Hello, this is Anna.
In one of my last videos, I came out as a nonbinary woman.
If you want, you can watch it, I put the link below.
I did give a little explanation of what it means,
quoting a definition by Riley J. Dennis, whom I was drawing in that video.
While this was a very good explanation of what "nonbinary woman" can mean,
and I got really excited when I first heard it,
I've been thinking a lot about how I, myself,
would explain my gender and had some other ideas how to more accurately explain and visualize it.
Now, I want to make it clear that this is how I define it for myself
and not everybody who is nonbinary necessarily sees it the same way.
I would like to start with the gender binary.
The two gender categories most of us grow up with are, of course, man and woman.
Usually, we're assigned one of these at birth, depending on our genitals.
Babies with vulvas are categorized as "girls" and babies with penises are categorized as "boys".
Side note: This is a very unreliable way of identifying someone's sex because
a) there are more than two different kinds of genitals
and b) there are more factors than just genitals that determine biological sex.
I'm going to link another video by Riley J. Dennis below,
because I could not explain it any better than she already has.
But let's go back to this image here.
We have two circles, one with an "M" for men and one with a "W" for women.
We are assigned one of them at birth, based on our genitals.
But even if we stayed in this binary for a moment and looked closer at how society defines gender,
we can quickly find more things that supposedly are connected to our genders, right?
Men aren't just "humans with penises" and women aren't just "humans with vulvas".
We have a whole set of characteristics that we define as "manly" or "masculine"
and their opposites, which we define as "womanly" or "feminine".
That can be our behavior or personality traits, for example being active vs. being passive.
Or being dominant vs. being submissive.
Being rational vs. being emotional.
It can also be the shapes of our bodies or certain abilities,
like being physically strong and muscular vs. being weak and fragile.
Also the way we dress our bodies, the way we move, the way we talk…
almost every characteristic about us is classified as pairs of opposites in these two categories.
And while sometimes it's quite acceptable if a person from one category
has a personality trait or ability that we would categorize with the opposite,
like, for example, when a woman is or good at assembling her own furniture,
we usually find it irritating when people we would classify in one category have too many characteristics
that we associate with the opposite one.
We are even more confused if we can't tell by looking at someone which category they're in.
What I'm trying to say is that the way we define gender depends on way more than just our genitals.
What I also want to say is that this is all crap.
I say, that all of these characteristics are not "masculine", or "manly"
and they're also not "feminine" or "womanly".
They are just neutral characteristics that people of any gender can have.
And sometimes, some of them are a big part of how they express THEIR individual gender,
but they are not immutably linked to one particular gender.
For example, a person can identify as a woman and have a lot of characteristics about them
that society would categorize as "masculine".
She would still be a woman because her gender expression is not the same as her gender.
So.. let me conclude what we have so far.
It's not our biological sex that defines our gender.
It's also not the way we dress or behave or any personality traits that determine our gender.
So what is it? I think it's best explained by saying: It is a feeling.
If you feel like you are a woman, then you are a woman.
If you feel like you are a man, you are a man.
And there are some people who don't feel like a man or a woman, or who feel like both.
And that often is explained by drawing this line between "Men" and "Women", like here.
So it's a spectrum, and you can be anywhere on this spectrum.
So, a person who is right in the middle would be 50% woman and 50% man.
Or someone here might be 20% woman and 80% man. Right?
This is a very good way of explaining that there are, in fact, more than two genders.
But for me, it's still too limiting. My problem is this:
As I said, "M" and "W" are defined as opposites.
That means, they are always defined in relation to one another.
A man is defined as "not a woman" and a woman is "not a man".
They are two opposites complementing each other.
And this does not change much by just drawing a line between the two.
All the genders on this line are still defined in relation to those two categories.
As I said, 50% man and 50% woman. 20% woman and 80% man.
Those are all people who still live between these two binary poles. It is still a dualism.
I'm not saying it's wrong to identify on that line.
If that's where you are, it's absolutely valid. It is just not where I am.
I identify as a nonbinary woman.
To explain what that means, I would like to look at the "nonbinary" part first.
I am a woman, but not a 100%. If we use this graphic,
that would mean I move a little bit on that line away from the "W".
The problem is that this automatically implies that I am closer to the "man" side of the spectrum.
Like, maybe, 70% woman and 30% man.
But what if those 30% are not "man"?
What If I feel like a woman and, in part, neutral?
What If I feel like a woman and, in part, a third gender? Or a fourth?
Now, secondly, let's look at what "woman" means, because we have many different definitions of "woman".
If "woman" is defined in a very traditional, conservative way, then it's not really the right category for me at all.
That doesn't mean I have nothing in common with that category, but I just don't really fit in there.
But there are other definitions of the term, and some of them feel more like me than others.
So.. If I'm a woman or not is kind of relative, depending on which definition I go with.
I go with "it's a feeling". And, what's most important for my own definition
is that I am not a woman as in "opposite of a man".
I am not a woman as one of two complementary categories, so let's remove that line.
And now look at what we have: it's not a binary anymore.
It's a pluralism, a gender diversity!
There are many different genders,
and they are not all defined in relation to these two traditional gender categories.
They are their own categories. And all of them can overlap.
So, in my case, I am, to some extent, a woman, but I am also a little bit of this,
and this, and this, and maybe even a tiny bit of this.
And that's why I identify as a woman who is also "genderqueer" or "nonbinary".
For more infomation >> What Was Undertale Actually About? - Duration: 46:55. 
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