Notable people who aren't nonbinary

Notable people who aren't nonbinary is where this wiki lists a few famous contemporary and historical people who may have ended up in the notable nonbinary people article at one point, either because they formerly identified as nonbinary, or who were popularly misrepresented as being nonbinary. This list will be in alphabetical order, by family name.

Janelle Monáe

In January 2020, the hashtag #IAmNonBinary was trending worldwide on Twitter. Well-known queer musician Janelle Monáe tweeted the hashtag along with retweeting a gif of Stevonnie from Steven Universe. Many people interpreted this as Janelle coming out as nonbinary. In a later interview, Janelle said, "I tweeted the #IAmNonbinary hashtag in support of Nonbinary Day and to bring more awareness to the community. I retweeted the Steven Universe meme 'Are you a boy or a girl? I’m an experience' because it resonated with me, especially as someone who has pushed boundaries of gender since the beginning of my career. I feel my feminine energy, my masculine energy, and energy I can’t even explain."

Andreja Pejić

Andreja Pejić (born 1991) is a world-famous fashion model. She came out as a woman in July 2014, with the intention to model only women's fashion. She has stated that she prefers she/her pronouns and that she identifies with the term transgender as an umbrella term..

During the years before she came out as a woman, she used to self-identify as neither male nor female, which was widely reported by the media. She had modeled both men's wear and women's wear, and would defy interviewers' attempts to label her with a gender. In 2011, in response to a question about how she self-defines, Pejić said "Define, refine, constrict, package, and sell... No thank you. I would like to live in a world where your gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and, above all, financial status didn't affect the opportunities you are given in life, the way you're treated by others, and your overall freedom. In a world like that, I wouldn't be given such a complex definition". When pressed in an interview to reveal whether she saw a girl or boy in the mirror growing up, Pejić replied simply, "I saw a child".

Tom Phelan

Actor Tom Phelan used to identify as a nonbinary lesbian but as of 2018 is a gay trans man.

James Clifford Shupe

James Clifford Shupe (born 1963) is a retired United States Army soldier who in 2016 became the first person in the United States to obtain legal recognition of a nonbinary gender. In early 2019, he released a statement explaining that he had "returned to [his] male birth sex". He has become a vocal critic of transgender rights and the very concept of gender identity, blaming "out-of-control, transgender activism" for making transition too easy.

Billy Dee Williams

William December "Billy Dee" Williams Jr. (born 1937) is one of America's most well-known black film actors of the 1970s, best known for playing the adventurous Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars film franchise. In an interview with Esquire in 2019, Williams said, "I never tried to be anything except myself. I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn’t take himself or herself too seriously. [...] And you see I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine. I’m a very soft person. I’m not afraid to show that side of myself." Although that Esquire interviewer labels Williams with the word "genderfluid," Williams was not recorded as using that word during that interview. Based on that interview, several other news articles afterward misreported that Williams had come out genderfluid.

A few days afterward, Williams explained that that was a misrepresentation of him, that he had never identified as genderfluid, and that he didn't know what the word "genderfluid" meant. He explained that his remark in the Esquire interview was meant as a reference to the anima, the feminine side present in all manhood, in Jungian psychology.

See also

• Notable nonbinary people