Interesting, I hadn’t really thought about how I perceive non binary people. Clearly you’re very well read on the topic. I think your comment might be coming out of left field for some people (heh, “left” field also kind of implies a binary - this shit is everywhere), but I appreciate you taking the time to share.
Thank you…and you are not alone. Generally speaking my experience is that people sort of treat non-binary folk as just a third category, like pips on a government questionnaire. A friend of mine started dating a non-binary person and was quite startled when after a few meet ups I asked them where they sat inside the non-binary spectrum. It simply never occurred to him that how we hope others would ideally conceptualize us individually is a way to feel like people actually see us better underneath the obsufcating factors of physical phenotype. Most people just ask for pronouns and figure job done… And that is fine really but any two non-binary people might have very different emotional needs or presentations. Most people just assume something like agender and then stop really thinking about it. Most of us will never bring it up but when someone doesn’t actually know the details of our deal it can be very difficult to feel holistically understood in the way we sort of hope our nearest and dearest would.
But yeah… When you look at non-binary characters in media you see a lot of shapeshifters, aliens and robots. Things where they physically aren’t strictly male or female in a reproductive sense which is more an intersex thing, not a non-binary thing . A lot of our general struggles involve asking for something the human brain isn’t strictly programmed to do in ignoring what they see so a lot of the time these depictions sort of naturally exclude a lot of our everyday struggles by simply being physically provable. So when you hear of another non-binary shapeshifter added to a growing list of shapeshifters the reaction becomes “oh. Another one”. Like you aren’t mad at it but it’s definitely not reinventing the wheel. Disney particularly tends to be like 10 years behind on representation and when that antiquated train finally pulls into the station the media makes a big deal and the attitude is that they are being bold and we’re generally expected to cheer for whatever stale crumbs they throw our way.
And none of this is to say that enby shapeshifters can’t actually be great. Nimona was fantastic rep that dug really deep into trans themes and felt real about misgendering even through it’s fantasy lens that somehow managed to punch waaaay above what you expect for a trope normally the domain of very lazy unexplored surface level cnon-binary" rep. That just finds the least potentially hard to grasp situations to use they/them pronouns in. They managed to go very deep into the weeds…
But most of the time in an ensemble peice these shapeshifters are not really ever explored in a way that really resonates or feels real.
Interesting, I hadn’t really thought about how I perceive non binary people. Clearly you’re very well read on the topic. I think your comment might be coming out of left field for some people (heh, “left” field also kind of implies a binary - this shit is everywhere), but I appreciate you taking the time to share.
Thank you…and you are not alone. Generally speaking my experience is that people sort of treat non-binary folk as just a third category, like pips on a government questionnaire. A friend of mine started dating a non-binary person and was quite startled when after a few meet ups I asked them where they sat inside the non-binary spectrum. It simply never occurred to him that how we hope others would ideally conceptualize us individually is a way to feel like people actually see us better underneath the obsufcating factors of physical phenotype. Most people just ask for pronouns and figure job done… And that is fine really but any two non-binary people might have very different emotional needs or presentations. Most people just assume something like agender and then stop really thinking about it. Most of us will never bring it up but when someone doesn’t actually know the details of our deal it can be very difficult to feel holistically understood in the way we sort of hope our nearest and dearest would.
But yeah… When you look at non-binary characters in media you see a lot of shapeshifters, aliens and robots. Things where they physically aren’t strictly male or female in a reproductive sense which is more an intersex thing, not a non-binary thing . A lot of our general struggles involve asking for something the human brain isn’t strictly programmed to do in ignoring what they see so a lot of the time these depictions sort of naturally exclude a lot of our everyday struggles by simply being physically provable. So when you hear of another non-binary shapeshifter added to a growing list of shapeshifters the reaction becomes “oh. Another one”. Like you aren’t mad at it but it’s definitely not reinventing the wheel. Disney particularly tends to be like 10 years behind on representation and when that antiquated train finally pulls into the station the media makes a big deal and the attitude is that they are being bold and we’re generally expected to cheer for whatever stale crumbs they throw our way.
And none of this is to say that enby shapeshifters can’t actually be great. Nimona was fantastic rep that dug really deep into trans themes and felt real about misgendering even through it’s fantasy lens that somehow managed to punch waaaay above what you expect for a trope normally the domain of very lazy unexplored surface level cnon-binary" rep. That just finds the least potentially hard to grasp situations to use they/them pronouns in. They managed to go very deep into the weeds…
But most of the time in an ensemble peice these shapeshifters are not really ever explored in a way that really resonates or feels real.