What Does it Mean to be Nonbinary? 

By: Julia Stitely

I remember sitting on a Zoom call as a professor justified her misgendering of me because she was experiencing “menopause.” I don’t remember the full conversation, maybe because it was awkward or because my roommate was fiddling with our dish drawer at the time. There was this sense of “can I please leave” running through my head as she went on and on. In class, when giving notes, she would ask to confirm my characters’ pronouns in my script but continued to misgender me and never correct herself. 

There isn’t a problem with making a mistake. If you apologize and move on, then both parties can forget. In the case of misgendering, the longer the discussion goes on, the longer the person who is misgendered has to deal with the consequences (much more so than the person who did the misgendering). What a lot of cis people don’t understand is that it is more about the lack of respect in these situations that is most damaging. 

The idea of being “nonbinary” isn’t this new thing. There have always been inclusive gender identities throughout time. As detailed by Out & Equal, Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back to 2000 - 1800 BCE depicted a “third gender.” All around the world, different cultures including Indigenous, Indonesian, and Mexican societies have had depictions of different genders. Even in the animal kingdom, there are creatures that display transness and gender-expansiveness; clownfishes are born male and transition to female while some snails have both male and female reproductive organs.

There are so many incorrect viewings of how gender is and how pronouns work. Because of the lack of education and acceptance of gender and fluidity, I wasn't able to understand the feelings I had in high school. Even if I had gay family members or was taught about transmen and transwomen in school, I still didn’t have a way to make sense. I didn’t feel like a boy but I also didn’t feel like a girl. I didn’t have the vocabulary to define that feeling and it wasn’t widely talked about. And if it was, it was in a very binary view. You either sit at the boy’s table or the girl’s table. You either shop in the men’s section or the women's section. 

It wasn’t until college that I got to explore what it meant to be me. It was much less about how I wanted people to see me and more important about how I wanted to see myself. Once I could understand that I didn’t feel like either a guy or a girl, it opened me up to wanting to express myself in more ways. When I was little, I felt like there were only two ways of dressing but now I’m more comfortable in my body. In college, I also had a support system to help me understand what I was going through. The first people I came out to were nonbinary and even though the people I told seemed random at times, it was nice to get it off my chest and talk about it with people. How similarly we felt with our genders and how different we felt.

If someone is reading this who is contemplating their gender identity or starting their journey on their gender discovery, remember that there’s not just one way to be nonbinary. That’s the beauty of it. The option is there so you aren’t defined by the binary, thus creating stereotypes of a “nonbinary” person is counterintuitive. You choose how to present yourself with your clothing, identity, and pronouns. And don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. What it means to be nonbinary is to be yourself.