Three Two One: Flags

I had a discussion not so very long ago about the idea of being "non-binary"-- NB or "enbee". A friend told me that she was beginning to regard herself as non-binary, and was considering coming out to her friends and family. I of course will fully support my friend in whatever she does about this, but I, as an aging roué, am very much out of the loop on just what NB is and what one does as a non-binary person.

My understanding is that NB is a gender identity, that it's an identity where someone doesn't identify as either "male" or "female". Well, fine. But what exactly does that mean? Is being NB a way of saying that you're able to move back and forth between social identities as M or F, or that you identify as something that's neither? Functionally, how does it differ from being bisexual or pansexual?

I spent a great deal of my academic life studying nationalism and the idea of nationality--- how nationalities are created and how they define themselves. How do "imagined communities" (Benedict Anderson's famous phrase about nationalities) define themselves? So, yes, any view I have of non-binary / NB people is going to be based on nationality studies, and I have no idea if that'll be a valid sort of comparison.

Any community that forms needs its markers. It needs criteria for who's inside and who's excluded. Any community needs a Secret Handshake or its own On Thursdays We Wear Pink rituals. It needs ways for members to find one another, and it needs ways to separate itself from outsiders. The rituals, the common symbols, help build and cement identity as well. It's more complicated that just thinking that any group creates its own uniforms, though of course they do. And the group's markers need to be recognized as identity markers by the outside world. There's that, too. 

Social identity requires social presentation. That's clear. If you want people to see you as a Serb, you use Cyrillic lettering and you go to an Orthodox church. Believing yourself to be something (anything!) doesn't give you any social position-- other Serbs and the rest of society have to see you as that as well.

Of course the markers are likely to be arbitrary and often trivial. A left ear piercing versus a right ear piercing. Handkerchief colors in hip pockets. Lapel pins. An in-group argot (see, e.g., Polari). Sleeve buttons on a blazer that actually unbutton. Saying zed instead of zee. The markers are arbitrary and often trivial, but all they have to do is mark out some kind of distinction. They give a new community a way of saying we do this, not that. It's a way of saying we're this, not that...and this is how you tell.  Class, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, sexual interest/kink-- the point is to have a distinction.

So...what are the NB markers? What's the checklist for new NB community members? I know that there's an NB flag that can be flown on Pride days, but a community needs more than that. What do you do-- socially, as presentation --to let others know you belong to this group? I asked my friend that question and she was perplexed. Does everyone else need to know? she asked. Can't I just tell the people who need to know?

My first response was that of course you need public, social markers. If you want to have political and social leverage-- a key reason for having  a community --then you need to find ways to make members feel like they have things in common and that they have ways to let each other (and outsiders!) know that here's a community whose interests need to be addressed. A flag is a place to start, but a community will always end up creating a checklist. 

Which brings up the idea of an NB Checklist. What does a potential NB person do, wear, sound like in order to create a distinction. Social distinctions are by definition socially constructed-- arbitrary, often trivial, but often of key importance. 

We're talking about creating stereotypes, yes. But that's part of community building as well. Humans create uniforms for themselves. 

So I will ask anyone out over the aether who reads this... What are the Official NB Identity Markers? This is a web age, and some website, some listicle, some Reddit  board has created checklists for this: clothing styles, bands, slang, accessories and accoutrements.  There's the equivalent of the Official Preppy Handbook out there somewhere on the web. 

We'll get to the other discussion here-- what being NB means in terms of what one does as NB --later. I'll need to discuss with my friend how taking up a new identity affects her sex life or her styles of romance. Does it make any difference at all? She's always been bi as long as I've known her-- will being NB make any functional difference? What's the connection here between gender identity and sex life? 

Well, I'll get to that discussion later. Right now I'll see about what's on the Official NB Checklist.