NON-BINARY AWARENESS PAGE

A common convention in past societies has been that gender is male or female.

However, some of us have genders which lie on a spectrum in between these.

Some of us are simultaneously of more than one gender.

Some of us have 'gender poles' other than male or female.

Some of us consider gender to be an artifical and oppressive social construct.

This gives some idea what Non-Binary people are, though we do not claim it to be an all-encompassing definition.

Rather, we believe that each person has the right to define their own gender whichever way they please.

.

By this point in time, many people are familiar with Trans* people. These are even protected by law from discrimination.

Non-binary people, however, are not. [It is a misconception that Trans* and Non-Binary are the same thing.]

Also many aspects of being inclusive toward Trans* people are lacking;

Gender is not to be defined by gatekeepers such as bureaucrats, doctors or lawyers.

A person is whatever gender they say they are, regardless of whether this has been 'recorded' by bureaucrats, 'recognized' by courts or 'diagnosed' by doctors.

In the current world, this entirely harmless and personal right remains 'officially unrecognized'. Many job application forms, say, ask for 'M' or 'F' boxes to be ticked without offering alternatives, and changing gender recorded on a passport, say, is a major difficulty even for those Trans* people who have transitioned.

Moreover, far from all Non-Binary people (or Trans*) people belive in there being any necessity to, say, surgically transition prior to being 'officially recognized' as the gender one views oneself as.

In fact, these days a growing number of Trans* and Non-Binary people don't believe in surgically transitioning (though of course other Trans* people do, and are very welcome to!)

For instance, some people are GenderFluid, meaning gender that depends on time in a more complex pattern than 'male to female' transitioning or 'female to male' transitioning. In such cases, many feel that surgery and hormones are not an option.

And some have multiple genders at once, which is usually handled by changing how one presents rather than surgery.

Finally, some are fine with 'how we look', just 'wishing to be recognized as a woman' and so on.

.

Initiatives involving pronoun badges, stating pronouns in introducing oneself, and asking new acquaintances' pronouns, while started by Trans* and Queer people, are clearly also helpful to many Non-Binary people.

Some Non-Binary people moreover have distinctly Non-Binary pronouns.

Such as plural-they for multiple genders.

Or time-dependent pronouns in the case of some GenderFluid people, depending for instance on what their pronoun badge currently says, on presentation, or asking for pronouns every new day you converse. Though other such use a single pronoun.

See here for more about Non-Binary, Trans* and GenderFluid pronouns. And here for more about GenderFluid people. Finally, the upcoming Glossary of Safer Space Peoples and Adversities Faced will contain a number of Non-Binary issues.

Also a lot of Non-Binary people are Closeted; see here for unusually extended Closeted resources.

Some Non-Binary people have adopted the Non-Binary Bunny as a mascot :)

Thankyou for reading :)