[Pride 2022] The Blob is Non-Binary: Change My Mind

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It’s a hot July in 1958. You live in a small town; everyone knows everybody, people leave their doors unlocked, and you’re just an average American male. Everything is safe and ordinary. Normal. Quaint. 

Until suddenly - there! From the sky! From outer space itself! A meteor hurtling through the atmosphere and carrying with it something that could destroy the very foundation of which you’ve laid your white-bread family-valuing foundation on. An alien. A “monster”.

A non-binary. 

(People screaming)

Err, no. I meant a blob. That’s right, just a yucky and smelly ol’ blob that destroys everything you hold dear - gasp, your traditional American values! From your closed-mouth make-out sessions, to your toxic-masculine drag racing, to spooky midnight theater movies with Bela Lugosi, nothing is sacred to this menace! 

“What is it?” “I don’t know.”

All joking aside, though, I’ve always felt a connection to the blob as I’ve started to slowly embrace my gender-fluidity. The Blob (1958) is the antagonist without meaning to be or even realizing it. The blob just is the blob. It’s ever changing, ever moving. Adapting and absorbing people near it instinctually. Like gender fluidity, it shifts and changes. It’s sticky and potent. It’s without logic or reason — it just is. One form to the other.

It’s seen as attacking “good folks” from an honest town — from the medical community (who are baffled by its existence) to the blue collar workers trying to make ends meet, to our vulnerable youth, to our police force and all those who are true-blue Americans. Like in Reefer Madness, it supposedly attacks the core of Americana. It destroys norms and rejects the “natural order” of men and women.

And it scares people with its “monstrous” nature because it’s different and it’s not an easy thing to understand. Even the protagonist Chunk McBeefy (a.k.a. Steve McQueen) has a hard time explaining it to the police, calling it a “monster”, but is not really able to describe it. And when he tries to, they mock and disbelieve him. Only a few people trust what he saw and experienced.

“Non-binary” has emerged in the past several years (especially in North America) as an umbrella term to include people whose gender identities do not neatly fall into the dominant binary gender categories of “man/boy” and “woman/girl.” In its most common usage, “non-binary” is a descriptor rather than an identity term. People with non-binary gender identities may identify as genderqueer, agender, pangender, etc. They may or may not identify as part of trans communities. (Frohard‐Dourlent et al., 2017)

When it comes to my own NB ways (gender-fluid), I am usually a burden to some and a “ew, special snowflake alert” to others. I’ve had eye rolls. I’ve had sighs. I’ve had shaking heads. I’ve had the whole, “Well, it’s just grammatically incorrect, so it’s really difficult for me.” Using they/they traumatizes the masses; it’s monstrous. It’s gross and icky. 

Unfortunately, these reactions I’ve had aren’t from strangers, but from the close select few I do tell. Like when Steve in the Blob tries telling his friends about the Blob and they mock him, making jokes to dismiss his sincerity. 

Recently, I found out that a good friend of mine sometimes chooses to misgender me to the people she’s talking to. On purpose. Not the usual, “Oh, sorry, but you know, I’ve seen your face so my brain just kinda…” type non-apology. This was a specific choice.

When I asked her why, she said it was because cis people just don’t understand that kind of stuff. That it would take time and energy to explain that I’m non-binary and then she’d have to answer questions and she’s got a lot going on and she didn’t think it was a big deal… 

But it is a big deal and it’s a hard thing to describe. It’s a part of my identity I’ve not only had to discover but embrace and try to understand myself. Because half of the time I feel alien, and not in a cutesy metaphorical way, but a literal alien. Like, somehow I was dumped off here and having to adhere to Human Law so as not to get caught. A better Blob. Blob 2.0. Better. Stronger. Faster. Looking and talking like the humans do.

So, I actually empathize with the Blob; it doesn’t have an origin or an identity to the humans. They don’t try to understand it. They don’t even know how the heck to describe it. It is a threat, and nothing more. 

It’s a bit of a precursor to the incredible alien in Annihilation. It truly is an alien creature, distinct from a human, without the boxes to check that make us more accepting of it. Like, in Star Trek, most of the aliens are very humanoid. That makes it easier to understand them and empathize with them. But the more alien-appearing the alien, the less empathy people have for it. 

And this is a major issue for those who are non-binary. Because we don’t fall into the “girl/boy” boxes to check off, and so it’s difficult for people to empathize with us. And that takes its toll on NB people. Studies consistently report worse mental health outcomes compared to our binary identified counterparts, including trans female and male (James et al., 2016) (Veale et al., 2017). 

Heck, it was only in 2013 that the DSM-5 for psychologists removed the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (which considered wishing to change one’s gender) as a disorder which at the time only recognized the gender binary of male and female (APA, 2013). 

