionary trends based on the selection effects on the egg version and the sperm version organisms, not directly inferred by the gamete production itself.
By this standard, yes, you are correct in that male and female has no effect on your psychological being, and so you should just overlook it and focus on the person behind the genitals. From this point of view, you’re correct in thinking that one should instead focus on being ‘men should knit as a hobby if they want to, this is a-okay!’.
And you know what, this is pretty much what NB people want for men, too. We’re happy that you’re happy in being a man, and we’re happy that you don’t conform. It’s great! But we’re not you. We’re all fighting against the gender perception, but we’re fighting a different battle.
The problem is----despite identifying that they’re distinct—you’re conflating biology with psychology, which happens often with cis people, because you just don’t have a frame of reference! You simply have no frame of reference for how far apart biology and psychology can be, and so you assume that it’s pretty close. It can be pretty far really lol. It isn’t really about ‘societal expectations’ or ‘system of conforming’, though it tends to factor a lot into how people recognize their NBness/transness because we live in a society and like it or not, that tends to be where we first learn to define ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and thus it becomes the first and primary definition that we seek to escape from. Sometimes, when you’re in a society that really places value on the split, it becomes the sole definition you want to run from.
What you’re thinking is, ‘we’re all born with one of the two sexes and I’m comfortable with mine, so why aren’t you with yours and just focus on the bad perception of behaviours you want to get rid of’.
But we aren’t comfortable with ours.
That’s literally it. That’s all it is. Maybe it’s stronger in some people, maybe it’s not. It’s all valid. We are just not comfortable with our physical sex. This is the same as in trans people, which you should have a better understanding of, right? Trans people want to be the sex they’re not. It’s easier to understand for cis people. You probably think that’s not the same with us, but much of the time, it is. For genderfluid NBs, they want to be both, but that can’t happen. For agender NBs, they want neither, but that can’t happen. For male/female-leaning NBs, they want a mixture, and that can’t happen. Imagine what it must be like to be trans, except instead of longing for an identifiably male or female self, before you stretches a vast, unblinking void.
We don’t endorse the binary system. But what can we say when we’re asked ‘male or female?’ in a non scientific fashion (because no one ever really uses the scientific male/female, ever, outside of health/biology/census forms, and if they do they conflate it with a whole bunch of other things)? When the question is psychological, as they often are? Do you want us to answer with our physical sex when our head screams that we are not?
NBs are not leaving cis people to fight against conformity alone. We’re just fighting from a different part of the battlefield. We’re not saying ‘meh, you do your work I’m not part of you I’m outta here, choo choo!’, we’re saying ‘cool bro, you fight the good fight for man’s right to nurse children and knit socks, our interests align, we’ll be over here fighting for the right to not be a man/woman in the first place’.
I hope I’m not being confrontational lol. >_> I just want to explain what it looks like from my point of view.
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No, sorry, I will not talk in this thread anymore if you will keep saying I’m trying to conflate psychology with biology when I specifically said a thousand times I am not. Clearly I’m too stupid to be part of this conversation because over and over I said that I consider being “male” exlusively a biological scientifical data imput and that my behaviour, my personality or whatever else has nothing do to with that. And you keep telling me that if I have a male body and I dare to say I’m a male than it means I must be ready to embrace every single stereotype in the world or declare myself as non-binary.
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You’re the one who keeps making this about stereotypes when it’s not about stereotypes, my friend.
But it’s fine, not every discussion is for everyone!
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Maybe this explanation will help?
Gender and sex, in the past, were taken to mean the same thing and were limited to male and female in accordance with biological sex. However, these days, we generally consider “sex” to be the biological sex that someone was born with (male, female, intersex, etc.) and “gender” as both 1.) the cultural and societal norms surrounding the perceived roles of an individual as they correlate to gender and 2.) the way in which an individual person identifies and presents.
So, I was born as a male. That’s my biological sex. I also identify consciously as a man. That’s my gender identity. I typically reject the behaviors most people expect from men, and I instead present myself in ways that are considered by society as “feminine” (I paint my nails, wear colors associated with women, etc.) That’s my gender presentation/gender expression. I also tend to reject society’s most common gender role for men, which is to be a provider for a (heterosexual) family. (Obviously, I reject this because I’m gay, but I also reject the whole “being a provider” thing).
When it comes to the non-binary gender, people trying to understand the distinction between these concepts get lost because the non-binary individual’s gender identity and presentation/expression can exist outside of our cultural norms and gender roles, both of which are steeped heavily in the idea of binary biological sex. Their identity and presentation/expression can also exist within our cultural norms, but in a non-gendered way (someone could present themselves in a way that most people associate with female, but they don’t have to identify as female).
