The Feminist to Nonbinary Pipeline

Why are so many heterosexual women identifying as nonbinary?

There are many different reasons why people choose to adopt a nonbinary label. It's a complicated philosophy with various entry points.

For me, it was mainly due to being gender nonconforming as a kid, chasing the fantasy of "gender euphoria," and being surrounded by people in college who pushed the idea that nonbinary was the future of the LGBT community.

I've spoken and written about my personal experiences with this before.

What I did not expect when I entered the "queer" scene in college was the number of feminine heterosexual women who identified as nonbinary. Everything about them seemed pretty "binary" to me.  

Since leaving gender ideology, I have seen a lot of people in both the feminist and conservative spheres claiming that these women are narcissists trying to "appropriate" gayness for themselves in order to feel special.

I disagree.

These women aren't calculated attention seekers. They're guilty feminists.

The feminine straight women who identified as some flavor of nonbinary when I was in college were all the same: hyper-progressive feminists from equally progressive families. They saw men as "oppressors," and femininity (especially liking makeup or dresses) and heterosexuality were considered inherently harmful. They believed that women who dated men contributed to the "patriarchy" by being gender-conforming.

They often subscribed to the feminist blank slate theory, claiming that gender (behavior typically associated with one sex or the other) is entirely socially constructed and that every aspect of femininity is a "stereotype" taught to women by men. They thought any woman who enjoyed any part of femininity had been "brainwashed" to enjoy things men designed to be bad for them.

During my brief time as a radical feminist after leaving gender ideology, I came across quite a few political lesbians who believed exactly this.

Political lesbians are heterosexual women who have convinced themselves that dating men is immoral. They think heterosexuality has an inherently oppressive power dynamic due to men being "oppressors" in society. Their collectivist thinking leads them to conclude that any woman who decides to sleep with a man is holding all women back and undermining the feminist movement.

Instead, they choose to exclusively participate in relationships with women, whether platonic or sexual, although many of these women choose to be celibate.

I learned from speaking with these women that there are two main mindsets for participating in the practice.

The first belief is that sexual orientation is a social construct like gender. If women are taught to be attracted to men the same way they are "brainwashed" into femininity, they can undo that socialization by dating women.

The other set of beliefs is that sexual orientation is innate, but the action of dating men is still immoral. In this way of thinking, they can't help who they are attracted to, but they can refuse to act on it.

Doesn't this sound familiar?

I left the ideology when I realized how similar much of their rhetoric was to religious conservatism in how it thinks about gender and sexuality.

Many religious conservatives believe that either 1. homosexuality is a result of your upbringing, and you can unlearn it, or 2. that homosexuality is innate, but the choice to act on it is a sin.

This religious view of sexual orientation and gender through a moral lens is why many girls abandon second-wave feminism. They have demonized femininity and heterosexuality so much that some girls feel guilty about who they are or love.

They may have tried being gay or more masculine to fit into a mold of what they think a "good feminist woman" should be. But like young butch lesbians who are miserable when they pretend to be feminine straight girls, it was a suppression of who they were and what they truly wanted.

Women who do not want to turn to political lesbianism instead turn to trans-identification.

I believe that many of these women would probably identify as men in an attempt to be gay men if it weren't for the fact that they think men are oppressors. Instead, they turn to a non-binary identification. This way, they can still claim to be "oppressed" without feeling wrong about their relationships and gender expression.

They don't have to see their boyfriends as "oppressors" if they can claim their boyfriend is also "queer." Their femininity is now no longer "oppressive" but "nonconforming" since they are no longer women (at least in their eyes).

Due to their hypocrisy, I have distanced myself from many aspects of modern progressive movements. They are not about encouraging people to be themselves but pushing people into molds, similar to what they claim to be against. Radical feminism isn't allowing all women to be themselves but simply shifting the goalposts to idealize a different kind of woman.

When there are feminine girls who are afraid of being who they are because they are scared of betraying the movement, the movement has a problem.

As much as I dislike many aspects of third-wave liberal feminism, this is one of the ways that third-wave feminism is actually better.

Liberal feminists believe that any decision a woman makes is feminist as long as it goes along with the belief that women should have equal rights to men. They don't claim that you have to fit one specific mold of what a woman should be to be a good woman. Radical feminism does. 

Until feminism teaches women to embrace who they are as individuals instead of members of a collective, they will continue to lose women to the gender ideology cult. 

Genuinely empowered women will go where they can be themselves and be appreciated. For some women, gender ideology is better at this than feminism.

And that is a problem.