Nonbinary is So Normal
July 14 is National Non-binary People’s Day
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July 14 is National Non-binary People’s Day! I thought it would be valuable to write a basic “why the binary is not really a thing” post. It is a hypersimplification, necessarily; anything less than a multi-volume book is a simplification and this is just 1500-ish words.
And hey listen, I’m a Gen X cisgender woman talking about an identity that isn’t mine. This post is mostly for cisgender folks (if you don’t know what that is, this essay is probably for you) who feel confused about all this gender stuff they keep hearing about. Part of my job as a cisgender sex educator is to make life easier for trans, non-binary, and genderqueer folks by “explaining gender” to my fellow cisgender people. I’m not the expert, I’m just running a little interference on behalf of NBs all over the world, who are getting kind of tired of explaining gender themselves.
(If you’re a cisgender person and this article was sent to you by a trans, non-binary, or genderqueer person in your life, it might be because it explains some things they would like you to know. Hi! Hello!)
The basics of the basics of the gender binary:
On the day a person is born—or maybe even earlier—the adults around a newborn look between the baby’s legs and declare, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Along with that declaration comes a cultural “user’s manual” about how to use this body, what kinds of toys you should play with, what kinds of people you should love, what kinds of feelings you’re allowed to express and what kinds of feelings you will be punished for expressing, and lots of other rules and regulations about what goes into being a “boy” or a “girl.”
This is the “gender binary”—the two social “boxes” that we put people into, based on their bodies.
And for some people, that works out pretty okay. They grow up feeling generally comfortable, in their hearts, minds, and souls, in the psychological identity and social role of the gender they were assigned based on their genitals. These folks are “cisgender,” “CIS” comes from the Latin root meaning “on this side”. That’s me.
For other people, though… Often from an early age – but sometimes not until adulthood – a person may feel that the toys, friends, and social expectations just don’t feel like them. It’s common for kids to play around with gender, but that’s not the same as the persistent sense that people are perceiving you as something you are not, that your body, especially as it changes with adolescence, is not the body that represents who you are in your heart, mind, and soul. The gender these folks were assigned based on the body they were born with…. just isn’t the right gender for them.
They might feel, in their heart, mind, and soul, that they’re much more aligned with the other gender. These folks are “transgender.” “TRANS” comes from the Latin root meaning “across.”
(This description of “transgender” is becoming less and less relevant as the binary gradually, so gradually dissolves.)
And other people might feel that they don’t fit inside either identity. They’re “some of each” or “none of the above” or both of those or something else. Who they are, in their heart, mind, and soul, isn’t the same as the gender they were assigned at birth, but it also isn’t the “other” gender in the binary. They are outside the binary. They’re nonbinary. These folks may also identify under the umbrella term “transgender” or “trans.” Or not.
Remember, American culture has these two boxes that we built because someone decided a person’s reproductive anatomy is Super Important. All of us have absorbed some rules about what a “real” man or a “real” woman is, and our gender boxes are full of those rules.
And if you’re thinking, “But biology!” cool cool cool, I get that. We all agree that bodies are real and hormones exist. Heck, a main reason many (not all) trans, NB, and genderqueer folks pursue medical interventions like hormones and surgery is because bodies are real and hormones exist, and they would like theirs to match better with their personhood, please and thank you. How awesome that that technology exists and gets better all the time!
But here are two ways we know these gender boxes aren’t about biology:
(1.) The biology part isn’t really “binary” in the first place. At a population level, when you study humans as mammals, we, like many (but not all) sexually reproducing species function, at the population level, as “dimorphic.” But just because something is true enough at the population level doesn’t mean it describes every individual within that population, and the individuals who vary from the population average are not “wrong.” Just because human women are, on average, 5’4”, doesn’t mean there’s anything remotely wrong with a human woman who is 6’4” or 4’4”. People vary.
This variability is true when it comes to our chromosomes, which we usually think of as binary, and our anatomy, which we usually think of as binary.
