LIFE IS NOT A WAITING ROOM

Couples Counseling Needed

The checkbox at the start of the big annual survey reads:

Yes, I confirm that I don't really fit into just one of the two boxes of "always, solely and completely a woman/girl" or "always, solely and completely a man/boy."

Obviously the logic of this very precise wording is very familiar and coherent to me, because I have been thinking about it every year for like 10 years or something! But I do always get a few people confused about whether binary trans people are deliberately excluded, or whether they are "nonbinary enough" to participate.

So, this evening I made this diagram that I hope illustrates what I was going for with it:

So, there will be people in just one circle, or two circles, and people all the way outside all three. (That's me, agender, occupying zero circles: consistently never anything.)

I think most cisgender, transgender and intersex binary women would say that they are always women, they're not anything else, and they're women all the way through, for the most part. Ditto most cisgender, transgender and intersex binary men. If they agree with that for themself, they're not invited to participate.

It's intentionally very broad. That's why cisgender and binary are on the checkbox list, because someone could feel like they are a cisgender man or a cisgender woman and there is still something that nudges them out of that central segment. (As a nonbinary person I'm like, "are there really people who feel like they truly absolutely are always, solely and completely [men/women]? That sounds fake." But yeah, that's most of the population apparently!)

And the thing is, there is no sharp cut-off. Two people can have the same internal experience of their gender and maybe even call it the same thing - but one of them might feel that they qualify while the other feels they don't, and that's totally fine.

Edit: Diagram now with "none of the above" and "secret third thing" for clarity!

then she started funnelling all her wizard book money into destroying the rights of my people and I resolved not to give her any more of my money

LIZARDS IN LOVE.