International Nonbinary People’s Day

Today is International Nonbinary People’s Day. It is exactly halfway between International Women’s Day and International Men’s Day. However, that does not mean that nonbinary people are halfway between men and women. Gender is best thought of as less of a spectrum and more of a scatter-plot.

I am nonbinary and I use they/them pronouns, so this day is important to me.

I used to refer to myself as genderqueer and people would ask me what I meant by it, so I would refer them to the dictionary definition of genderqueer, and they would say “But what do you personally mean by it?” This happened more than once. I was a bit baffled by this question. Surely the point of adopting a label is that you mean the same by that label as everyone else does. What’s more, I don’t owe random people on the internet a detailed explanation of my gender feelings. I find it hard to explain my gender feelings to myself, let alone unpack them for anyone else. I have known that my gender is fluid or ambivalent for a very long time, I just didn’t always have a label to describe it.

Sometimes people ask, “but why do we need labels?” The answer to that is so that you can find like-minded other people who can relate to your experience. Quite often the people who ask this question are part of the “unmarked default” and perhaps they have not reflected on their gender or their romantic and sexual orientation.

Nonbinary genders generally fall under the transgender umbrella. Transgender simply means experiencing yourself as a different gender than the one you were assigned at birth. Cisgender simply means experiencing yourself as the same gender as the one you were assigned at birth. Cis is a Latin prefix meaning “on the same side as”, as in Cisalpine Gaul. Trans is a Latin prefix meaning “on the other side of”, as in Transalpine Gaul. As nonbinary people experience ourselves as a different gender than the one we were assigned at birth, that means we broadly fit under the trans umbrella. However, not all nonbinary people see ourselves as trans.

Here’s a close-up of the nonbinary space, with explanations of each term.

And here is a list of some more terms that are under the nonbinary umbrella:

Inclusive language

Most languages employ gendered terms for referring to groups of people. Here are some examples of how to help nonbinary people feel included when addressing or referring to groups or categories of people:

I personally don’t like the terms “identity” and “identify as”. I don’t identify as nonbinary – I am nonbinary. This is why I do not talk about “identifying as” a gender, but instead write “experiencing yourself as”.

Similarly, we do not refer to “preferred pronouns” any more, as that makes it sound like it’s optional for people to respect other people’s gender markers. It’s just pronouns.

If you are stuck for a gender-neutral term for something, many people have compiled lists online. The one that seems the hardest to replace is Sir/Madam, but this could be avoided by dropping these as forms of address, and just being normally polite to people.

2SLGBTQIA rights

2SLGBTQIA rights are currently under attack in many places (notably the USA and the UK, but all is not well in Canada either). The US is rolling back queer rights both on a state and federal level. The National Parks service recently removed references to trans and bisexual people at the Stonewall National Monument. The UK has done massive harm to trans rights with the recent Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces. In Canada, conservatives are seeking to remove trans rights, especially in Alberta and Sakatchewan.

Queer joy

Despite our rights being under attack, it is important to celebrate moments of queer joy, and so I wish you a Happy Nonbinary People’s Day, wherever you are located on the scatterplot of gender.