Binary trans people, while often third-gendered and relegated to being Other, do still have a gendered framework to understand themselves and one another through. Some have the option of going stealth. All have the language and social roles to express themselves within society, even if they are not accepted as truly belonging to said roles. A trans man can use the framework and language of manhood, can in some places be legally recognized as a man, can present as a man on the street and be treated as such. The same goes for trans women, although obviously with caveats as transmisogyny leads to disproportionate third-gendering and gendered harm toward them.

But nonbinary people *are always third-gendered.* It is not an erroneous label foisted on us that we can escape by being accepted into the binary system, because we by definition defy that system. We do not ever have the option of going stealth, of being legally recognized as an accepted gender. Those who are legally recognized as nonbinary are essentially legally branded as Other, which is why so many people advise against getting your gender marker changed to X. While a binary trans person who has changed their legal gender may still have this problem if they are clocked as trans, that is *if* they are clocked. Nonbinary people are known as trans by default. That is the difference.

And language and social roles! Trans men and trans women have pre-existing social roles and language that they can adopt and step into, or choose to reject in favor of non-conforming gender expressions. Our society has countless examples of what men and women should or could be; the Housewife/Provider, the Butch Lesbian/Femme Gay Man, the Working Woman/the Househusband, etc etc. It is not just conforming expressions with roles and history and language, it is practically all incarnations of men and women. There are pre-laid foundations for every possible way you could be a man or a woman, though some are far more difficult than others to exist as. But the foundations still exist.

No such foundations exist for nonbinary people. What little language and history and roles we have are either quite new or very old and not particularly relevant to a modern context. There have been many diverse gender systems, and people who have defied binary gender systems, throughout history, but so many of these are poorly understood or were intentionally destroyed. It gets especially complicated when third-gendering as a practice is used to devalue and deperson binary trans people: how do you tel, beyond a doubt, who in the distant past actually rejected a binary gender system, and who was forcibly excluded for expressing themselves as the gender they were not assigned? And we have new roles, new language, new terms, of course, but these have very little stability as roles in society. Nonbinary roles are not widely recognized as genuine; marriage, for instance, is still a strictly binarily-gendered system in almost all places. Honorifics, terms of respect, familial terms— almost always gendered within a binary.

By enjoying your life as a nonbinary person, you not only do you provide hope to other nonbinary people, but you also show binary women and men that it's ok to not fit perfectly into rigid boxes.

Write to your MP and ask them to fight for all of us:

Their contact/general enquiry form (entitled “Ask us your Health Question”) has a gender question, and there are only two options, but the NHS do recognise nonbinary genders.

They do have a form for reporting faults, which has no gender question, so here’s what I’m writing:

On https://www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs.uk/ContactUs/OnlineEnquiry/GeneralEnquiry/ the gender question only has male and female as options, but the NHS recognises nonbinary genders and this gender question should have an appropriate third option. Could you please add a third option to the form and get back to me about it? Thank you!

If you’re in the UK, drop them a line and let them know it’s important.

It can be the heart of your activism or just another aspect of who you are.