That sounds like a step in the right direction. I'd go further though and just not identify and get rid of gender entirely.
As I've mentioned in this thread before, gender as something separate from sex still confuses me. I don't me that as in "if you were born with male anatomy you're a male and nothing is ever going to change that". What I mean is that a being male or female is usually irrelevant to everyone, except maybe doctors.
You'd like to think so however it's still listed on passports, drivers licenses, bank accounts etc. and you have to jump through hoops to get that changed. In the UK you literally can't get your passport changed to anything except for male or female. Which means when I rock up to passport control with a feminine hairstyle and makeup on (and a ****ing fierce outfit) they're going to see male on my passport which adds awkwardness to a situation that doesn't need it.
I've heard of trans men with full beard getting their breasts removed still being referred to as "ma'am" because of this.
Telling me your sex/gender does not inform me of your personality or how to interact with you.
Maybe not in your case but it's apparently very important to some people. I know plenty of guys who would be very upset if a girl didn't tell them she was trans and he wanted to date her.
If someone tells me that they are cisgender, how is that supposed to influence my interactions with them compared to them being non binary? If you reply to anything in this post I think answering this question would be the most helpful to me. My default stance is that I don't know anything about you until I learn through interacting with you. Giving me a gender identity up front just doesn't give me anything to go on. Not even cismale vs cisfemale. There is no meaningful difference between the two.
It shouldn't influence your interactions at all besides the pronouns used. In an ideal world that's what would happen. Instead you get questions like "are you a boy or a girl?" and "are those womens clothes?" (No, they're mine)
To explain a little more, what made me respond to your post was that it seemed to imply that gender isn't real, but just something humans have made up. People take on gender labels only to fit into these constructs. That to me sounds totally backwards. If gender is real, ie I should treat non binary people differently from males and both differently from females, then I can see a point in having a gender. Your post, as I interpreted it, doesn't suggest that to be the case.
How are you defining "real"? We know gender exists because people use it daily all around the world. I may have worded one of my replies badly if it made you think that gender wasn't real, so I apologise for that. Gender is a very important thing for transgender folk who fit into the male or female side of things, less so for non-binary people.
On pronouns, they aren't the endgoal are they? Aren't they just markers to help people refer to you correctly? Being correctly gendered makes it easy to decide on what pronouns to use, I'll give you that, but that doesn't come across as the most important (I don't want to say it's unimportant) issue in having yourself represented accurately to others.
For many trans people pronouns and passing as their gender are the ultimate goal. I can't speak personally on the mental damage caused by the use of assigned gender at birth pronouns as I'm fine with using male pronouns, but I've spoken to lots of others who have really bad reactions to being mis-gendered.
It is very confusing to me. I can understand intersex (being both) and trans, but it is difficult to understand how someone is non-binary ? I considered Trans as transitioning from one to the other, but how can someone have no gender? Isnt that just A-sexual?
Someone with no gender is agender. Asexual refers to someone with no sexual feelings or motivations. Being Asexual is not related to gender identity.
Why use "they"? I often use he/she, but understood that can be insulting to some people. Could you explain why?
"They" has been used for many years and is already used more frequently than you'd think. Imagine you're driving with a partner and you see someone else driving along with a flat tyre but can't see them clearly. So you turn to your partner to tell them, what do you say? "Oh, they have a flat tyre!"
It's used when you don't know the gender of someone, so non-binary people prefer it. There are some other pronouns that are sometimes used but I can't recall them off the top of my head.
For me this is confusing. Can I call a gay person queer? Or a Non binary person, Trans?
Non-binary technically does fall under the transgender umbrella but it's not often used as it has an association with someone completely switching their gender. The use of the word "queer" is an interesting one as it's widely used within the LGBTQ+ community as a powerful word for self identification. Outside of that it depends on the context. I'd avoid it unless you're absolutely sure the person you're talking to won't find it offensive.
I'll confess that logically, non-binary is the one that makes least sense to me as a definition. So, noob question, are non-binary folk bi-sexual by definition? Or do some non-binary folk exclusively prefer sex with someone who have the opposite set of genitals?
That's a difficult one to answer as everyone feels differently. I consider myself fairly fluid in terms of gender (I have days where I feel way more masculine than feminine and vice versa) but I'm attracted to femininity and I'm married to a cisgender woman. I consider myself pansexual - Not limited in sexual choice with regard to biological sex, gender, or gender identity. I could say bisexual but that would exclude other non-binary people.
