So YouTube’s all in an uproar because there are apparently too many genders [too many notes]. You see, when we were kids, boys played with tiny skateboards and girls played with urine. The cosmic order was in balance. But now there’s demiqueers and trigenders and everyone wants to kill themselves. But you know what, maybe hold off on the bleach for a minute there, Hamlet, I say we should give this thing a shot. But if we’re gonna do it properly, we’re gonna need to get into the spirit of the thing.

[Rossini intro]

So I think we’re at a point where most civilized people accept homosexuality, and we even seem to be making progress on the transgender issue. But non-binary genders are where the line has been drawn, for now.

Now I don’t identify as non-binary myself. In fact, I identify as a mayne, which is how bluesman Muddy waters pronounces man what kind of man? say it again. 

If you mispronounce it, I will be triggered. 

The point is I can’t claim to speak for people who are non-binary. But I can look at the arguments against non-binary identities, and see if they have any merit.

I say arguments against because I don’t think non-binary people need any positive arguments in support of their own existence, because, unlike most of you, I’m a real American, which is to say I believe in a little thing you may have heard of called freedom.

Argument 1: it’s new and different and I don’t like it

The vast majority of people I see objecting to non-binary gender identities are basically people who are just repulsed by a thing that seems new and different and ridiculous to them.

[Attack helicopter bit]

It should, but doesn’t, go without saying that finding something weird and distasteful is not in itself an argument against it. I find it particularly hard to sympathize with this view since I have a personality type that kind of just goes along with things, almost to a pathological extent.

Like, normal human beings are repulsed by things like incest and cannibalism, but I kind of don’t have any feelings at all about those activities. And if someone tells me that, say, they alternate between three different gender identities, my initial reaction is, interesting! Tell me more! I’m not repulsed. If anything, I’m attracted.

[If you think I’m comparing non-binary identities to cannibalism, here’s the address to complain to]

Argument 2: This is just made up because there’s no science to support it!

[Blaire Clip (shoe vid 6:30)]

So Blaire’s argument is that being transsexual is an actual diagnosis, whereas being non-binary isn’t, therefore the former is a real phenomenon and the latter is make believe.

But, for one thing, this is just an appeal to the authority of current medical practice. Five seconds ago, homosexuality was an actual medical diagnosis. Psychiatrists make shit up as they go just as much as anyone, and they invent new words to describe new conditions all the time.

For another thing, non-binary gender isn’t primarily a medical issue in the first place. Keep in mind that there are multiple dimensions to gender. There’s biological sex: male, female or intersex; there’s socially constructed gender roles, including things like dress, mannerisms, style, and what sorts of work and relationships are available to you; and then there’s identity, a person’s inner sense of what gender they are.

And gender identity is what’s in question here, so I don’t really see why we need a biological basis for validation. You know: there’s probably no gay gene, but there are definitely gay people. And we didn’t need a brain scan to figure that out.

For another thing, there just isn’t much in the way of scientific research on non-binary genders yet. There can’t be scientific terms for things until scientists decide to study them.

Argument 3: I don’t “feel” like a gender, therefore no one else does either

So, to me, gender identity is a kind of confusing topic, since I personally don’t have any strong feeling of “identifying” with my gender at all. I look inside myself and ask, do I feel like a man, or a woman, and the answer is that I feel like shit. I mean it’s just hollow in here. To me, gender is all costumes, it’s all a charade. I choose to perform masculinity because that’s what I’ve been socialized to do and it’s simply what’s easiest. But I feel irony toward gender roles and distance from my body. If I woke up with tits and a vagina tomorrow, I think I could roll with it. I’d get to wear better clothes. But the only time I really feel like a woman is when I listen to Lionel Ritchie []. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. And the only times I feel like a mayne are when I listen to Muddy Waters [] and when I’m having sex with a woman, which feels very natural. You should try it sometime. God smiles down, the angels trumpets sound, the maiden is laid bare, the intrepid knight mounts his—

Oh for fuck’s sake. | What do you want? | Oh Jesus.

What is it, dark mother?

[You dare make a video about feminism and not mention me?]

This video isn’t even about feminism! It definitely isn’t about video games.

[Yes, but every video must be about me, because I’m the most important woman in the world!]

No, you know what? Fuck that! I’m not doing this anymore. Look, we don’t need to mention Anita in every video. It’s time for all of us to move on.

[SILENCE!]

Alright. I’ll suck your goddamn c*ck.

[Brushing teeth]

Man… Where were we?

Argument 4: I refuse to call people by non-binary pronouns because it’s not grammatical English

What do you people think language is, anyway? You do realize that it’s just a bunch of fucking sounds coming out of your mouth? 

According to Wittgenstein—yeah I’m pulling this card—the meaning of words is determined merely by the way they’re used. So if we start using words in a different way, the new use determines the new meaning, and grammar can be invented and destroyed to suit our purposes. Language is a human tool, not a dictate of God.

Wittgenstein also compared language to an ancient city, since a language is always built around the ruins of its own past. This is one reason why I think the singular “they” is more likely to catch on as a non-binary pronoun then inventions like ze and hir, since that’s a more natural way for the language to evolve.

But you know, Wittgenstein was also another one of these boring, unfunny, self-loathing gay Jews, so... What is with these guys?

Argument 5: non-binary people are just special snowflake transtrenders. Also, I hate it when people besides me use buzzwords and neologisms.

Well there’s no doubt that non-binary genders are having a bit of a moment. Will all these neologisms, like greygender, cloudgender, and astrogender stick? My guess is that most of them won’t. But some of them probably will.

And while this gender inventiveness has probably gotten a bit out of hand, I’m sure it’s always been the case that there are people who feel alienated from their gender, and there probably always will be, and a society that makes space for these people is surely more humane than one that doesn’t. And while the current wave of gender inventers will probably make some mistakes along the way, I for one admire their experimentation. 

For one thing, they’ve paved the way for the rest of us normies to be a little more fluid ourselves. And why not? It’s fun!

Argument 6: but if we allow non-binary genders then soon people’s genders will be pineapple and mayonnaise

Good! Let’s have pineapple and mayonnaise genders. 

This is where I’d like to see the radfems step on board. Patriarchy cannot possibly exist in a society where people are mayonnaise gendered.

Argument 7: How am I supposed to explain to my child

Kill your child. Then you won’t have to explain anything.

Seriously though, I think kids should be confused about gender, because it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. In traditional agrarian societies, it actually worked well to divide people up by sex and assign them different roles. All there was to do in life was farm and reproduce, so the men used their swoll biceps to plow the mule and women bled on the birthing bed, and it was a pretty good system. But in an individualist, capitalist society, it doesn’t really make any sense to assign people rigid roles on the basis of what reproductive organs they have.

We know from history and anthropology that gender is pretty variable, so I say, let’s reinvent it to suit our purposes. 

We should be celebrating, not mocking, the gender deviants of our own time. After all, they’re paving the way for the future, when our great-grandchildren will plug their brains directly into the simulation to avoid the climate change-induced nightmare that is what’s left of the physical and biological realm. There will be no more men and women in this world, only quadgender wolfkin shamans endlessly pullulating over the sunny plains of Azeroth.

And that, frankly, is a paradise I am looking forward to.

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