At every moment in time, when one reflects on what it means to be, we mean it is to emerge into existence as a thing bearing an identity, that is, what it is in itself, which always ends up meaning what kind of thing it is. This entails that in the very emergence of beings in the field or zone of consciousness, there is present here an exhaustive intelligibility of that which appears, and this apparently pure intelligibility is exhausted by the name– if the act of being is to be with an identity, then the very emergence of every being in their being brings along with it an intelligible identity which signifies, exactly and exhaustively, what that being is.
Yet, the name itself refers to an irredeemably withdrawn source of their impossibility, for the thing itself, in that it is not for-self, yet in-itself-as-itself, self-contained, is not the source of its own existence.
Therefore, if one has faith in the validity of names to name the true being of the particular being, then one has to believe that the name is signifying an essence that not only doesn’t appear to the bodily senses, but is forming the way in which that particular is; that is, ultimately, an essence which the individual has. However, when we remember that names must signify the general or universal, then the name cannot refer to the individual in their singularity. Put differently, if we pay close attention to our experience, we realize that the what-it-is must come after the mere fact that it is. That is, what it is presupposes and comes ontologically later than the it which is being identified and named.
Moreover, as universal, the essence of the being cannot be utterly theirs. Since the essence is shared with different individuals, rendering them identical, it is no one’s in particular. However, if we consider the being in its utter singularity, as that which it is prior to being a congealed identity, we recognize in absolute difference, a pure difference in itself which actually emerges prior to presence than the general, than the intelligible.
As I have alluded to, discourse is what renders the presentation of beings intelligible, subsumable under concepts. But considered in the utter singularity, as the substratum of every essence, one recognizes that each being, each individual, must be a pure particularity that cannot be exhaustively revealed in the concept, for concepts and names must abstract from that pure particularity which underlies and has the name, and only see what these different pure particularities have together, and it is purely this universality or abstract identity which the name can signify, never the thing-in-itself.
At the risk of repeating myself, insofar as one understands that all that emerges in their consciousness as beings are pure particulars that are always-already differentiated from all other beings, then the consequence is that any identity we ascribe to more than one pure particular can not account for the difference which all those beings must first have been to be asked what their name is. That is, the principle of difference is ultimately the principle of being– to be is to be different from other-than-self, and in this difference, all beings are.
As such, being itself, which is that which lets beings be, is an ultimate unity that all beings share in just by virtue of the fact they are, and this is the one “supra-essential” essence that, in its unified procession of being into all beings, lets those beings be a one, a being, which is prior to being some kind of being, an incorporation into an abstract identity that doesn’t account for the process of pure be-ing which, existentially, comes prior in all forms of existence.
Let us take a look at tweets made about being non-binary, and then I will show how each relates to the aforementioned discussion.
Firstly, we see, “non-binary but likeeee as in (both) more than (neither)” (@acephale17, 02/23/26.” Initially, we should note that the use of “likeeee” in between the description of oneself marks a fundamental “ambiguity” or inability to completely express the meaning through language. With this in mind, we see that, for this individual, being non-binary entails an overarching unity of being both sides of the gender binary more than being neither. The use of “more than” points to degrees of being, that is, one, in being both girl and boy, must be neither boy or girl in-themselves, but is more both than the nothing of neither. Clearly, though, both sides of the scale are in play, as only through being neither this or that in themselves am I able to be both identities in my singularity.
Secondly, we highlight the following, “non-binary people are and will be forced into binarity as long as patriarchy is around.” (@acephale17, April 28, 2025) The condition of possibility for patriarchy to instantiate itself into and as social relations, is that real singularities, pure differences, are rendered intelligible into kinds of person. That is, patriarchy revolves around the locus point of actualizing mental categories and rendering them real material which appear in consciousness. There are two ways of interpreting this. Firstly, this may mean that the non-binary individual, upon engaging in activity, is rendered intelligible through the rationality of categorization. That is, everything the non-binary individual does will still be classified, understood, and experienced, as pertaining to femininity or masculinity. Importantly, this entails the faith in and congealing of, a universal essence which is apparently actualized through the singular being. As we have seen, this interpretation and forceful categorization can not bring to light what is there subtending the essence, the substratum which has a universal identity, the pure particularity which is always-already absolutely non-identical to all other; and the very moment the brute existent is placed into an identity, one has already concealed the pure being of the individual, which can never be represented conceptually. So, patriarchy presupposes a non-identification with singular existence, a mis-identification of the what with a this/that, and the political implication is a violent covering over of the pulsing force of brute being-there which is ontologically prior to being a kind of being, partaking in a general essence. Secondly, this may be interpreted in the following: being-non-binary is understood as a pure negation which would mean the non-binary-ness has no being in itself. That is, if all it means to be non-binary is to be not boy or girl, then the identity only has being insofar as it is caught in a relation to boyness and girlness. Put simply, if all it means to be “y” is to be “not-x”, then the very being of y is to actively be in a relation of opposition to x, meaning if x absolved itself, so would the very being of y, as there would be no “x” to negate or not-be, undercutting the very meaning of y. However, we realize and emphasise that the being of non-binaryness is not a mere negation. Rather, it is the bringing to presence and actualization of a pure-singularity, not being anything in particular, not even being a negation. That is, for any-thing to negate some-thing else, it must be some kind of thing opposed to a different kind of thing. But non-binary is not a kind of being. Instead, non-binary points to the utter ground that is actualized in the individual prior to identification, signifying the pure engagement in the act of existence which cannot be pinned down into an identity which must abstract away from this activity– even a negative one. So, on this second interpretation, we’d see that patriarchy entails understanding the non-binary individual only negatively through a relative opposition and therefore still fixed within the gender binary, instead of allowing the being of non-binaryness to put into question the very play of that conceptual binary in the first place.
