Non-Binary is not a Revolutionary Black Feminist Concept

Stop Playin!

Photo Credit: GoMag.com

Within the past few years, I have seen a massive surge in the sheer volume of black women who identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns.  

Years ago, I conceptualized the term ‘non-binary’ as something that was exclusively reserved, and used by, gender non-conforming gay and lesbian people. I thought it was a term that such people called themselves, when they felt truly and deeply androgynous, and when they were read by society as such. 

Pronoun-sharing became a thing within the LGBT community, a practice that was, of course, birthed by white folks, and that later trickled down to black gay and lesbian circles. For a long time, I saw pronoun-sharing as something only gay people do, to signal to other gay people that they’re in the community. 

The spread and mutation of this ideology happened dis-orientingly quickly. The first confusion for me, happened when I saw straight people signaling their pronouns—something that white libs began doing to “show allyship”, but to me, just muddied the waters. The second confusion, happened when I began to see heterosexual and gender-conforming women and men—identifying as they/them, screaming about how they don’t owe anyone androgyny ¡lmao!

But I was genuinely shocked to see black women—many of whom were not only identifying as nonbinary but “reclaiming” queer identity—all while being feminine-presenting, some even having whole husbands, white boyfriends, and procreating…

And turning their neo-identities and pronouns into this whole new wave of black feminist, intellectual thought. Creating Afrocentric theories out of it, publishing accredited work on it, as if we’re in the Harlem Renaissance or some shit.

I just can’t!

So I wanted to take a moment to share some of the common themes I’ve seen, heard, and read from such black women as to why they do this, and my take on it.

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• “Blackness is inherently Queer”

This is the most common one. “Black People are inherently Queer under white supremacy.” ✊🏾“Black Women have never been considered real women.”✊🏾

First of all, let’s be clear about something:

The term Queer is not ours to reclaim. Historically, the word “queer” was used as a slur against gay people—especially homosexual white men. 

In this context, here’s what the word Queer was not used to mean:

Weird, different, kinky, someone who enjoys dressing as a furry mascot, pedophilia, daring to be unique or unconventional, a person with unnatural hair color, a woman who doesn’t shave her armpits, a woman who works to attain gender equality with her husband, a black woman,

Or any of the other hundred random ways people now use it for, in the vapid spirit of “reclamation”. 

It simply meant that you were homosexual. And it was used in the process of outcasting and violence, upon discovery of homosexual tendencies or behavior. You know…real homophobia. The stuff that actual gay people still deal with in most parts of the world, outside of (and even inside) Western “qwEer” bubbles. 

There were plenty of other words ‘they’ used to describe black women as a group, but queer was not one of them, even when naming bi and lesbian black women.

So there is nothing to reclaim. 

Back in the early 2010’s, when black women were using the term ‘queer’ as an umbrella term for being same-sex attracted, I could understand. I used it that way for myself, too. It was cool. But after seeing how it’s gotten out of pocket over the years, after thinking about it more deeply, I have distanced myself from both the word, and the huge, dysfunctional family it convenes as a ‘community’.

This is just bogus, y’all.

As for claiming the word “Queer” as a blanket descriptor for all black people, I really don’t like how this implies and further reinforces whiteness as the norm. Academics love to use the term “queering” and “black bodies” (don’t get me started on this!) when really, they are reinforcing the same paradigm they wish to break free from. 

Whiteness is not in fact, the global norm. White folks are less than 10% of the human population, despite being over-represented in the media, and hoarding the Earth’s resources. Black people, in all of our cultural diversity, all of our humanity, are not “weird” for simply existing as we are.

It’s true that black women were not historically considered “women” in the same sense as white women. Under colonialism and slavery, we have always worked. We have always been providers for our families-which were roles preserved for men, in middle and upper class white families.

Black women have also been masculinized for our dark skin and physique, even if our beauty has been coveted, on the low.

Prior to that, our history has been muddled, but it is clear that the gendered roles we occupied in pre-colonial African tribes were different than the ones European women had. With that said, in this country, we have always been unmistakeably considered women, and we were treated—and mistreated as such. We were bought and sold as women. We were raised as women. We lived and died as women. We could not escape being women, even if we were differently positioned than our white counterparts.

These roles that we were forced into, these ways in which we were projected upon—do not make us “queer”. 

Let’s think about this.

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• Manhood & Womanhood Were Invented by White Colonialists. Let’s Fuck it up!

I won’t even get into this too deeply, because I feel like this is so basic it racks my brain. However, if you’re curious, I have written more in-depth about this concept in another article, here.

