nope.

not all nonbinary trans folks have the same feelings on it. i don’t think nonbinary folks who are for this petition are bad, oppressive people. i’m speaking from the perspective of a cafab nonbinary, intersex black person who is a descendant of enslaved africans who were forced to assimilate to the colonial gender binary enforced on us via white supremacist conquest in the usa. this is the context i’m speaking from. the hierarchy of gender and sex binarism i have engaged with because of my history is coercive. i am not speaking as a “person of color,” i am speaking specifically from how descendants of enslaved peoples interact with colonialism in the usa.

now lemme tell ya why that’s relevant

from this experience, the petition has good intentions, but being visible to the government in such a way is very negative. look at how hypervisible blackness is to the government in the usa; if black folks’ visibility and surveillance under the government meant less oppression, then we’d be free, but we ain’t. we can probably rely on the government to not fuck us over for a period of time (until those particular laws corrode all over again, like the voting right’s act), but we as black folks, as black queers, can never depend on the government for liberation.

the idea that having more options for gender markers on legal documents will make our lives better is liberalism masquerading as “baby steps” toward liberation and it obscures our oppression, and under a patriarchal society where cisness, whiteness, and maleness are oppressive social classes, legally essentializing nb identities is going to replicate the same issues we have with the restrictive societal standards of the male/female binary. being hyper visible under the government’s surveillance will do harm (to me as a black queer, again, i can’t speak for all poc), due to the fact that the usian government will never be our ally, something we can trust, or a body that supports our liberation, especially for black camab trans people and black trans women.

legal gender is a form of surveillance and control that will hurt us as trans people, camab trans people and trans women especially. having more options on the gender markers isn’t Horrible, but it does have tangible consequences, and basically it can serve to out oneself (which makes it not really accessible to, you guessed it, camab trans people) to powerful institutions (medicine, prisons, welfare, etc) that will discriminate against us on the basis of our gender. keeping gender markers can be helpful for statistics of rape, violence, and other such atrocities that affect us, but we should strive to do away with “legal gender” as a political entity as it has always been used as a gatekeeping tactic against non-cis people for resources we need access to and is transmisogynist by nature. 

of course if it did become A Thing, i’m sure many nonbinary people like myself will still use either M or F in favor of exposing ourselves to all of this mess on a legal level. so, in that sense, adding more gender options isn’t Inherently Oppressive, but most of us won’t even be able to have access to it and expect positive results. if i ticked “nonbinary” on all the legal documents i have, i can’t even Count the ways i’ll be fucked over as a black mentally ill person, for example, considering the medical community Still treats transness as form of mental illness and routinely misdiagnoses black folks due to stereotypes and mismanagement.

if you support adding more gender options to legal documents and having the state recognize nonbinary folks, i don’t think you’re a bad person and i don’t think folks should come for your neck or anything like that. sign it if you want, and if you relate to that kind of activism, then i ain’t mad at ya. i just really do hope you understand the consequences it has for folks like myself, and At The Very Least i also hope you don’t pretend it’s going to lessen the oppression of black non-cis folks in the united states who were assimilated into the colonial gender binary via white supremacist cultural genocide who have had our efforts of black liberation literally thwarted by the same government (MLK Jr. was killed by the CIA and the black panther party was constantly invaded by cointelpro, for example, two government-supported entities set out to destroy us as black people, all this shit is relevant) that the petition is attempting to appeal to, bc it most Certainly Won’t. das all i gotta say bout it. gawd bless and stay woke.