I'm nonbinary. What does that mean?

06 Oct, 2025 • 3761 words

Table of Contents

Hi! I’m nonbinary. This may confuse you. Let’s discuss.

What makes the nonbinary label “confusing”?

You, dear reader, probably have some sort of preconceived notion about what being nonbinary is. You probably know us for having blue hair and pronouns. You might have seen us on TikTok or somewhere else being “weird” and “annoying”. You might not like us. Well, rest assured, I may have pronouns, but I do not (currently) have blue hair.

If you are genuinely curious, feel free to read on. This article is a friendly explainer. If, on the other hand, your confusion comes from being deliberately obtuse and a lack of an open mind to understanding this stuff: there is not much I can do, sorry for you.

Sex and gender

When we talk about an individual’s sex, we are typically talking one of two categories they fall into: Assigned Male at Birth (AMAB), or Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB). Doctors typically prescribe this at birth based on your physical sex characteristics. This works for a lot of people, but not everyone: there are a number of intersex people whose physical sex characteristics don’t neatly fall into one of these two categories. Yes, biology is more complicated, and categories are fuzzy: this theme will come up more throughout this article.

The distinction between sex and gender was not always made. Sexologists (real job, allegedly) started making this distinction as early as 1945 (I. Madison Bentley), but it was perhaps not popularised until the 1960s by an ironically transphobic psychiatrist - Robert Stoller. Many attribute the sex-gender distinction to extremely problematic physician John Money, but this is in fact not the case. Wikipedia has more.

Unlike sex, gender - being a socially ascribed trait - is much harder to define. In essence, gender is a social category that encompasses a number of traits, roles and societal expectations that we are expected to perform. Honestly, I think trans author Isabelle Fall describes it excellently in her short story, “I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter” ¹. This is an excellent read, and it bothers me to this day that clearly one of the best upcoming trans writers was bullied off the internet AND out of her transition, by people who claim to be progressive “trans allies”.

In her story, Fall writes:

The reasons for war don’t matter much to us. We want to fight the way a woman wants to be gracious, the way a man wants to be firm. …

How often do you analyze the reasons for your own gender? You might sigh at the necessity of morning makeup, or hide your love for your friends behind beer and bravado. Maybe you even resent the punishment for breaking these norms.

But how often—really—do you think about the grand strategy of gender? The mess of history and sociology, biology and game theory that gave rise to your pants and your hair and your salary? The casus belli?

She also has an elegant description of gender itself:

Long before we had writing or farms or post-digital strike helicopters, we had each other. We lived together and changed each other, and so we needed to say “this is who I am, this is what I do.”

So, in the same way that we attached sounds to meanings to make language, we began to attach clusters of behavior to signal social roles. Those clusters were rich, and quick-changing, and so just like language, we needed networks devoted to processing them. We needed a place in the brain to construct and to analyze gender.

I won’t repost the entire work, but it’s worth reading, if you’re interested in this stuff. It’s both interesting and a fascinating philosophical reflection of what gender means.

The point to be made here is that gender is clusters of attributes: voice, dress, mannerisms, hair, your gait, the way you stand, anything. Most of the time, all of a person’s attributes will fall into one category or the other (feminine or masculine), and they will never change it over their entire lifetime. Due to this, we humans are very well trained to identify one’s gender identity based on physical appearance very quickly, and it is not common for us to see people who either A) wish to change their gender; or B) don’t fall in one of the camps.

For the majority of people, gender is natural. It comes with how you were born. You never have to “think” about it, you rarely have to perform it. As Fall importantly writes:

You might sigh at the necessity of morning makeup, or hide your love for your friends behind beer and bravado.

For many people, this may never bother you, for your whole life. Maybe you enjoy applying makeup, and could never imagine sitting in a gross pub drinking piss-water. Conversely, maybe you love shouting at the game over a beer, and deeply cringe at the thought of being put in a dress. For some people too, you may indeed sigh at the “necessity” of morning makeup, but it feels natural when you’re told you’re feminine, pretty and beautiful. You may wish you could tell your friends you love them after a beer, but you feel empowered when told you’re strong, dark and handsome. In all of these cases, despite their differences, your gender identity - your internal understanding of your gender - matches with what you were assigned at birth. You embody the typical clusters of behaviours that society expects from men or women. This is known as being cisgender.

