Now that we've established non-binary folks go through transition in a similar way to trans people, what is my status in particular?
I have, in order:
– Come out to my partner
– Picked a new name and pronouns
– Asked my partner to use them
– Come out to my work with new name and pronouns
– Mentioned it to a handful of friends, but not properly
You'll notice conspicuously missing is telling my family. Also that after my partner, my work was the set of people on my list. Honestly reflects my level of closeness / trust in those parties. :)
Oddly enough I don't consider myself trans. But I'm pretty sure this is because of deep denial more than anything else.
Being trans is not identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth. Since no one really gets assigned “NB” at birth, all non-binary folk are by definition trans. Unless somehow your parents were familiar with the concept and you never meshed with M or F.
Regardless of my state of constant denial, transmen and -women and enbies share a similar path, though I've found the details can vary a lot. Most of the big milestones are the same—coming out, changing your name, legally changing your name and gender, trying to pass, surgeries, hormones, etc., etc, etc. But the specific anxieties and doubts take on a different flavor.
I oftentimes find myself wishing I wanted to be male instead of non-binary. It would be so much easier to explain to people, to have them take this seriously. But I think in the end, non-binary is right in a way that male is not.
To be clear, I don't think I'm wrong. I think the nature of non-binary-ness just elicits these questions on a daily basis. The male/female dichotomy is so prevalent in my (western) society that staying apart of it takes a certain amount of constant resistance. And no one is capable of that.
The other part is, there's no clear picture of what a non binary person is—what they look like, how they act, how they think. Pictures are becoming clearer, but they're far from mainstream. In some ways the lack of a stereotype is freeing, in others it's exhausting. There's no easy way to say to others “Look at that. That's what I am.” You always have to explain the whole of yourself in detail, all the time.
And I guess that's another reason why I started this blog: Add my part to the story of the third gender.