Nonbinarity - A Lifestyle?

Every time, when informations about nonbinarity or genderqueerness are shared, there is at least always one person, who declares it as a lifestyle - at best. Often there are many people sreaming "mental illness" when hearing anything not fitting their incommodious way of seeing the world, but I think I will talk about mental health, mental illness and stuff like that in another Blog post.

Yesterday at the International Nonbinary Awareness Day our vsibility increased a little bit and we were put into spaces that normally are hosted by cis-gender and/or heterosexual people. Cis-gender means, that someone identifies with the gender they were assigned with at birth. It's seen as "normal", "default", but I don't like to use the word "normal" here. Just because it makes out the majority of society it doesn't mean that it has to be the norm - and with norm I mean the expected behaviour to fit into society's box. 

If Nonbinarity is a lifestyle I try to answer right away. I just want to dig into something first: In my experience, some cis-het people (cisgender and heterosexual people) who don't want any changes and progress often try to reduce identities to lifestyles in order to kinda outlaw them.

I seriously don't understand that. Even if it would be a lifestyle, why should there not be respect and acceptance for something that doesn't hurt anyone? Even if it would be a lifestyle, why does it matter to them? Even if it would be a lifestyle, what kind of argument should that be? Why should a lifestyle, that embraces the freedom of individuals and literally doesn't hurt anyone, not be valid just because it's a lifestyle? 

Seriously, can someone explain to me that kind of thinking? 

Like, what even is a lifestyle? The cambridge dictionary defines lifestyle as "someones way of living; the things that person or particular group of people do" (source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/lifestyle, 15.07.2021). I understand, that a lifestyle that hurts other people could be forbidden; but that's not because it's a lifestyle, rather because it hurts people. (For example Nazi scum. F*ck that lifestyle.) But there is no logical or moral reason to forbid or degrade something jus because it is a lifestyle because every single person has lifestyles. Everybody lives a certain way. Everybody is part of groups that act a certain way. 

The only idea I have is that people degrade other people's way of living and existence in order to heighten themselves. The usual: Degrade others and feel higher, feel better... I will never understand that.

But is nonbinarity even a lifestyle? I mean, it is basically a way of living, but I wouldn't call it a lifestyle because the lifestyle - for me - includes that you can choose it. And like any other gender you can't choose to be nonbinary. You don't choose to be a woman, a man, a left-handed person, a green-eyed person, and so on... Nonbinarity is a way of feeling, identifying. After that feeling there comes the living a certain way. But nonbinary people don't live the same way. The only thing we all have in common, is, that we all try to burst the binary behaviour society tries to drum into us in order to live a free and healthy life.

Nonbinarity is not a new "trend". It is new that it gets more and more visibility, more and more visible people are coming out as nonbinary, more and more magazines share - more or less good - articles about it. It's slowly coming into the rearview of cis-het people who fear for their world view. But nonbinary people always existed; one of the first documented nonbinarity is dated back to 400 B.C.: In ancient Hindu texts Hijras were mentioned: indian people who identified beyond male and female. (source: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/nonbinary#:~:text=Although%20nonbinary%20is%20often%20regarded,referenced%20in%20ancient%20Hindu%20texts; 15.07.2021) 

And that's not the only ancient group of people living their nonbinary selves. Sadly, western culture, especially christian religion, forced them to live inside the - in my opinion very toxic - binarity. Yeah, how we love colonialism and stuff like that... not...

Nonbinarity is a gender identity. Gender means how you identify: female, male, nonbinary, demigender, agender, ... it is not necesserily your biological sex. Sadly, people see what's between your legs as a more decent and definite marker to who you are than your identity. Which is just sick, in my opinion. What's between my legs only should be known and important for me and maybe, MAYBE, my sexual partner*s. I am not thinking or acting with my organs, I am thinking and acting with my brain, my mind, and that should be the indicator of who and what I am. 

Nonbinarity is NOT a lifestyle. Living your true self, actively breaking the gender binarity, being open and loud, COULD be seen as a lifestyle, as a way some people act and live, and that is valid. But the very fact of being nonbinary isn't a lifestyle. Being male or female isn't a lifestyle, it is one's gender. Gender is valid. Gender is your true self and being true to yourself is one of the greatest froms of self-love. No one can give you that but you. And no one should be forced to not act with self-love and for one'S true self just because some people's world view was put in tiny boxes. 

Break those boxes. It doesn't hurt them. But it would hurt yourself, to hide your identity. 

Follow your euphoria.

I love you.