For others, this is not the case. They may be born AMAB, but instead feel as though they are a woman. Or be born AFAB, but feel as though they are a man. This could be for any number of reasons, but is often gender dysphoria - the disconnect between one’s internal gender identity, and external presentation. This group have the academic definition of “binary trans people”, because they are transitioning from male to female, or vice versa - a binary relation. Many binary trans people will often socially transition (e.g. change their name, pronouns) and also undergo medical treatments (e.g. hormone replacement therapy) to change their appearance.

In the current political climate, trans people in general - and especially binary trans people, as the most visible - receive hate from society at large. They have become the myopic focus of global hate movements, who seek to stigmatise their identity and use them as scapegoats to push regressive policies. Despite the hate binary trans people receive, their transition still aligns with society’s rigid gender roles. It is merely the case that hateful individuals do not accept this transition as “valid”, not that they do not understand in principle the concept of transitioning from male to female, or vice versa.

Nowadays though, the trans label is an umbrella term. We covered individuals who are transitioning from one of society’s rigid gender roles to another, but what about those individuals for whom none of these two rigid roles align neatly? The way we understand our gender identity doesn’t neatly fall into one box or the other. Maybe we feel that we are partially feminine, but also partially masculine. And it’s important to note, this is entirely separate from being a “butch” woman, or a “femme” man. Those persons still identify as a man or a woman. For us, we feel like neither of those two labels are apt descriptors. In my specific case, I feel like I fall somewhere in the middle. We might say that we do not align with society’s binary gender identities. In other words, we say we’re nonbinary.

Gender and sexuality

Nowadays, when we talk about sexuality, the concept of being bisexual - attracted to two or more genders - is commonly accepted. I’ve known and identified that I was bisexual since somewhere around 2017, so that’s coming on just under 8 years now. During that time, I’ve been lucky enough to date men and women, so I’m pretty confident that this isn’t a phase. Maybe we’ll know for sure when I reach 10 years of being bisexual :)

For a time (and perhaps, in some circles, still today), the bisexual identity was considered fake. In the sense of, “No one can possibly be attracted to multiple genders at the same time, it’s not possible.” People said we, bisexual people, were either secretly gay or straight. Or that it was a phase. Academic researchers claimed to “disprove” bisexuality as really being straight/gay people in disguise.

More recently, thankfully, both society and academic research have come around somewhat, and embraced bisexuality (and other “multisexual” orientations, e.g. pansexual) as a real, valid sexual orientation. There’s good data and good literature to back this up. Plus, intuitively, it makes sense, right? With out modern understanding of sexuality, it would be bizarre to suggest there are only two sexualities: homosexual and heterosexual - and that anything in between was invalid. In fact, the inverse makes more logical sense: that everyone’s unique experience of sexuality is different, and one can be attracted to at least two genders, to many different degrees. Millions of people worldwide have lived experiences that back this up. In fact, as has been identified recently, sexuality is complex and fluid, and can vary with individuals over time.

Following this logic, I argue then, that it doesn’t make sense to assume that the only possible gender identities are male and female. The right likes to frame the question “How many genders are there?” as some ridiculous modern invention, but personally I consider the question itself as ridiculous as “How many sexualities are there?”. The question doesn’t make sense, and there’s no universal answer. Everyone’s experience of sexuality is different, and likewise, everyone’s experience of gender is different. As we defined gender earlier as a social construct, it does not make logical sense to force one’s experience of gender to fall between these two rigid binaries - male and female.