Nearly ten years ago being non-binary was still a disorder; a disorder that I probably was disnosed with, as different therapists told me that I was just rejecting my assigned sex as a way of self-loathing. But that never felt right. 

Yet, who was I to tell someone with years of schooling and experience that they were wrong and I was right? 

“I think they’ve got it in for me…They heard about my war record and it bugs ‘em. They’re trying to break me down. See what makes me tick. Anything they can try, they try.”

I don’t usually tell people my preferred pronouns or even that I’m gender-fluid. And I’m not alone by far. Data from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey suggests that 63% of non-binary participants sometimes choose not to tell others about their gender identity due to expectations that they will not be affirmed or taken seriously (James et al., 2016). And it’s not just being affirmed or taken seriously, it’s not just about pats on the back and high-fives, it’s clear discrimination and violence we fear, too.

I tried to come out at work before, once. One time. I saw how all the cis people were being cute by having their pronouns listed and thought, with my heart beating wildly, “Hey, let’s just be ourselves, huh?”

Two months later, I was getting written up for every little thing and for telling people about my “personal life and making them uncomfortable”. I really don’t talk much about my personal life to Work Humans besides my basement flooding and my inability to get my garden going. So, it was very strange timing that after years of good performance reviews, suddenly I could do no right after coming out. 

But, there wasn’t anything outright said AND, biggest kicker, my state doesn’t care about LGBTQ discrimination with jobs. It’s legal. Companies have a right to tell me I’m a smelly ol’ blob they’d rather freeze out than cultivate. 

In the end, I had to move jobs to get out of the environment. Out and proud? It’s hard to be, isn’t it? It’s hard to be when the Supreme Court gives you a legal ick face and your own mother-in-law rolls her eyes at your pronouns. Or when your friend won’t even listen to why you’re pissed that Screeners.com is asking for your governmental I.D. in a recorded zoom call while misgendering you, just so you can watch a zombie movie.

It’s hard when you feel degraded and embarrassed and everyone is telling you to get over it and it’s all in your head. And somehow the people you love sometimes act like the victims in your own gender crisis because they have to remember that you use different pronouns…

Like in The Blob, it just sucks, for the citizens and for the Blob itself. No one wins. Everyone is having a horrible time. Blob just wanna blob and people just wanna be boring and normal. I get that. But that’s not life. Life, like the Blob, is sticky and messy and eats people (maybe not that part), but our distrust consumes us. It makes us fear each other, which is the real danger. 

We lose sight of what’s true and what’s reality. People get victim complexes on all sides. Suddenly we’re all running around screaming at each other, jumping to conclusions, and that’s not the type of ending any of us really want. 

“How do you get people to protect themselves from something they don’t believe in?” 

Spoiler alert - the Blob doesn’t die. It can’t be killed. We are here. We are queer. And it’s a tough time right now, I know. God, hoo boy, trust me, pard. I know. But you’ll find a way.

Gender expression is becoming more and more nuanced every day. More schools and companies are adapting to pronoun expression. The youth, goodness, they’re really pushing gender boundaries and expectations and I applaud them. 

And of course, there’s always people coming from all sides to “apache helicopter” this, and “put they/them on shooting targets” that. It’s a mix of growth and regression, but the real bottom line is the legislation. 

In the US, more and more bills are being introduced against trans and against NB. They know we can’t be killed, so they’re slowly freezing the progress we’ve made. 

And while it’s something to be sad, angry, disappointed, etc. about, you also need to be strong, because, just like the Blob, we can’t be killed just when people think we’re inconvenient. We can’t be pushed back just because we’re more complex.

We are still people. We are still worthy of safety and health. We are worthy of being respected and having our identity. Even if we are sticky and roll around, we are to be celebrated for being the sticky roll-around mess that we are. And we will keep changing and evolving and growing because we’re strong enough to. We’ll just become bigger, especially together.

The real enemy is always fear. Which we need to keep fighting against, because fear can never stand a chance with what we have to share — because the opposite of fear is the Blob. Or love. One of the two. 

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References:

Frohard‐Dourlent, H., Dobson, S., Clark, B. A., Doull, M., & Saewyc, E. M. (2017). “I would have preferred more options”: Accounting for non‐binary youth in health research. Nursing Inquiry, 24(1), e12150-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12150

James, S. E., Herman, J. L., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Anafi, M. (2016). The report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality

Veale, J. F., Watson, R. J., Peter, T., & Saewyc, E. M. (2017b). Mental health disparities among Canadian transgender youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 60, 44–49. doi:10.1016/j. jadohealth.2016.09.014

Richards, Christina (01/2016). "Non-binary or genderqueer genders". International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England) (0954-0261), 28 (1), p. 95. 

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