This is a conversation between Anna and Rae. They talk about discovering the term non binary for the first time, they talk about navigating gendered healthcare services as disabled and non binary people that don't fit the two available boxes. They talk about the binary systems and social constructs that oppress us all. They talk about quantum physics and how it affirms non binary-ness. They talk about the you, the me, the we and the perceived other.

Chloe: The term non binary is a relatively new word, but non binary people have always existed. When did you first hear the word non binary? And what did it mean to you?

Anna: I really vividly remember this. And because I didn't, I didn't have the language for myself and I was masking. I think I was masking like my queerness, I was masking my chronic illness for so long. Anyway, I remember vividly where I was in bed, reading on my phone and my flat about must be about eight years ago. And I read this term, it wasn't the non binary at the time, it was something like new to neutral, or like neutrois, but Neutrois was like the term that was being used.

And I just remember that, like landing all of the atoms in my body and just going, that's me. The first time I've read a description of myself, and there's a word for it. And it just it really changed everything. And I think it made me a better person. It made me a more empathetic person, because I think I hadn't understood the value of language to different marginalised groups until that point. And yeah, it just it totally changed everything. And I've very tentatively started to use that. I can't really pronounce the word thank goodness, non binary is now the word.

I started to use it a little bit and and it was just lovely to have a word to explain the word to people and then start to see, you know, like my best mates kind of going. Oh, yeah, that's, that's perfect for you. That's great. And that meant everything like that. That was just, yeah, a really beautiful thing. So it's, it's a very specific memory for me.

Rae: Yeah, mine was. So I was brought up Roman Catholic, and went to a very gendered all girls, Roman Catholic, ex convent school, and section 28. Of course, so weren't being taught any of the stuff about being trans or being, like queer. So I was really late in starting to pick up any of this stuff and finding my people. And it wasn't for me, it was in 2014, I started to play roller derby in Bristol. And I didn't want to be on the girls team, because I wasn't a girl. And I always felt like I wasn't a girl. And I felt like a bad feminist for not being a girl. But I'd never found the word. They explained it. And I knew that trans women existed. And I knew that trans men existed. But that wasn't me. But I wasn't a girl.

And I was trying to explain this when they were like, you're going to be on the ladies team. And I was like, but I want to be on the men's team. I don't want to be on the ladies team. And they're like, but you can't be on the men's team because you're not a man. And I was like, but I'm not a girl. And somebody mentioned non binary and my head exploded because it was like, Okay, there's a word, there's a word for people that don't feel like there any of those things. And it led me down the path of, okay, non binary. Okay, agenda. Okay, auto agenda. For a lot of autistic people. We don't understand social constructs, we don't understand things that society have made up in order to put us into boxes in order to make sense of the world.

So awesome agenda is basically that I've never been able to I've never understood why you needed to be separated in terms of sex in terms of gender in terms of what you're allowed to do in your life based on what genitals you had at birth. And it's that kind of what Autigender is around not understanding the social constructs that people have placed on you. I always knew that I wanted to play with boys toys and was told I wasn't allowed because I was a girl and that I should play with dolls and that I should have a pink bike and not a blue bike and I'm not allowed to go to scouts I have to go to brownies or whatever, never understood it. And then leading on from being realised finding non binary as a term finding a gender as a term starting to understand that I was neurodivergent and being late diagnosed has all come to the word Autigender, which just was the word that sounds really funny.

Anna: To me, like the big wall of binary most comes up the most in healthcare settings, which is sort of it's sort of ironic given that, you know, science by biological science tells us that there is this great spectrum of sex and chromosomes and all the things. And I find it I don't know about you Rae, I, I find it really difficult because I'm going in with as someone with chronic illness and disability, which is, which is a term I'm sort of newly inhabiting for myself. And you're already faced with, sort of, often medical trauma being gaslit, or the chronic illness not being understood or, or associated with women's problems.

So I have MECFS, one of the things I have, and that has always been traditionally put down as like hysterical women, all of that stuff. And so it's really interesting, because you go in, I go in already sort of feeling like I've got to fight a little bit to be understood and accepted. And then, when there's no space for me to identify my gender, or I’m misgendered, it's like another layer. And I find myself sort of bargaining going well, for me right now, today, it's more important that I try and get heard for like, how shitty I'm feeling physically. And I'm going to leave that gender fight for another day. But it shouldn't have to be like that. And, yeah, it's it really sort of blows my mind.

And now that I'm sort of hitting that age of like, maybe Peri menopausal, I'm having to also access all of those very gendered sort of services. And I'm really fighting against internally what it means to be ageing in a body, that people perceive things about me. And things are happening hormonally and like, at odds with my gender identity. So it's a real complex loop. That's where the hardest walls come up, and I sort of get exhausted, trying to work out how to navigate it.

