There’s a pretty good show, “Deputy”, currently airing. One of the characters came out last week as nonbinary, when previously they identified as a lesbian woman. They had a girlfriend in the show and everything seemed okay in the first few episodes. But after they came out as nonbinary, their girlfriend is pissed off, angry because she said she fell in love with a woman and now that woman is nonbinary But the character, “Bishop”, doesn’t dress any different, doesn’t look any different, doesn’t act any different. I don’t understand why their girlfriend would be mad. Is it really that big of a deal if your significant other says “I’m nonbinary” as opposed to a single gender?
(This involves a TV show, but not really about the show so I wasn’t sure where to put it. I usually use IMHO but I wasn’t sure. Feel free to move if necessary)
So, you know how a lot of straight guys, if they found out the girl they were dating was a post-op transsexual, would break up with that girl? Even though her appearance and behavior are identical to how they looked and acted before they told him they were trans? This is pretty much the same thing. The non-binary character looks and acts the same, but they’re not a woman, and their partner is exclusively attracted to women. That’s a problem even if the woman in the relationship does not otherwise have an issue with the concept of non-binary or trans gender expressions. At the very least, staying with the nb person requires redefining her own identity: if she’s in a relationship with a non-woman, can she still identify as a lesbian? (Personally, I would say “sure,” but this isn’t about how I feel about what constitutes being a lesbian, it’s about her feelings about what constitutes a lesbian.). She may also be concerned that identifying as nb is a transition on the way to identifying as a trans man, which is not uncommon. She may be feeling an irrational sense of betrayal, as if her partner had been lying about being a woman up until now. She may also simply be prejudiced against trans/nb identities.
I’m not familiar with the show, so I don’t know if any of these apply to the character, but those are some of the justifications I’ve seen in real life when one person in a queer relationship comes out as a different gender, and their partner has trouble handling it.
Is it though? In your example, the women is biologically different then what the guy thought. In the show, all biology is the same. Only the gender is different.
When watching the show, I tried to imagine what I would think if something like that happened to me. I don’t know if it’s exactly the same, but say I was dating Taylor Swift. And one day she told me “I’m nonbinary”. If she looked the same and acted the same, why would I care if she is “nonbinary”? That’s the part I don’t get.
You think most guys are attracted to women because of their Fallopian tubes? Gender matters to people. More than it should, IMO, but that’s neither here nor there.
I haven’t seen the show, but it’s obvious that the character is acting different in at least one major respect. Gender is a pretty big deal to most people, and shades a lot of different interactions.
There are a significant number of lesbian women who identify as what I’d call ‘aggressively lesbian’ and utterly reject the idea of being with anyone who is not a lesbian (that is, a woman attracted exclusively to women). They will reject queer or bisexual women who date men and nonbinary people and consider them almost as traitors to the cause. The partner might fall into that category. It’s like a lesser for of straight men are ‘aggressively straight’ and get angry to the point of violence at the idea that they’re engaging in something ‘gay’, like having sex with someone who isn’t a woman (which is probably still the majority of straight men).