Didn't want to bog down previous reblog's tags with my thoughts, hopefully someone resonates with this or could share their thoughts.
On the non-man/non-woman discussion of sexuality descriptions, I have conflicted feelings because while I acknowledge that it is an incredibly unhelpful descriptor to use for broad definitions such as with vincian and lesbian, I personally resonate with it as both a person descriptor and sexuality preference.
I am multigender and genderfluid, to the point it was very difficult for a long time to really understand what I wanted from others in the long run or what my transition goals looked like. The only thing I knew for sure is that I am not a woman.
I'm not a binary man, claiming to be one for passing situations in the future makes me feel queasy and stressed because it just isn't true, but it's more true than staying in the closet and continuing to present as a woman. I have been many things and I may be many more, sometimes I am nothing and something at once and have to navigate that with myself, things get complicated. But the one thing that remains constant is that I am a non-woman.
When it comes to relationships, I have only ever been able to imagine myself as a queer guy. Younger me took that as an indication (before I realized romantic and sexual attractions are different and that gender and body are separate things) that I could never be interested in a female or feminine person whatsoever, but that isn't true. As I've grown and gotten more comfortable both with myself and others, I've realized the parts on someone's body, their clothes, their pronouns, etc, have no correlation to how I feel about them, I'm attracted to their gender - so long as that gender is non-woman.
The more complex feelings come in when I try to analyze myself further, because it's hard to think of things inside a vacuum.
The connotation of non-woman is very restrictive when it comes to others because it disconnects a lot of people who are bigender, multigender, some who are androgyne (some see it as distinct like I do, while others are both binary genders at once which would make them partially a woman), some who are genderfluid, everyone who is pangender, people who live/have lived as women, etc etc etc.
People with contradictory or overlapping labels then have to be considered, anyone who uses a label that is usually reserved for women or indicates the user is a woman is now someone I have to consider if I would be attracted to in a vacuum, their gender divorced from who they are, but just like the other examples this is impossible.
You cannot divorce someone's gender from someone's personhood, they morph and form each other indefinitely.
If I were to date someone who is genderfluid between man and woman, would I be able to love them? They are not a non-woman strictly or on a regular basis. If I were only to love a portion of a person, that wouldn't be truly loving them or showing respect for the other portions of them.
In everyday life, maybe they choose to present as a man to others and use traditional masculine pronouns. Would this make it easier for me? Would I be able to feel for them presenting as a non-woman, despite knowing somewhere in them is a woman as well?
If they asked me to refer to them as a woman and use feminine pronouns, would what feeling I do develop for them as a man change or go away? I would hope not. But I couldn't promise them that.
If I were to be with someone who is sometimes a woman or partially a woman, it would feel like an inherently disrespectful effort. I would be degendering a part of them with my affection, no matter how much I didn't want to.
When I feel attraction, it's as a non-woman projecting emotion to someone like myself. I am gay in a very broad sense, I am attracted to what I am and I am many. But I am not everything, and I cannot connect to that other experience genuinely.
Despite this, I don't want terms that I would use for myself cut off from those who are different from me.
Even if I identify as a gay man, a vincian, an achillean, etc etc etc, every man should be able to identify as those terms as well, if they feel it fits them. Because they know themself best. It is not up to me or anyone else to say that a man is not a vincian just because they are also a woman or perhaps also a lesbian. It does not suddenly make them a non-man to be a woman, just as being a woman does not make someone a non-man.
The only thing it does mean, is that that person isn't for me.
Period.
If a man states that he is a gay man/vincian/etc, and includes everyone who I would not personally include in that orientation, that does not mean he labeled himself incorrectly. He just doesn't have the personal restrictions that I have, and that is beautiful.
Things are messy and complicated and it makes finding someone who is right for you even harder if you get stuck on the "correctness" of feelings and labels.
I know where my personal limits are for connecting with someone, and I know what terms speak to me and which ones make me feel hollow. And that's really all that matters.
The second we start policing other people because we insist on thinking we know better than they do, that they're just wrong about what and who they are or that they're identifying in some way to upset others instead of to be happy, we lose.
We lose a part of community that could have fostered understanding and friendships.
We lose trust in others even knowing who we are in fear of rejection from those who should know better.
We lose a part of our sanity in restricting other people's feelings for the sake of artificial "accuracy", as if we could ever "accurately" know their thoughts and feelings better than themself.
And if it continues we will only continue to lose parts of our own autonomy as more things are determined as "inaccurate" and eventually "inappropriate" or "harmful."
There are many issues with the terms non-man and non-woman.
So, so many issues when it comes to succinctly identifying who is and is not such-and-such.
But that doesn't mean we can restrict people from using it for themselves or even for using it as a definition of their own orientation. The only thing we can do is discourage people from unnecessarily policing and restricting others based on flawed understanding of who "can" be a man or woman, and educating them that there are an infinite number of possibilities for someone identifying with gendered labels that may not "make sense" to them.
Humans are made to exist and experience life, not to make sense.
