For many non-binary people, their gender is not a third category or something in middle but a wholesale rejection of gender boxes, they refuse to be categorized as men and women all together. Objection to such identities is mainly an attempt to desperately holding onto gender binary. Desperately indeed, genitals, bones, official gender certificates, chromosomes, brain lobes; such people search for something, something they can find so they can finally tell what "really" non-binary people are. In reality, they are just non-binary people. But the sensible thing of just accepting them as they are is too hard. Why, why is this desperation?
Apart from maintaining a patriarchal system, people often think they are entitled to easily identify someone. Androgynous look, intersex genitals and even singular "they" pronoun creates a similar frustration. They need to know, you must belong one of the pre-existing groups in their head, they would rather get comically angry about someone having neo-pronouns , start spamming attack helicopter memes and whine about "mental illnesses" over just letting them be, after all it doesn't actually affect them in any real way but they have been conditioned to think otherwise for a long time. Even queer communities have a problem about treating non-binary people as "man-lite" or "woman-lite" or may implicitly demand to know the genitals of non-binary people so to know whether that non-binary person "fits" in their sexual orientation or they can know they are more comfortable around said non-binary person; as if any of that is non-binary people's problem.
"Genderfluid" is the one of the favourite hate-boners among reactionaries for this reason. "So like, you wear different clothes? That's what everyone does snowflake?" It can be also seen, for example, in the confusion a trans man wearing feminine clothing but still insisting on being called "man" creates. The reasoning is clear: It doesn't change any permanent change in appearance or behavior, it does not make any difference from my perspective, your label is useless as an identifier for me, thus it only breaks my pre-existing classifications and should not exist. It doesn't occur that gender/sexuality labels might serve to describe one's experiences, their struggles, the way they find meaning out of their lives, their feelings --oh no-- rather than a signaling other people what group they are in. It is frequently ignored one might choose a label as a descriptor rather than identifier.
What does "non-binary woman" mean? For the person, it probably means a lot that they are not just "woman" or "non-binary" For the listener, it probably just means they will use certain pronouns on them. "Demisexual" might functionally mean "no casual sex" to you but it is a very useful concept that explains a lot of inner feelings. Why someone prefers "pansexual" over "bisexual" when their meaning is so similar? Because it feels better better somehow. People don't use neo-pronouns to feel different, but they don't have to justify anyone doing so, it just feels alright.
Such identities are shown as examples of hyper-individualism, how young people do anything to feel different, how they don't know about "real" queer culture, how they are so harmful because they create more boxes so on and so on. This could not be opposite from the truth. The actual crude individualism is the entitlement to be able to put in your boxes, to think other people's feelings must make sense to you to be relevant, to mock labels because they are "micro" and useless to you, to reject further explanations because they might shatter your categories, to demand other people must declare the groups they are in for your convenience. It's a brilliant expression of Western individualism; the individual is good but only in the right brands.
From POV of someone who is not obsessed with other people's identities, the right thing to do is simple: Just accept people as they are and move on with your life. However, if you are really used to feel entitled to easily categorize people and build your worldviews on top of that, it can be surprisingly hard thing to do. When it comes down to it though, they can really stop caring about so much, I honestly believe people who routinely make fun of asexual people actually talk more about asexuality more than asexuals. Just let people be asexual, agender, demi-girl, genderfluid, a very specific sexuality. It is really okay not to understand everything perfectly. We must always remember that universe will be always larger than we will ever know, the things that will make little sense will outweigh the things you can understand. Obsession over identifiers will gain us nothing. Let's be humble and listen to descriptors more instead. This does not mean everyone is acting on good faith, like some anti-trans cis women calling themselves "trans women" or attempts to brand pedophilia as a sexuality but they are not hard to detect. Someone being "panromantic agender asexual" literally does not harm anyone but clearly makes that person feel a little better, so it is net positive for the world, for the sake of anything you love let's not recreate patriarchal behaviour in queer spaces.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.
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