I just read a post online from a person who considers themselves “a non-binary trans person.”
I don’t even know where to begin understanding what that means, but I’ll give it a try. As my daddy always taught me, if you don’t understand what words mean, look that shit up.
non-binary (adj.)—denoting, having, or relating to a gender identity that does not conform to traditional binary beliefs about gender, which indicate that all individuals are exclusively either male or female.
Oxford English Dictionary
There’s that confusing word again: gender. Are we saying gender, the feeling we have internally, or gender, the physical sex characterictic?
gender (n.)—the male sex or the female sex, especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones, or one of a range of other identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.
Oxford English Dictionary
That doesn’t help me much. Gender means “sex,” but especially when it refers to things that aren’t “sex?” As it relates to being “non-binary,” I infer that gender must mean “characteristics that aren’t sex”—those “social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.” A person whose gender is neither masculine nor feminine, therefore, would be “non-binary.”
There. I’ve got it. A non-binary person is someone whom we used to call “androgynous,” right? A male (sex) or female (sex) whose internal feelings of self are neither masculine (gender) or feminine (gender).
Then they throw me for a loop by adding “…trans person” to the description.
transgender (n.)—denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.
Oxford English Dictionary
Okay, I think I get that, too. A trans person is one who is of a particular sex whose internal feelings of self (gender) do not correspond with the internal feelings of self (gender) shared with the majority of people who share their same sex.
So, then, how is “non-binary trans person” not a redundancy? Wouldn’t all non-binary people be trans people, as they have an internal feeling of self (gender) that does not correspond to either the internal feelings of self (gender) felt by people who share their sex or the internal feelings of self (gender) felt by people of the opposite sex?
Unless there is some sort of third sex that’s neither male nor female, nor a rare condition mixing the two, every non-binary person has a sex that doesn’t match their gender. Nobody is “assigned non-binary at birth.”
Every time I read woke word salad like this, I’m reminded of two types of people. The janitor who boasts he’s a “senior custodial arts technician,” and the priest telling kneeling children that a flavorless cracker is literal flesh from a 2,000-year-old flying zombie god. Some people just need to feel important and special and require elaborate fairy tales to establish an identity.