Thanks for responding. No, it wasn't written with bad intentions. I suffer with dysphoria so everything I write comes from a position of empathy.

I do not write about "non-binary people assigned male at birth" as this piece (and my feminism more broadly) focuses on those born female. Given my own dysphoria, it is also an experience I understand better.

Of course many non-binary identified people experience dysphoria. I think dysphoria is a natural response to an increasingly gendered society. However, many non-binary people claim to not experience dysphoria. This obviously isn't the case for Monroe, which is why I quoted that section and wrote about changes in the body at puberty and a feeling of "wrongness" in sexed bodies.

When I say "referential", I mean it in the sense that in order to be non-binary, you presuppose the existence of a binary. The "reference" is to the two social categories. "Conversational manipulation" is the desire for people to reflect in conversation the idea that you are outside of that binary, and by extension, they are inside of it. Some people do not think that binary should exist and that everyone should be free to present themselves as they wish without discrimination.

I don't believe identities are "innate". Identity is shaped by society and personal experience. Material factors (like being born female) determine how you are treated and can therefore influence the desire to identify as something different. This was the case for Monroe, who talks about the struggles of female puberty and being a young single mum - issues relating to biology.

You claim "My identity as non-binary does not cut me off from my experiences as a girl" and yet also state that "We are not leaving womanhood behind, we were never a part of it to begin with." How can both be true? Your experiences as a girl are a result of being born female. Either you have something in common with the female sex class or you don't. Identifying as something other than a woman does not allow you to escape the material reality of being female, as you say yourself: "most people still view me as female, would've been a pretty poor attempt at escape."

I'm glad that your experiences are "more complicated than just man or woman", as those are both restrictive gender roles that we should all strive to be liberated from. My argument is that identifying as somewhere ‘in between masculinity or femininity’ supports the idea that these categories should exist in the first place.

When we talk about the rights of the working class, ‘social mobility’ is used to prove that the boundaries of that class are permeable and therefore class status depends on the efforts of the individual. I see gender identity as similar. We need solidarity among those born female to improve the conditions of *all* women, not to position ourselves outside of it.