The non-binary identity is not beyond criticism, when it's built on deeply binary nonsense

What’s a narcissist to do! After mental health struggles and overdoses, it must be a bit of a bind trying to think what battle to exploit for publicity next. Of course, one could always retreat from the world, sort oneself out and come back when one is ready to be judged by the talents that brought one into the public eye – but where’s the fun in that!

The answer, at least for the 28-year-old troubled American singer Demi Lovato, is to join the growing ranks of people describing themselves as ‘non-binary.’

This means that they do not identify with being exclusively male or female. It also means changing pronouns from he/she/his/her, to they/their.

In this woke era that believes in the socially constructed nature of everything, and where identity is king and rightness is held by the most offended, we’re not only obliged to accept Lovato’s decision, but to congratulate *them for *their bravery. What we absolutely cannot do, ever, is fail to validate a person’s identity. You think it’s daft? That’s your ignorance. You think it’s silly? That’s your hate coming out.

If you can’t say anything nice, you’re supposed to shut your mouth and say nothing. By ‘not nice’, of course, we are not merely talking about being rude and disrespectful, but offering any utterance that tells someone anything other than that it’s okay and no one should be questioning them. So, that leaves us with something to ponder: should we leave non-binary people to it, or is there a cause for concern here?

 

We have always known that sex is biologically determined. In contrast, even before the era of the social constructionists, we always knew that there exist sociological dimensions to gender – there are archetypes for the masculine and the feminine, and there are behaviours associated with each gender.

The point of an archetype isn’t that it describes everyone. Rather, it is a representation. We all know that, individually, we conform to a greater or lesser extent to the different archetypes that exist. Less conforming girls have always been described as tomboys, and less conforming boys as sensitive. We have terminology, employed in everyday parlance, to acknowledge the reality of a spectrum.

To invent a trendy new minority out of feeling distant from an archetype is to reject the labels of male and female based on an understanding of what these mean that’s far narrower than that which society at large uses. In that sense, it’s a deeply regressive outlook, atomising and making abnormal that which is completely normal.

But then, in the era of identity politics, being normal is boring, for one’s real power to influence what can and can’t be said rests in one’s ability to claim powerlessness. Once anything becomes a matter of identity, it automatically becomes immune to challenge. If it’s how people feel, then it must not only be respected as a matter of courtesy, but it must be affirmed as true and valid. To do anything else is not only to disagree with an argument, but to fundamentally question the very essence of who a person is – and it’s prejudiced by default.

 

The problem, though, is that identities are built not only upon inner perceptions, but a sense of how we relate to others and how others relate to us. The non-binary identity, in confining male and female in a way that society does not do, is built upon refutation of a binary that doesn’t actually exist.

By claiming that rejection of the binary makes one non-binary, non-binaries are also able to appropriate the scientific evidence for gender spectrum. By failing to distinguish a phenomenon from their own personal choice about how to express its presence in their lives, they are able to falsely claim that non-binary is both an identity, and demonstrable scientific fact.

Whilst, therefore, a person should be able to call themselves what they want, and whilst it’s polite to refer to people in the terms they prefer where possible, there is no entitlement to affirmation of an identity that is, in fact, built on a misunderstanding of societal perceptions. However attached the label might be to people’s personal feelings and sense of who they are, the non-binary identity is not beyond criticism, when it’s built on deeply binary nonsense.