[Serious] Non-binary

[John 6IX Breezy]

In the end, just like some guys are feminine and some women masculine, so too are there people who don't identify with their sex, yet neither do they identify with the opposite sex.

This makes sense to me in theory: Once we've detached our biological sex from our gender identity, every combination of those variables should be possible. Unfortunately, the notion of non-binary as an identity (rather than a category in which to group nonconforming identities) is so new that it isn't mentioned in any of my textbooks, and a brief search through a databases failed to produce any papers referring to it as its subject matter.

One thing I found odd, however, based on the few YouTube videos I saw (which might not be representative), was the sense of shopping around for an identity. There are videos describing how you can know if you're non-binary, for example, or telling you to experiment with different pronouns and clothing until you find the right fit. The reason why this seems odd to me is because our gender identity tends to develop in early childhood, around 3 years of age, and I believe its the same for transpeople. So this leaves me with the question—what happened in childhood? Why is non-binary something that people appear to be figuring out after puberty? (Note: I did find one video talking about childhood, but the way it was spoken about was in retrospect. It gave the impression of not knowing it back then, but knowing now looking back.)

It might be the case that their gender identity failed to develop in childhood, therefore, they are developing it in adulthood. Admittedly, this doesn't make sense to me because it seems to bypasses a "critical period" of development. However, the shopping around, the experimenting, and trying things out, is similar to what children themselves do when developing their gender identity.