Nonbinary
 Meaning Yellow: gender without reference to the binary; White: many or all genders; Purple: gender between or a mix of female and male; Black: lack of gender. | |
| Related identities | Genderqueer |
|---|---|
| Under the umbrella term | Transgender |
| Frequency | 63.1% |
| Click here to see alternative flags! | |
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Nonbinary (also hyphenated as non-binary)[2] means any gender identity that is not strictly male or female all the time, and so does not fit within the gender binary. For some people, "nonbinary" is as specific as they want to get about labeling their gender. For others, they call themselves a more specific gender identity under the nonbinary umbrella. Many people who call themselves nonbinary also consider themselves genderqueer. However, the terms have different meanings and connotations: genderqueer means any gender identity or expression which is, itself, queer.
Nonbinary falls under the umbrella term of transgender (meaning a gender identity different than one's sex assigned at birth). However, for various reasons, individual nonbinary people may or may not consider themselves transgender.[3]
History[edit | edit source]
There is more information about this topic here: history of nonbinary gender
There are many other historical events about genders outside the binary, which have existed for all of written history, going back to Sumerian and Akkadian tablets from 2nd millennium BCE and 1700 BCE,[4][5][6] and ancient Egyptian writings from 2000-1800 BCE.[7][8] This section focuses only on historical events about people who call themselves by the word "nonbinary."
The editors of this wiki have not yet found the earliest recorded use of "nonbinary" as a self-identity label. It appears to have been in use during the first decade of the 2000s.
Since 2012, the International Nonbinary Day has been celebrated each 14th of July, with the aim to celebrate and focus on nonbinary people, their successes and contributions to the world and their issues. Katje of "Fierce Femme's Black Market," the person who proposed it, chose that date because it is exactly between International Men's Day and International Women's Day.[9][10]
In 2013, a user of the social media site Tumblr coined an abbreviation of nonbinary or N.B., "enby." This word and how people have come to use it is discussed below.[11][12][13]
In 2014, Kye Rowan designed the nonbinary flag in response to a call put out for a nonbinary flag that was separate from the genderqueer flag, the final design is shown at the top of this article.[14][15][16] This flag is meant to "represent nonbinary folk who did not feel that the genderqueer flag represented them. This flag was intended to go alongside Marilyn Roxie's genderqueer flag rather than replace it. The flag consists of four stripes. From top to bottom: yellow represents those whose gender exists outside of and without reference to the binary as yellow is often used to distinguish something as its own. White represents those who have many or all genders, as white is the photological presence of color and/or light. The purple stripe represents those who feel their gender is between or a mix of female and male as purple is the mix of traditional boy and girl colors. The purple also could be seen as representing the fluidity and uniqueness of nonbinary people. The final black stripe represents those who feel they are without gender, as black is the photological absence of color and/or light." The nonbinary flag and the genderqueer flag are both options for nonbinary people to use to symbolize themselves, and take different approaches to how to symbolize nonbinary genders.
In 2014, the social media site Facebook began to allow users to set their profiles as any of 56 genders, one of which was called "nonbinary."[17]
In 2017, in the USA, the state of California passed the 2017 Gender Recognition Act "to ensure that intersex, transgender, and nonbinary people have state-issued identification documents that provide full legal recognition of their accurate gender identity."[18][19]
In 2018, in the USA, Washington state began to allow "X" gender markers on official documents[20], with the law stating that
| « | "X" means a gender that is not exclusively male or female, including, but not limited to, intersex, agender, amalgagender, androgynous, bigender, demigender, female-to-male, genderfluid, genderqueer, male-to-female, neutrois, nonbinary, pangender, third sex, transgender, transsexual, Two Spirit, and unspecified.[21] | » |
Also in 2018, well-known cartoonist and songwriter Rebecca Sugar came out as a nonbinary woman.
In 2019, Collins Dictionary added the word "non-binary".[22]
Of around 1.2 million students who submitted a Common Application in 2024, 15,016 (1.20̬ percent) selected "Nonbinary" as their gender identity. 3,750 students used the write-in box option to describe their gender identities.[23] "Genderfluid", "agender", and "genderqueer" were the most common responses.
Enby[edit | edit source]
The word enby (plural enbies, derived from "N.B.," the initialism of "non-binary") is a common noun meaning "nonbinary person." It was coined by Tumblr user vector (revolutionator) in 2013 as the nonbinary common noun equivalent of "boy" or "girl."[11][12][13] Due to that wording, some nonbinary people question whether it can also be used as a nonbinary common noun equiv