Chromosomes: The usual story we tell is that an ova slurps up a sperm with a Y sex chromosome or an X sex chromosome. This is where we get chromosomal sex. Let’s call “XY” chromosomally male and “XX” chromosomally female—always remembering that a person’s chromosomes are not a person’s identity, it’s literally just their chromosomes. There are a variety of other combinations of sex chromosomes like XXY, which is Klinefelter syndrome, XYY, which is creatively called XYY syndrome, or just X with a missing or partially missing second X; that’s called Turner’s syndrome. And none of these are a person’s identity; it’s literally just their chromosomes.
And what this tells us is chromosomes are nonbinary.
Anatomy: The usual story we tell is that XX people develop genitals that adults, seeing them on the new baby, will call “girl” and XY people will develop genitals that adults will call “boy.” In general, the “girl” genitals mean that the urethra is separate from the phallus (clitoris, in this case), and the “boy” genitals mean that the urethra is somewhere on the glans of the phallus (penis, in this case). But some people with XY chromosomes have hypospadias, where the opening of the urethra is somewhere on the shaft of the penis rather than the glans. And in congenital adrenal hyperplasia or CAH, a person with XX chromosomes might have a vagina and urethra that converge and open from the body somewhere close to the clitoris, which might be on the larger end of the spectrum and look a lot like a penis. Both conditions are caused by genetic variations that are not the sex chromosomes.
What I’m saying is: genitals are nonbinary.
(The eternal caveat: this is a hypersimplification.)
(Additional caveat: a person’s chromosomes and/or anatomy have nothing in particular to do with their identity. A person’s identity is what they say it is, not what somebody else decides they must be.)
And (2.) the gender categories available in other cultures are often completely different—so different that it’s not really possible to describe them accurately with the words available in the English language, but here’s a rough simplification of a few cultures that have more than two “gender boxes.”
Samoan culture has three… but really four:
TEINE/FAFINE cisgender woman
TAMA/TAGATA cisgender man
FA’AFAFINE assigned “boy” at birth, takes feminine social role
And also:
FA’AFATAMA “assigned “girl” at birth, and then it’s complicated
Traditional Navajo culture has four (but also six? These things really don’t translate conceptually):
ASDZÁÁN cisgender woman
HASTIIN cisgender man
NÁHLEEHI assigned “boy” at birth, takes feminine social role
DILBAA assigned “girl” at birth, takes feminine social role (this is a word that isn’t often used)
Bugis culture, in Indonesia, has five:
MAKKUNRAI cisgender woman
OROANÉ cisgender man
CALALAI’ assigned “girl” at birth, takes masculine social role
CALABAI’ assigned “boy” at birth, takes a feminine social role
BISSU gender transcendent, androgynous shamans
(The caveat again: this is a hypersimplified explanation; in reality none of these categories maps so conveniently over Western/white binary definitions.)
Now, don’t jump to the conclusion that one of these cultures is “right” and the rest are “wrong.” That’s not what’s happening right now. There is no “ideal” or “correct” number of gender categories; they’re just different ways of understanding who fits in which roles in a culture.
These examples are here to point out: For a cisgender person to say that human beings have two genders and only two genders, because biological sex and gender identity are the same or there’s “no such thing as gender identity,” is to say Samoan people, Navajo people, and Bugis people are not as correctly human as the cisgender person is.
I feel confident you don’t mean to say that. Right?
Okay, so now you understand that gender doesn’t necessarily have any relationship to the shape of a person’s genitals or their reproductive organs, and you know that the “gender binary” that forces people into one of two boxes is just one of many possible sets of gender boxes we could have, because cultures vary from each other and they change over time.
Hooray! We solved gender!
Okay, not quite, but heck, the world is already a better place because you got this far.
I’m going to assume that if you’ve read all this way, you want to create space for the nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer people you know or may know in the future.
But some people may feel inclined to dismiss nonbinary folks, to feel it’s “too hard” to use the singular they or other pronouns. I’ll write more about what to do when you accidentally misgender someone, but for now we can make the world a better place for ourselves, our friends, and our partners, if we work to make space for everyone to be who they are, and to affirm each other in the identities that feel right for each of us.
Nonbinary identities, like nonbinary chromosomes and nonbinary genitals (which, again, have no particular relationship with a person’s identity), are normal. Just a normal part of human variability.
It’s so simple when you think about it that way. Right?
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