Queer TBR Pile Review: They/Them/Their: A Guide to Nonbinary & Genderqueer Identities, by Eris Young

I’ve decided to add a new subsection to my TBR Pile reviews: Queer books. I’m Queer, myself, as well as Autistic, so I choose to use those words to describe myself and my way of categorising books. Don’t like it? Leave.

Or you could stay and learn something?

Anyway, on to the review.

Mum, Dad, don’t read if you don’t want to know some stuff about me.

In this insightful and long-overdue book, Eris Young explores what it’s like to live outside of the gender binary and how it can impact on one’s relationships, sense of identity, use of language and more.

Drawing on the author’s own experiences as a nonbinary person, as well as interviews and research, it shares common experiences and challenges faced by those who are nonbinary, and what friends, family and other cisgender people can do to support them. Breaking down misconceptions and providing definitions, the history of nonbinary identities and gender-neutral language, and information on healthcare, this much-needed guide is for anyone wanting to fully understand nonbinary and genderqueer identities.

My Review

Young covers current issues with non-binary and genderqueer identities, the historical situation and matters regarding healthcare and the law. The main problem is that society treats sex and gender as the same thing, and both as binary. For people whose sex and gender match up, that’s all well and good, but when they don’t it’s a problem. And of course neither sex nor gender are binary – intersex and non-binary people exist. Humans like to classify things and the either/or insistence written into our laws and languages make it difficult to think outside of those limiting boxes.

This book mainly focuses on the Anglo-phone world – what I like to think of as the Anglo-sphere of Britain and Ireland, and those colonial states where English is the dominant language and laws and traditions are based on English Common Law and traditions, such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The author has experience navigating the medical systems of the US and Scotland, and draws on research predominantly from the UK and US, although their interviewees came from a mix of ethnicities. They do however discuss the different conceptions of gender through time and in different places outside of Europe and North America. People are so steeped in the idea that how we currently think about gender is eternal and universal that they forget to ask how people conceptualised gender in different times and places, if they even think about gender at all.

Because of the binary sex/gender paradigm, access to healthcare for nonbinary and genderqueer people, who may have no interest in transitioning from their assigned gender at birth to ‘the opposite’, but still want some gender affirming treatment, is incredibly difficult. Getting access to treatment requires convincing gatekeepers that you are ‘trans enough’. Clinicians may not accept the reality of genders outside the binary, or be entrenched in the ‘you have to go from this to this on this path’ mindset of treatment pathways. Nonbinary people often have to lie about their identity – claiming binary trans identity rather than a non-binary/fluid identity in order to be taken seriously. Forcing people to present against their identity and causing distress is cruel and unnecessary.

The current accessibility of Gender Clinics is deplorable, with clinicians ignorant with entrenched mindsets, and clinics under-staffed and hard to get to. Even getting therapy with a counsellor who knows what being non-binary means and understands that treatment helps the gender dysphoria is really uncommon. It’s a bit better if you go private, if you can afford £100 – £300 for therapy each session. I can’t. I tried bringing up my gender issues during food therapy and with respect to being autistic but it was always pushed away as not the issue. Yeah, being autistic means I’m more likely to be trans or gender non-conforming. and some of my food issues are to do with not wanting to be seen as a woman. I am not a woman.

When dealing with GPs for conditions not related to gender stuff, it can be hard to be accepted – people report fear in going to the doctor because they will be misgendered, their name ignored, outed by by staff in front of other patients or just treated as a nuisance. I have in the past brought up my wish to have a hysterectomy because of the pain and health damaging aspects of my periods; I should have also told the doctor that periods cause me dysphoria when the coincide with agender and masc times.

I wasn’t allowed a hysto, but going on the progesterone-only pill has helped a bit. Telling my admittedly lovely doctor about the dysphoria would have meant admitting to others that I was genderfluid when I was still grappling with it myself and risking facing my doctor’s refusal to treat me or stopping my referral to the Autism Assessment Service for assessment (at the time the assessment service required a GP or Community Mental Health Team referral). Like ‘Fat Broken Arm Syndrome’, ‘Trans broken arm syndrome’ is a situation where whatever you go to the doctor for, it’s always brought back to being fat/autistic/trans (delete whichever doesn’t apply).

The author goes on to discuss the law as it applies in the UK. There are two relevant acts – the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010. They are only relevant to people going through medical transition, and in the case of the GRA2004, require medical diagnosis of dysphoria and for people to live as their ‘asserted’ gender for two years before documentation can be obtained as well as the stipulation that the people will present as the ‘new’ gender until death. For people who don’t have significant or any dysphoria, who change their gender fluidly or for whom the binary is irrelevant, this presents obvious obstacles.

The focus is on making trans people as close to their cisgender counterparts as possible, erasing trans visibility. The medicalisation of trans people falls in line with this too – the assumption that trans women should fit the ideals of femininity and that trans men should fit in with ideals of masculinity. It’s crap. There’s no universal way to be a man or a woman, everyone is different and expresses themselves differently, or they should be allowed to be so, without being forced to fit a box marked ‘male’ or ‘female’ just o pander to the comfort of the ignorant and afraid, the misogynist and conservative. The GRA is outdated. There have been consultations on improving the GRA this year, but the government decided to ignore the overwhelming response that it should acknowledge genders other than ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and that a gender certificate should be issued on self-declaration. Maybe, one day we’ll get the acts supposed to protect vulnerable people from discrimination up to date.

The Equality Act 2010 doesn’t protect people from discrimination for being trans/nonbinary, only those going through medical gender reassignment. So I could be assaulted in the street for presenting masculine on a particularly masc day and it wouldn’t be a hate crime. It would still be assault but only if I was physically assaulted, not if I had insults thrown at me. I probably wouldn’t (haven’t) report to the police, and as Young shows, many people don’t, because they are ridiculed, have to answer intrusive questions about their genitalia or are disbelieved. Or fear they will be.

My conclusions: people are bloody idiots with closed minds. I saw a lot of parallel between the way Autistic people are treated by the medical world and how non-binary people are treated. Anything out of the strict norm for our culture is scary and must be pathologised, and forced into the norm by whatever means necessary – we must pass as neurotypical and a binary gender, even if it damages us. Now we’re speaking up and building our own communities the backlash is building from those who traditionally have the power because they’re afraid to lose it to those of us in the different communities.

And this book is really good. It covers the essentials, provides thoughtful questions for consideration, advice for clinicians, and lots of resources, as well as being fully referenced. Highly recommended.