When you ask nonbinaries what they mean by this, the response usually boils down to men saying they feel kinda feminine sometimes, and women saying they kinda don’t. It’s not exactly The Communist Manifesto. When you point out that some men and women have felt this way since time immemorial, without feeling the need to turn it into a political cause, nonbinary males become aggressive and nonbinary females become sulky.
If, like me, you prefer to identify as non-lunatic, you might be tempted to dismiss the nonbinary phenomenon as a passing fad, like the Tamagotchi ‘egg’ toys popular among children a couple of decades ago. But there’s a difference between the idea of nonbinary and fads like Tamagotchis, especially among the young. Schools banned Tamagotchis in the 1990s because they were a distraction. This time, our public institutions, from multinational corporations to medical bodies, are actively promoting the idea that you can be neither male nor female.
The vague, indefinable, neither-nor quality of ‘nonbinary’ certainly appeals to the narcissists among us. It offers even more opportunity for forensic self-obsession than the old trans identity does. And that’s saying something.
No one sums up this narcissism better than Alok Vaid-Menon, perhaps the most prominent nonbinary campaigner around today. He first gained a name for himself in the mid-2010s for performing execrable ‘poetry’ while dressed in garish women’s clothes that showed off a body hairy enough to put Burt Reynolds to shame.
Once upon a time it was permissible to laugh at a hairy bloke squeezed into a cocktail dress who takes himself much too seriously. But not today. Vaid-Menon’s pronouncements are treated with the kind of reverence once accorded to religious leaders.
In 2021, an old social-media post of his resurfaced in which he also weighed into the debate about single-sex spaces. Instead of insisting that trans-identified males pose no risk to women and girls, as most trans activists do, he took a more original approach. He claimed that young girls aren’t as innocent as we think. ‘We have to challenge the idea that there is a perfect victim’, he said. ‘I believe in the radical notion that little girls, like the rest of us, are complicated people… Little girls are also queer, trans, kinky, deviant.’ He added that ‘no one is a perfect flower that can be corrupted’. This is sinister stuff.
[F]or an increasing number of ‘trans’ people, and above all their nonbinary successors, the most powerful motivation for ‘transitioning’ has never really been the desire to mimic the opposite sex. Rather it is driven by something far more self-destructive – to mutilate or erase the physical signs of their bodies’ sex.
Some nonbinaries have given the game away however. About 10 years ago, those who did acknowledge this desire to mutilate their sexed bodies explicitly embraced the idea of being nullo or neutrois.
An example of how overpowering this obsession can become was provided in January this year, when two men who ran a ‘nullo’ cult in Finsbury Park in London were given jail sentences. The trial revealed that the men involved had carried out and filmed procedures to remove one of their member’s penis and left leg, and another’s nipple.
Men who want to become neutrois tend to have their genitals removed, while most women tend to want to have their breasts removed – although there have been cases of others having their vaginas sewn up and their clitorises removed.
Neutrois aspirants of both sexes often want to have their nipples removed, too, so powerful is their desire to smooth out and erase the existence of a sexed body.
The nonbinary cause is born of a psychological disturbance.
In 2023, the world’s leading trans healthcare organisation, WPATH, added nullo, neutrois and ‘eunuch’ to its ever-expanding list of gender identities. In doing so, it was merely formalising a view widely held across the nonbinary ‘community’. In the US, some surgeons now actively promote the fact that they offer a ‘nullo’ service.
The trans lobby is already responsible for exacerbating the mental-health problems of troubled teenagers, feeding them the myth they might be born in the wrong body. But the nonbinary phase of transgenderism is perhaps even more dangerous.
We need to resist the trans and nonbinary agenda. We need to challenge its claims to be liberating and progressive, and expose its creepy, nihilistic roots. To allow or encourage the modification and mutilation of young bodies is not a win for social justice or equality. It is accommodating pathological behaviour.
A new policy in the United Kingdom to restrict the medical treatments available to trans and gender-diverse young people has raised fresh questions about Australia’s approach in one of the most sensitive areas of medicine and prompted a fierce defence from LGBTQ advocates.