In fact, sexuality is a recent social construction: in more ancient societies, there was not the concept of “gay”, “bisexual”, and “straight”, like we have today. Furthermore, in some societies, homosexual behaviour was not necessarily frowned upon and considered “immoral” and such, as it was for many years in Western societies. As a social construction, sexuality is complex and varied amongst different people, and obviously, not everyone falls into the neat label of “homosexual” and “heterosexual”. Likewise, while it is an older construction, gender remains a social construction. It could be argued that gender is the original social construction, as long before we had sexual identity, we had gender roles, even as far back as hunter-gatherer societies. Although it is true that these early gender roles were based on sex characteristics, gender is not specifically tied to sex characteristics. In other words, in the same way it’s possible to change sexualities with little fuss, the same should apply to gender. And, in the same way that it’s possible to fall in the middle of the continuum between homosexual and heterosexual (“bisexual”), the same should be possible for gender as well (“non-binary”).

What does nonbinary look like?

Being nonbinary will look unique to each person. Some nonbinary people want to change their appearance, others do not. Some people might say they’re nonbinary, but look exactly the same as they did before! That may be weird to you, but it’s expected, by nature of gender identity being an internal concept. We can internally identify one way, but present in a different way. This is why femboys (feminine boys) and tomboys (masculine women) exist. Femboys, for example, would (nominally) identify as 100% cis, but still present femininely. The key difference is between gender identity, and gender presentation; how we understand our role in the grand play that is gender, versus how we act in that role.

For me, personally, the goal is and has always been androgyny. I’m working towards modifying my appearance, voice, and mannerisms to be androgynous; which I feel will align my external presentation with how I feel internally. The word itself, androgynous, is one of those fun self-defining Greek loan-words: “andro”, meaning “masculine”; and “gyno” meaning feminine. In other words, masculine and feminine. Although, in my case, it’s better described as falling near the middle on the scale between masculine and feminine; to look a way that it’s not easily possible to identify my gender. I’m aware this will upset people; as we discussed earlier, gender is a very old social construction, and we humans like to be able to classify someone’s gender into one of the two predominant categories very quickly. Nonetheless, this is a risk I must take, as it’s necessary to align with my internal sense of gender identity.

So what changes for me? Maybe not as much as you might think. If you already like me from my programming work or other writings, you’ll probably keep liking me. If you’re reading this article as your first introduction to me, you might think I’m woke or weird. That’s OK. The only difference I will have is a new name and a new shiny set of pronouns that I prefer you use: they/them.

My personal experience

As a child, I was gender non-conforming. I liked to wear too-toos and engage in stereotypical feminine activities, and didn’t care much for stereotypical masculine activities for the most part. There is research that indicates that childhood gender non-conformity is associated with diverse sexuality in adulthood (Marino et al, 2023) ², so it does make sense that I identify as bisexual in adulthood. Furthermore still, though, it is worth noting that more recent research indicates that gender non-conformity in childhood remains stable into adulthood (deMayo et al, 2025) ³, so it could be said it also intuitively makes sense that I’m nonbinary, or at the very least, gender non-conforming.

I probably first started to realise that I was not exactly cis in or about 2019. I enjoyed wearing makeup, I thought it made me look pretty, and I would always ask my girl friends to doll me up in makeup when they were around (har har). But something still felt just a bit… off about it. Like I was trying to look one way, but couldn’t quite achieve it. These were confusing times.

In 2021 through to the end of 2022 inclusive, I had a girlfriend, and so thoughts on gender identity did not come up as much. I tried to live the cis male archetype, to be a strong and supportive partner, but it felt fake. It felt like a performance, not in the sense of the modern “performative male”, but as in an acting role to fulfill an expectation that I could not.

In 2023, I thought about gender identity a little bit more, but for the most part, I considered myself to be a boy who wanted to date boys. I told myself that I was simply a gender non-conforming boy. I was, of course, aware of the non-binary identity, but I didn’t let myself think about it, because I couldn’t face the idea that I was this way. I always thought to myself, “Society doesn’t even accept trans people. I’ll never be accepted as someone nonbinary.” As was the case when I was understanding my sexuality, I did about every “Are you trans???” quiz on the internet, and many came back as, “Well, we don’t know” or “You’re nonbinary.” I tried using she/her pronouns on a Discord server for a week, but something felt off about it. I decided that I was I was male, but gender non-conforming. But that still didn’t fully encapsulate my gender identity. I was a little bit gender non-conforming, but most of my fashion was still indistinguishable from normal male fashion. What was different? Something internal.

