Non-binary complaints with CASAB stuff

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Non-binary complaints with CASAB stuff

genderpunk:

shaedofblue:

dizzzypie:

youarenotyou:

lucypaw:

I hate how much emphasis is put on CASAB by people beyond pointing out the fucked-up ways it’s used in society.

I have found that when I am looking for other non-binary people like me, CASAB has no value in helping finding me people like me.

Claiming ‘all ____ people’ is no better when you use CASAB instead of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ and reinforces CASAB on people who are saying their CASAB is not part of who they are as a person.

The obsession with CASAB is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

THANK YOU YES

the last two points irk me if I am understanding them correctly. I think they are kind of denying privilege of CAFAB/DFAB/AFAB people in queer, feminist, and trans spaces. Like, if by obsession, you mean CAFAB/DMAB/AFAB people being angry, I don’t think that is right to say. But if by obsessed you mean like, the fucked up people who enforce this oppression, then yeah that is fucked.

If I am misunderstanding at all, please correct me

It is certainly denying a certain narrative about how DFAB and DMAB trans people are unilaterally privileged and marginalized in various spaces. That narrative usually assumes that DFAB trans is synonymous with masculine and DMAB trans is synonymous with feminine. It treats a DFAB nonbinary person as either a masculine woman or a typical man, and a DMAB nonbinary person as either a feminine man or a typical woman.

This is bullshit. A nonbinary person is not binary trans-lite or Butch/Fem-heavy. They are their gender (or lack thereof) and attempts to place them in a category based on designated sex are generally un/misgendering.

Since the person in question (if they agreed with these points) would probably not be drawing attention to an error some doctor made on their birth certificate, then the only way to even socially place them in a “DFAB” or “DMAB” category is through assumptions about what DFAB and MFAB bodies are supposed to look like, or what the right way to be express a nonbinary identity with a certain body is. I hope I don’t have to explain the gajillion ways this is screwed up.

It is true that people perceived as male-and-feminine are treated poorly, and that people perceived as female-and-masculine are treated relatively well. But simplifying that to DMAB vs DFAB trans people requires making a lot of cissexist, binarist, and dyadist assumptions about people’s bodies and presentations.

TL;DR:

How nonbinary people are treated is based more on people’s perceptions and assumptions that may or may not correlate with their DSAB, which is nobody’s business anyway.

When people assume my ASAB, most people assume wrong. This is true, even in queer and trans spaces. Trufax.

I have noticed that people assume my CASAB based on what I say more than anything else, especially in queer and trans spaces. For example, when I am heard to be angry at transmisogyny, I am assumed to be CAMAB and an authority on the subject, a voice to be listened to. When I am heard to be angry at binarism and obsession with CASAB, I am assumed to be CAFAB and my voice dismissed, an ‘angry woman’. While I understand dizzypie’s concerns, the fact that people assign me into a CASAB and treat me in ways that counters how most trans* people assume privilege among trans people works shows how broken this stuff is. For all the talk of concern about privilege, privilege is not what’s being attacked. People are.

As shaedofblue says above:

How nonbinary people are treated is based more on people’s perceptions and assumptions that may or may not correlate with their DSAB, which is nobody’s business anyway.

That’s exactly what my experience has shown. At this point in my life, I refuse to use my CASAB as an identity point or in any other way because it doesn’t say who I am now and only distracts and detracts from that. Yet, I still get given one based on people’s perceptions and assumptions to assign me privilege or oppress me. Do we see the problem there?

It’s like, no matter how hard we try to see people as people, designated sex just keeps on forcing itself back into the conversation. Rather aggravating.

Designated sex is useful when talking about how people’s assumptions about it affect their judgment and behavior. It affects the assumptions people make about me, not who I am as a person. When I’m read as designated male, people find my anger threatening. When I’m read as designated female, people find my anger irrational and hyperbolic. My body is the same body either way, and my anger is the same either way. The difference is in other people’s minds.

Designated sex isn’t about the individual in question to begin with: by its very nature it is about other people placing meaning onto one’s body. I didn’t choose that designation, I don’t agree with that designation, and it doesn’t accurately reflect who I am as a person, nor how I perceive my own body. We have to discuss these effects, because they have far-reaching ramifications, surely. But I know in my own case, it is not a part of my identity nor does it describe my experience growing up.