The dark truth behind the ‘nonbinary’ identity

It’s tempting to laugh whenever ‘nonbinary’ people hit the headlines. It’s hardly our fault. Singer Sam Smith declared himself nonbinary in 2019 and promptly began squeezing himself into fishnet tights.

Yet tempting as it is to dismiss the nonbinary movement as merely the latest social-justice fad, it’s worth taking the phenomenon seriously. For beneath the narcissism and eye-rolling illogicality, there is something distinctly pathological.

Take the ludicrous campaign of American activist Ryan Castellucci. Ever since he arrived in the UK in 2019, this cyber-security expert has been determined to win the same kind of legal recognition he and his non-binary ilk enjoy in his native California. There, the state allows him to record his ‘gender identity’ as neither male nor female on his passport, birth certificate and driving licence. Instead of ‘M’ or ‘F’, it is listed as ‘X’.

Much to Castellucci’s chagrin, English courts have given him whatever the legal equivalent is of a bum’s rush. Judge after judge has rebuffed him. They have said that until and unless the UK parliament recognises ‘nonbinary’ as a sex, the only gender-recognition certificate he can obtain – if he finds his status as a male unsatisfactory – is one saying he is female.

Castellucci eventually appealed to the UK’s Supreme Court, which last month refused to hear his case on the basis it ‘does not raise an arguable point of law’. In other words, it would be pointless wasting time on a case so obviously lacking in legal merit. His lawyers have now announced they are preparing a case they hope the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg will hear.

As cases like Castellucci’s and countless others show, nonbinary is fast becoming the social contagion du jour. And there lies the problem. Just as we discovered much too late that acceptance of trans identity came with a price attached – for example, the medicalisation and even sterilisation of vulnerable teenagers – so the nonbinary trend is every bit as malign.

The nonbinary movement is not merely a new, more fashionable kind of gender-bending. Many of its activists call themselves ‘Salmacian’. (In Greek mythology, Salmacis was a nymph whose body merged with a boy, Hermaphroditus.) A growing number of nonbinary people are Salmacian and want a mix of male and female genitals.

Castellucci himself openly acknowledges that he underwent surgery and hormone treatment to create a ‘customised’ body. This is the latest frontier in so-called gender-affirming healthcare. A cadre of surgeons, mainly American, now offer procedures that allow someone to have a body that looks neither male nor female.

In 2023, Dr Curtis Crane in San Francisco made a name for himself by removing people’s genitals altogether. This appeals to some nonbinary people who wish to be ‘nullo’ – that is, entirely smooth down below. Others have availed themselves of operations like ‘phallus-preserving vulvoplasty’ or ‘vagina-preserving phalloplasty’. These allow patients to obtain surgically sculpted versions of the genitals of the opposite sex, while keeping all or most of their own existing genitals, too.

Evidently, a new era of ‘customised gender-affirming healthcare’ is underway – though it is little commented on. If activists like Castellucci have their way, troubled young people will be able to choose from a menu of surgical and hormonal options that can tailor their bodies to express the confused mix of female and male stereotypes they have bouncing around their heads.

If the idea of a person having both a vagina and a penis at the same time seems like some weird pornified fantasy then that may be no accident. It’s taken a long time for mainstream society to realise that trans ideology uses lots of hot air and academic verbiage to try to disguise the fact it is, in essence, a sexual fetish.

The claim, for example, that trans people urgently require surgery to solve their gender dysphoria has always been questionable. If ‘transgender men’ (ie, women who identify as men) are genuinely traumatised by their female biology, why do so many choose to become pregnant after transitioning? What could be more biologically female than pregnancy itself?

The rise of nonbinary surgery lifts the veil on the chronic sexual fetishism that has always been at the heart of the trans movement and its so-called healthcare. That’s just one more reason the ECHR should reject the demands to recognise the nonbinary identity. In recent decades, the courts have furnished transgender fetishism with legal status. The last thing they should do now is validate an even crazier movement.

Malcolm Clark was LGB Alliance’s head of research from 2019 to 2022. Visit his Substack, The Secret Gender Files, here.