Rae: Yeah, I completely understand, like, you have to choose which battle you're going to fight. And a lot of the time, gender is the one that I just leave on the backburner, usually, because the thing that I have to fight hardest is about the fact that I'm fat. And that's the thing that I'm gonna go in and fight the most like, this week, I had a really fun day out to the hospital. And they, I always dread the intake forms, because it always asks if your sex is male or female. And then the title is always Mr. Mrs. Ms, whatever. And that's binary as well.

All of this stuff is it's just a huge wall of pink that you have to fight whenever you're trying to do health care. And it's always, you know, healthcare hasn't changed, it's, it's still so binary, I'd much rather stuff that was medically correct, and uses the official language, but they don't like to use that with you, because they think you won't understand rather than assuming that you'll understand and then reducing as they get to know you, and I'd much prefer them to just assume that you know what you're talking about. Because as somebody that's disabled, you become a specialist in your field. So much is withheld from us for being non binary, because they blame non binary as the cause as opposed to it just being the system. That's the problem. None of the laws work for non binary people, you can't change your gender to non binary on your passport, you can't change your gender, because the only options are male and female.

Anna: The unbelievable variety of sex in like biology and and in the natural world, like it's so not binary, it's, it's kind of, it's amazing. It's wonderful. From a physics point of view, yeah, totally. Like, there aren't really distinct things that like have labels. The whole universe is about relationships between things. What I love about quantum physics is that it says you can't you can't precisely describe and observe a thing and go, this is exactly the thing, this is where it is, this is the direction it's heading in. Like it's, it's all about just sort of things in relation with each other and probabilities of things happening. And then you get this sort of beautifully Possible and, and sort of myriad universe.

And these like really dividing labels just disappear. Because it just it's just doesn't exist at a physics level. And so yeah, I fundamentally affirms my non binaryness and so it's like, well, of course I'm a physicist then. Yeah. Which by the way when I did it, and you know, as a back then as well As a female presenting person, I suppose or what people were perceiving me as. And before I had the language for being non binary, there was there still are so few girls in physics and it's like, it's the same thing. It's like you don't get encouraged to do that if you've got a certain set of genitalia. What a nonsense. Why can't you think about the universe if you've got a vagina?

Rae: Haha I need that on a  t shirt? Yeah.

Anna: We are all totally entangled with each other. And it's, it's a nonsense and of violence and is damaging her try and, and not be entangled in it in a caring and supportive way. And so yeah, I think the support that does exist is kind of underground and unseen. And, and there's still loads of ways in which we're not supported. And that's because people are sort of deliberately kind of breaking that mycelium network that could could and should be there in a way that we are doing it with nature as well, I guess and sort of bucking up as well. Like we're, we're, we're, we're separating ourselves from the planet and from each other in a way that's like, really unhelpful, and these mushrooms are all they're just going look, this is a really cool way of doing it. Be like us. So yeah, I sort of I love it as a, as a as an aspirational sort of systems way of thinking about how we could be

Rae: Some people have stopped fighting because they've chosen to, to only get to a certain period and then stop, like, use the example of disabled people. It upsets me when people say Don't call me disabled, don't call yourself disabled, because I am disabled. And you're probably going to be disabled too. But you're too scared to admit that everybody will be disabled at some point, like, even if it's a minor disabling event, or in the future, as you get older, you become disabled, everybody becomes disabled, it isn't. It isn't a ‘them and us’ it isn't.You've got to be intersectional. Like, just because you're not trans, it doesn't mean people in your life aren't trans. Just because just because you've got marriage rights doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep fighting for non binary marriage rights and disabled marriage rights. And because it's all intersectional. And it's all linked to fighting against capitalism. Anybody fighting on anything is fighting for everything. So I think that's it's the same fight. It's all the same fight.

Anna: Yeah, and the pandemic has shown that more than anything, isn't it? It's like, if you there's a sort of, there's a narrative around like, oh, well, it's fine, because like, only the disabled people are dying. It's like, wow, really?, but actually, it affects the whole of society. And I just, that's, that's what I sort of keep grappling with, like you say it so well, about the intersectionality of it. It's it's just like, when we were going to wake up and realise that if, if we look after everybody, everyone will be looked after? And it's not just about like, well, I'm fine. So I'm not going to worry about this issue that somebody's having over there that that just doesn't make sense anymore.

Chloe: You've been listening to Anna Starkey and Ray Durrant, facilitated by Chloe Meineck