“I use any pronouns because I am non-binary, not because I am some strange form of man.” (@veteran_hater00, March 22, 2026) Here, we see that the non-binary individual understand the incorporation of identity and its expression in language in a way that is opposed to modern rationality, but still makes sense. When we release ourselves from the naive belief that the word can capture the particular and its being in thought, that any concept can adequately form an identity which expresses pure difference, then we see that in being nothing-in-particular, then those words which, in usage, do refer, in thought, to the non-binary individual, they don’t capture what that individual fundamentally is. That is to say, when one is not their identity, so to speak, they are all identities which that non-identity can affirm. In ascribing oneself any gender identity, then they are not any of those identities in particular. The non-binary individual here is not each identity, added up into a set, but an any. No one gender label exhausts and tells the truth of this individual, and that is precisely why any can apply. We can think about this in the analogous terms of being-human. Being-human, in itself, entails firstly, having being, secondly, having life, thirdly, having mind, fourthly, having animality, fifthly, having humanity. To be a human requires the active participation, therefore, in being itself, life itself, mind itself, animality, and humanity in general. Without the participation in these, they wouldn’t have the being of each, and wouldn’t be human. Since they are shared by all humans, the universals in themselves exceed each particular human they are constituting. Humanity lets all humans be human, by gifting humanity into each, and, in this way, just is all humans. But each human in particular is not humanity. This principle applies to all aforementioned grounding principles for the being of human. In this way, one couldn’t capture the being of human, dependent upon the emanation of each other grounding essence, by referring to the particular human being as “existing,” “alive,” “intelligent,” “animal,”. Each by themselves do not capture the whole being of the human. Therefore, to be human must exceed being any of these.
“‘Trans’ is an observable condition of humans. ‘Non-binary’ is just a self-description.” (@dilanesper, March 16, 2026)
Here, we see a fundamental misunderstanding. There are two ways of showing the non-sense of this view. Firstly, let us assume that non-binaryness describes an identity, and that this identity is conceptually intelligible. This person forgets that in every description of anything, that description is referring to a pure being which is necessarily other than the description in itself. The presence, the thing in question, is necessarily other than the words. And if it wasn’t, then words would only be describing themselves. Thus, in describing oneself as non-binary, this name would still refer to a way of presence, to a way of bringing forth the being which the person has, a mode of life that is engaged in in the ongoing actualization of the self’s potentialities, a way-of-being which can never be just a description, but is attempted to be captured exhaustively by the concept. Secondly, and far more importantly, this user doesn’t realize that non-binary refes to nothing in particular, a ground of nothingness, which, in being indeterminate, is actually and necessarily the possibility to become anything. That is, non-binary points to the very split itself between be-ing and representation, the pure presence of bring forth existence into view for another, which is prior in experience, to being a kind of being. This entails that, principally, the being of non-binaryness can not be conceptually represented, and is therefore unintelligible to the structures of traditional rationality, which derives from Aristotle (foundationally, that every way-of-being, say, changing, is actualized by a self-same subject: every activity is done by a subject).
In conclusion, we see constant pointers and illuminators about the nature of being non-binary through tweets of individuals on social media. However, we see that none of these tweets point to a being which is capturable in definition. To be non-binary is to not be this or that, but to even resist the very binary which conditioned the possibility to not be this or that. The non-being of being this or that thus seems to be the being of non-binary individuals, but, as we saw, even this understanding cannot account for the validity of non-binary individuals who are non-binary in not being related to the binary whatsoever, even negatively. In each tweet, the being of non-binaryness thrusted traditional reason into question, and should leave one on shaky grounds considering their worldview and experience of being. Even in the misunderstandings, it was still the being of non-binaryness which allowed for any misunderstanding to take place; that is, questions were still posed about it, and discourse tried to advance itself. However, ultimately, as we saw throughout, any attempt at intelligibility or rational representation in concepts can not capture that which is never a kind of being, which can never be generalized, which can never be placed under a determinate concept that finds its divine position in the chain of signifiers. Radically inside yet outside the structure of language, non-binaryness, in being named, works from within to point to the out, to bring to light what is actually always already there prior to speech, yet that which can never be exhausted by the name, always being other than language: Pure Being.