(no subject)

One of my dear friends is like - my problem is thinking about gender in binary terms and not embracing the possibility of being non-binary. They say - I don't need to be either the most manly man whose completely transitioned, or re-identified as a lesbian separatist who's very into being a woman, I can be something in between.

These are true things, and i think they-re right. But also

I think the idea of being non binary is unappealing to me because it's a way of noticing and accepting gender discomfort rather than "fixing it"?

I don't like experiencing genderweird all the time; it's distressing and strange and alienating, both in terms of being alienated from my own body, being alienated from histories/communities/identities where I feel at home in one place, being alienated from the world and others in it. Being either Definitely A Man or Definitely A Woman is really comforting: an end to that rootlessness and foreign-ness, a coming-home to something permanent and fixed.

I am sure that many non binary people do experience their gender as a comfort and a home and a certain, "right" thing; I don't want to cut off the possibility that this can be a complete, permanent, destination gender for people.

But to hear someone say "you seem conflicted about your gendered desires and have done for years now, perhaps you need to accept you're non-binary?" kinda makes me feel cut off from my own longing to be a fixed thing. Like, if being conflicted and feeling strange about gender is what it means to be non-binary, then I don't accept that as where I want to be. I'd like...a pathway to diminishing that strangeness, please.