alibinary system ⭑ observations

These terms are not meant to be restricted by identity.

I was originally going to put examples on each one on the original definitions, but I decided against it because only each person can decide what issues they feel they face, and because I didn’t want to imply there were certain identities that are intrinsically one thing or another.

For instance: I’m a nonvirmina. This is a gender identity that means I’m not male or female at all, but that my gender is masculine and feminine.

If we go by what best describes my gender (of the labels listed above), I would be ideobinary. And I really think ideobinary issues do affect me a lot.

However, I feel like a lot of the issues I have with people “not getting my gender” have a lot to do with exobinary issues: people not understanding how a gender can not be male or female at all and still exist, people not understanding how or why I would not like to be regarded as “feminine, masculine or androgynous”, and so on.

And sure, maybe some of those things fall into ideobinary, and I am mainly ideobinary… but I don’t think I would be totally out of place on an exobinary group, meeting or panel.

There is a reason I separate these identities between issues “mainly faced by” certain groups, and not between gender definitions or labels: because I want them to be used for talking about the issues we face, not for just categorizing identities.

I don’t think it’s wrong for someone to identify solely as viabinary or exobinary or both; and I don’t think it’s wrong for people to make flags or communities for “mesobinary people” instead of “people who face mesobinary issues”.

I don’t agree, however, with people categorizing individual identities as solely exobinary or ideobinary, for instance. Or with people defining those labels by giving examples of gender identities, instead of issues. People have different reasons for using the labels they do.

So yeah, please don’t take these labels that are meant to be open, self-applied and based on specific kinds of discrimination and neglect and turn them into a gender categorization system where only people who use certain gender labels or who are okay with being reduced to certain gender labels can participate in whatever exobinary/viabinary/ideobinary/mesobinary communities/spaces may exist in the future.

Possibilities / possible examples »