Beyond the Binary: Identity Labels Are Tools, Not Fixed Absolutes

If you’ve kept up with this column so far this year, you might have seen my recurring mention in reference to the label nonbinary itself, that it is a indication of what people are not (binary), rather than being its own, definitive category or a third gender. As we make a further dent into the year and continue these discussions, I figure it’s worth taking a step back to talk about labels and how they can be useful, or not.

Nonbinary folks sometimes use a number of other terms to describe their gender: agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, gender-nonconforming, demigirl/boy, the list goes on. It mirrors the conversations we see around sexuality, with terms like pansexual, demisexual, even queer, outside of terms like gay, lesbian, and bisexual.

Personally, I am queer and nonbinary. I stopped using the word “gay” for myself when I realized I was attracted to all genders, though I wasn’t necessarily sure that bisexual or pansexual were right for me, either. Queer felt comfortable in its ambiguity, in the same way that nonbinary feels to me now. For me, people get the information they need about me with my use of these terms, and it doesn’t necessarily need to go further.

Before I had really told that many people about my gender, I thought about adopting “genderqueer” for myself. I told myself, “My gender is queer, right? That’s how I feel.”

I had a conversation with one of my nonbinary friends around that time, who pressed me a little more about the adoption of the word “genderqueer” for myself. It’s sometimes defined as someone who doesn’t follow binary gender norms, cis or trans. Bear in mind, I’m defining the word in relation to this column partially to make a point. Some might ask how that definition differs from nonbinary or gender-nonconforming, and some genderqueer people might have a whole other conception of what that word means to them aside from that definition.

“Sure, but what does genderqueer even mean for you?” my friend posed.

Sometimes I resonate with that term, but my gender sometimes feels fluid. Some days, I don’t feel like any gender at all, just dressing and showing up in the world in the way that best feels right to me.

For me, it feels most flexible and enveloping by calling my gender nonbinary and leaving it at that. In addition to being aromantic and embracing that label once I realized it described me, words like queer and nonbinary in relationship to myself not only best describe my experience but leave me the most room to explore these elements of myself.

This all makes me think of some of the conversations happening, largely online, surrounding nonbinary folks as more and more began coming out over the past few years. I saw people on TikTok creating a “put a finger down” challenge for nonbinary people, with prompts like, “Put a finger down if you’re named after an inanimate object; put a finger down if you’ve had an undercut or mullet; put a finger down if you want top, bottom surgery, or HRT; put a finger down if you have tattoos.”

This sort of generalization irked me as much as it irked a lot of other people, for obvious reasons. It’s also a stupid TikTok trend, but it does speak to the larger idea of forcing people into gendered boxes and asserting characteristics, performance, and expectations on them.

Conversations like this helped to create this assumption that all nonbinary people are androgynous, fit neatly somewhere “in the middle” of men and women (an idea around gender I reject in favor of something more three-dimensional, not just a line from one side to another). They also assert that men and women, cis or trans, must perform their gender in a certain way, which opens a pretty dangerous Pandora’s box.

This ignores the extremely complex nature of people, their cultures, their race, their lived experience, the fluidity of identity over time, and truly, the very reason many people are leaving the binary behind. We’re not trying to fit into a new category; we’re saying no to the expectations surrounding gender altogether and forging a new path.

Going back to the abundance of terms folks use to express their identity, it’s important to remember that these are tools—They are not bound, fixed, definitive mechanisms that strictly bind every person who uses them. They help an individual to express themself in the world, but it stops being as productive when we start saying, “Oh, but how are you nonbinary? You have (some specific specific feature that isn’t gender exclusive to begin with).”

Use the gender and sexuality labels for yourself that best describe your experience and allow for further self-exploration. No one can take your identity and experience away from you; what we’re not going to do is use these tools as a mechanism to dictate how others “should’’ show up in the world. If we do that, we’re clearly missing the entire point.