#nonbinary theory

This is Jim Sinclair, at the time going by Toby. They are a neuter, asexual and intersex enban, and a seminal autism activist. They have been an educator on transneutral nonbinary identity, non-binary transition, the anti binarist position and intersex issues for decades. This is an interview with them from the 1980s, talking about their experience as a non-binary/genderqueer person at a time where the community was just coming together.

"In a 1997 introduction to the Intersex Society of North America, Sinclair wrote, "I remain openly and proudly neuter, both physically and socially."

To me, antibinarism is to be against the current gender binary in a manner that recognises the colonialist, bourgeois roots of the system.

Binarism is the Western imposed gender binary is a tool of colonialism, neo and classical. As a black person with direct African heritage, it broke my heart to find out how the West steamrolled the nuances of gender experience in my native culture, and imposed a very strict sex and gender binary. It divided them, it alienated them from their own culture and set them into rigid worker identities. Binarism shows why binary gendered POC are held to unrealistic standards that they will never reach because they are not going to fit into the patriarchal, white, bourgeois cishet binary. It shows how the binary was used to dehumanise us though that effect. It explains why queer people have always been genderqueer by nature of their sexualities. It explains why the nuclear family model was developed in that particular manner economically (domestic labour mother, market labour father and 2.5 children) and why it is upheld as a finality (to produce workers at an effective rate; to manage and engage with private ownership). Binarism is down to capitalism and it's effects on society, culture and mentality.

(note: this introduction is subject to change. Apr 2025)

You can call me R. My pronouns are he/she, or they/them, or zhe/hir. Pick a set and stick to it. My "about me" is below the cut. Here is my pronouns page. Here is a great resource masterlist for nonbinary transitioning (yes, it's possible, and done very often!)

I am here to help those outside the binary show those within binary systems show that we deserve liberation. We are suppressed and oppressed by the bourgeois gender and sex binaries, leading to many issues such as exclusion, a lack of civil rights due to legal invisibility, exorsexism, intersexism, targeted violence, corrective surgery, not knowing our community history, corrective SA, internalised oppression and so much more. We deserve better because we are human and we are beautiful. We show that there is a life and a world outside of these binaries, these binaries are not the be all end all of human existence, never have been and never will be.

This blog is multifaceted with specific focus on lives outside of gender/sex binary, our communities and our issues. There will be nonbinary theorising and promotion of others' theory too.

Since I assume myself to be perisex, I will not make any posts myself about intersex experiences, and will only reblog from intersex liberationists. If anyone wishes to submit specifically Intersex NOW posts, they can do so though my submissions box.

↓ About Me ↓

- Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own, 1929

I adore this quotation, not just as a womanist feminist, not just as a writer who seeks to write about experiences other than my own, but as a transandrogynous person, who understands the beautiful, natural creativity and empathy that mental androgyny lends me access to. The word is bipartite, dichotomised into a binary, where one must be better than the other. It is not in our nature to just hold two states, two things as equal. There will always be a victor and a failure. A better and a worse. But to choose to marry those two things into one, to force both to coexist in one life, to consciously (because as humans, it's in our nature, but consciously choosing this path is different) combine aspects of both into your everyday reshapes the mental experience into an androgynous one, with the ability to debinarise and marry every single little binarised thing; from the manner of blinking to the theory produced on the human condition and the science of life and creation.

In a world of binary dichotomies, to exist in a mental state that incooperates all aspects of the binary, to marry all of its silly divisions, to live as proof you dont have to lock your mind into "one or the other" brings forward the capability to expand ones own thinking long beyond what was previously thought, to access the "whole mind." To live as an androgynous, or at least as a being unaffiliated with the gender binary, shows an incredible ability to break away from the notion you must perceive, experience and live in the world only one way; it is the realisation that you are locking up half of your human experience. It is the realisation that you are falling into a pit of "pure simplicity." The death of new thought, the death of unity and the death of the complexities of human expression is surely inbound if not for beings of androgyny redefining the human experience out of these unmarriable dichotomies; man-womanliness and woman-manliness allows access to new perspectives on old concepts, and the birth of new ones. Birth that cannot happen in a mind confined to the rigidness that is binary thought. This is evidenced in real life, through people who live outside the binary, present outside the binary, transitionwithin the binary offering new perspectives to those who don't, and to all others who resist the binary.

This is the birth of new, beautiful, creative and expansive minds and communities. The breaking down of the rigid colonial capitalist thought that permeates all of society. Seeking empathy across false borders, the unity of all people, and the understanding between the man and the woman. Helping people realise that they are capable of androgynous thought despite being binary, by being someone who is a unification or a disassociation with it. Androgyny is universally understood in binary individuals, it helps them understand the opposite from their perspective. Helping them see that they are more similar than they think, but it will take active mental androgyny to help realise this fact. Helping the creativity, the empathy, the understanding "grow in the minds of others." Mental androgyny is radical in the sense that is the realisation of shared humanity, with baseless binarisation being a detriment to society. Below is my personal favourite quote on androgyny, ever.

"The androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent, and undivided."

Even though we are mocked and told we are unserious, we still exist.

Even though we are murdered and and assaulted at high rates, we still exist.

Even though we are erased by language, by society, by our wider community, we still exist.

Even though people fail to accept us at large, we still exist.

Even though binary and cisgender supremacy reign strong for now, we still exist.

Even though they have thrown everything at us to stop us from living and being out and being visible and being members of society, we still exist.