What If Non-binary Was Decoupled From Trans and Queer Identity Altogether — How Many More People Would Join In?

IDGAF if you use neopronouns

Of course I will use and respect your pronouns

I think my issue is that

Non-binary

As a concept, and in practice

Has much, much greater potential

If we were to decouple it from trans identities

And transgender communities altogether.

Non-binary means

Not binary, you take

The sex binary

And you say “no thanks—

My earth is round”

When you take it for what it is—

It’s got absolutely nothing to do with

Queer identities, especially not queer sexuality.

It’s a concept more than it is

A reality— in reality

Almost all people

Look like both and neither

Identifying as non-binary —

To me— means

Acknowledging the mutability of gender

And the multitude of natural variations

Human sex offers, as demonstrated by

Intersex conditions.

To identify as non-binary and

Demand neutrality

As if that is somehow something

Achievable— seems like

A very hopeless cause. Perhaps because

The majority of people in the world

Currently identity as the gender they were born as

As if that is some sort of fact that matters.

Imagine if non-binary identities

Were totally decoupled from queer and trans identities—

How many more people

Who’ve never felt comfortable acknowledging the feeling

For fear of being misunderstood in some other way

Would be willing to identify as non-binary

A term, here meaning—

“I believe sex and gender are bigger than just m and f”

If coming out as non-binary

Was free from queer association, people would be

Taking gender markers off their kids, returning

Their gender reveal party balloon arches—

Perhaps not, but perhaps if

Identifying as non-binary

Had absolutely nothing to do

With gender expression,

People might start to understand

What it is we’re talking about—

The ways in which we are all the same,

Not what makes us different.