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This is a harder question to answer than I thought at first. Anyway to give it a try:
Tbh I’m not even sure if I consider myself a woman bc that’s what I’m used to or bc this is the gender I’m comfortable with. My dressing style and behavior is something more inbetween than feminine I think. Actually people sometimes get confused about my gender and I don’t mind that at all. There were times I even thought I was born as the wrong gender, but I don’t think I’d actually try to change that, but once again idk if it is bc I’m comfortable with my own gender or bc it sounds too complicated. Also I think even if I were born as a boy I couldn’t be exactly what’s expected from them either… it’d probably only make dating easier I guess. Since I got to the topic of dating I think I’m more annoyed about people automatically thinking that I’m interested in men just bc I’m a woman than being occasionally mistaken for a guy.
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A part of me is genuinely curious as to what are the gender systems that are non-Western/European/you get what i mean.
And i am not going to lie. i’m very, very bitter at the erasure (of history, systems - political, gender or otherwise and so on) that happened during the Colonial Period.
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We need to come to the consensus nobody really understands gender we are all just assuming what it could be, and that we are all living under our own assumptions of the nature of gender and we just choose/accept whichever gender reflects us the most. It’s okay that we don’t have the objective truth about gender, because ultimately your guess is as good as mine it’s just a matter of whether or not your forcing your standards upon others, and to take into consideration that gender is too abstract to be tied down by binarys.
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I feel I am a non-binary individual. Someone who likes to be referred to as a person and with gender neutral pronouns. They/them. Mostly as that’s very much where I feel I’m treated best by other people and how I can make other people feel more comfortable by interacting with me.
I have what’s very much considered an androgynous face, put on makeup a certain way and style my hair a certain way and people will easily lean towards thinking I’m either male or female depending on what they associate my appearance at the time with. Same thing extends to clothes I happen to be wearing. However, take off all that, wear some plain clothes, push my hair back and people take a moment to decide what they think I am.
Part of it also is in regards to the feeling provoked from being referred to by a certain pronoun. Being referred to by masculine terms and I just shrug my shoulders and roll with it, being referred to by feminine terms and I kind of smile. However, anyone who refers to me as a person and I feel absolutely delighted. I also feel that when people have the chance to guess what they think my gender is then they kind of just lean towards what they feel most comfortable with. What I noticed is that people are most comfortable around me when they assume me to be their gender.
Being non-binary I also feel like I bypass a lot of the associations with the masculine and feminine ideals. This even applies to being an author hoping to get an actual publishing opportunity. Whenever I’ve had people read over my work they’d assume me to be the gender of my pen name at the time. If they thought me to be male then suddenly my female characters were unrealistic and needed more work…the same characters who under a female pen name were remarked as unique, loveable, and ones the reader became quickly attached to. Vice versa with male characters. Even the current game I’m making, I have one character who’s flirtiness would have gotten me lynched if I was using a male name. I got accused of trying to fulfill a male fantasy when I wrote a character of her personality in the past.
Even my parents didn’t quite know what to make of me. Saying I was “neither much of a girly girl or manly man” (they were comfortable with the concept of transgender individuals but still thought of people in binaries as opposed to the full gender spectrum for context.) to make certain associations with.
All of this is to make the point that as a non-binary individual I feel I can just be me and people won’t treat me worse for it. That I behave in such a way and have a mix of behaviors and interests that all blend together from what’s usually associated as male or female and that I feel my best when I’m just called a person anyway.
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I want again thank everyone for sharing their thoughts with me.It helped me in various ways. And I thlought sharing my conclusions would be the right thing. So I came the conclusion that my instinct on building the characters by their traits and whims and after that assigning the genders, so that there are equal numbers was a good thing.
It also made me understand trans and nb aspects a lot better than before, so I could finally decide which kinds of the spectrum I want to use with the two nb chars I have in mind. I just picked what I feel now most comfortable with, regarding understandment and writing, not as persons of course. I chose one to be genderfluid, cause I can relate a lot t the switching personalities and dressing and even the switching of languages, cause that is something I myself realize doing. I do talk a lot different when I talk to men than when I talk to women. The other character will be nb. THe nice folks here did so vivid descriptions on how that feels, that Ihope to be able with their help I hope, to come up with a realistic description.
Thank you a lot for helping me out, and realising that I am not so weird, as I sometimes think. 
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