For anyone who may be wondering, please look up the definition of the words: man, woman, male, and female. 

The definition has expanded since 2020, to include “anyone who identifies as such”, a dangerous addendum—but the original definition is based on human biology. Manhood and Womanhood simply names what is there. It is not a concept, a spiritual feeling, or a creation of something non-existent. 

We are animals—apes—who reproduce, and we have names for biological sex, whether we actually have children or not. 

Sex is observed at birth, not ‘assigned’. The only time there is any speculation and ‘assignment’ is in the extremely rare case that someone is intersex, which is where the term ‘AFAB’ (assigned female at birth) comes from. This is often used when someone wants to use jumbled up language to describe women, in the spirit of ‘inclusivity’.

I am tired of seeing how people appropriate the medical terminology of sex “assignment at birth” from the intersex community, as though intersex people are somehow living proof that the categories male and female are not real, as though intersex people cannot be definitively male or female and are therefore touted as physical manifestations of non-binary truth, and as though girlhood and boyhood are imposed on all of humanity by oppressive white doctors. The victim narrative in the “queer” community is strong, with a very warped concept of empowerment. 

I’ve also heard the idea that the words “they/them” fuck up the Colonizer’s language.

Well, that’s a lofty idea! I wish liberation were that easy, but sadly it is not. 

They/them pronouns are the most linguistically tongue-tying, inaccessible form of language mutation I’ve ever seen in my life. 

Most human beings in this day and age who have taken on the task of learning to use they/them pronouns, have had to practice it, train themselves to get used to it, and re-wire their speech pattern to make room for the usage of “they” as a singular pronoun, when either speaking, or listening to someone else’s speech. By Ye Olde English standards, it might be grammatically correct, but it is simply not how we have collectively been trained to speak.

It is something that only certain people, within certain circles understand and practice, and it is now widely positioned as language orthodoxy, which means it is considered “the right way” to speak. It is imposed on others, to a fault.

If you don’t twist your mouth to accommodate for queer language, you are looked upon as problematic, regressive, stupid, and uneducated, at best. I don’t know what bleeds white and colonialist, more than that. 

Oh, that’s right—nothing. 

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• Non-Binary People Existed in Africa. Our Tribes Were Gender-Fluid and Trans!

Again, for my mental—I can’t go too deep with this one, but I will say this: 

Now that I no longer believe in ‘true’ transgenderism, now that I see it as the identity that it is, rather than an innate metaphysical state of being that the everyday commoner is policed into worshipping—I also no longer believe that someone can “feel” inherently androgynous, or “in between” sexes.

Because, I don’t believe that simply existing as man or woman comes with an inherent feeling, set of personality traits, preference for pink or blue, skirts or trousers, cooking vs. construction…you get the picture. 

Being a man or woman doesn’t mean anything other than what it simply is on a human biological level. Everything else that we assign to it, is purely cultural. Even the dichotomy of skirts vs. trousers I just named—is deeply cultural.

And in any case-there is nothing revolutionary about placing yourself in a separate category from other women, saying you’re ‘not like other girls’ just because you don’t fit—or don’t want to fit— a Westernized gender stereotype of what a woman is.

The word and concept of non-binary, is from white people. 

Academics, and privileged, lofty headcases, to be exact.

Black people did not invent the word, or the concept. It is white. We are not reclaiming any roots or origins by claiming nonbinary identity. We can free ourselves from that lie. 

As I’ve said before, the idea that ancient Africans didn’t have any concept of who is male and who is female, is not only bogus, but it’s deeply patronizing, and offensive. 

Gendered roles have existed since the beginning of time, and they have varied from culture to culture. And where did those gender roles come from? An acknowledgement of sex, and our reproductive roles. It came from millions of years of evolutionary programming, to discern who is who and what it means, to ensure and optimize our survival as a species.  

Some cultures had designated roles and positions for males or females who they perceived to be gender non-conforming, yes. Some cultures may have been more accepting of homosexuality, or permitted women to have wives under special circumstances, yes. Some cultures may have been matrilineal, or held women in certain positions of power that were not available to European women.

African have certainly not always adopted the specific flavor of patriarchy that they were infected with by Christian missionaries. 

But blanketly conflating Native & global South’s diverse cultural customs and gender roles with the Eurocentric concept of transgender and nonbinary is just wrong.

It romanticizes these cultures without holistic knowledge and education of them, and it’s done with the agenda of forced teaming, to paint a picture that trans/nonbinary is something ancient, deeply rooted in blackness and some intangible truth of the human spirit, when it is not. 

Following this lie, is just following the herd.

Stop playing.