In 2025, I have so far met many new people, a lot of whom have been trans. With this newfound community, the old thoughts of gender identity returned. But this time, I felt more confident. My trans friends had been very accepting of other non-binary people I knew, so surely, they could accept me? I realise I absolutely loved being referred to as they/them. I liked abbreviating my legal first name to M., to remove its gender. I wanted to dress more androgynously, sound more androgynous, and be more androgynous. I talked to my therapist. I updated my bios. I wrote this blog! That’s where we are now.

FAQ

(aka “Rebuttals To Things Nasty People Say On The Internet”)

Massive content warning on this section for transphobia.

Q: Aren’t you just doing this for attention?!

A: Boo. Get new material. Man, come on. This is what people have been saying about the gays for like 40 years. We live in a political climate in which classifying all trans people as violent extremists and sending them to camps is being actively floated. I’m not an American (thank god) but just by being who I am, it is no longer safe for me at this time really to enter the US, to go to conferences and such. Why would I want that attention? If I were cis, and straight, I could rock up and be fine. Plus, I get all the attention in the world I need from my academic work, not my gender identity or sexuality.

Q: Aren’t you taking up resources (HRT and stuff) from the Real Trans People (TM)?

A: I am not currently looking to medically transition at this time. Resources for HRT are already short, and nonbinary people are not the majority of the trans community. Rather than blaming other trans people, we should be looking to campaign to increase these resources.

Q: Why can’t you just say you’re gender non-conforming?

A: Well, I could. But this would only be partially true. Firstly, I don’t always present in a gender non-conforming way. Why is it that I can wear jeans and a T-shirt, but still light up when someone calls me ’they/them’? For me, my understanding of my own gender is an internal feeling, that is independent of external presentation. Now, in the future, it is true that I may choose to present in - what to a cis man - would be a gender non-conforming way. But, for me personally, I consider this to be androgynous, rather than gender non-conforming. Realistically, this is pedantry. As you long as you are respectful of me, I don’t mind what you want to internalise me as.

Q: They/them?! Singular they is grammatically incorrect.

A: Firstly, let me agree and say: yes, even as someone who wants to be called they/them, it takes some getting used to, it’s Anglocentric, and I still get it wrong sometimes myself for other people (sorry to those people). I do accept that singular-they can feel clunky and unwieldy. However. The singular they is increasingly used in modern speech, and also has history to it. For modern speech, consider the case where someone has left an umbrella in the office, and you don’t know whose it is. I feel most people would say, “Someone’s left their umbrella here”, not the much longer, “Someone’s left his or her umbrella here”, even if the latter is technically grammatically correct. Furthermore, the singular they does in fact have a relatively long documented history in English, you may consider reading the following resources below. Furthermore though, I want to add that language changes all the time. We have sentences nowadays that would make a Victorian child cry tears of blood (“skibidi rizz”??). Unlike other languages such as French which have the Académie Française to dictate language, English is very free-form. It’s natural that language will change over time to incorporate new developments.

Singular they links:

Respect

Humans like classification. We like to be able to neatly file all of the people we know into certain boxes. We receive so many stimuli every day, that this approximation of reality makes sense as a way to handle that much data. But, reality is more complicated. Reality is fuzzy. People are complex, and don’t necessarily fall into the boxes you made for them. The problem lies in your reaction to this information. Do you step back, and re-draw the lines of the boxes? That’s OK, that’s why we label nonbinary as a thing. Do you say, “fuck the boxes, let’s do away with them”? That’s OK too, that’s why some activists talk about a post-gender society ⁴. Or, finally, do you reject reality itself, and say, “No, you have to fit into one of the boxes I made. You’re the problem.” In that case? We have a problem.

Despite all this, you might still be confused. This makes sense: if you’re cis, it’s very hard to understand what having a different gender identity is like. Just like how if you’re a straight man, you may never understand how a man could be attracted to another man, because you aren’t.

That’s OK. I’m not after your understanding, I’m only after your respect. What does respect look like? It’s pretty straightforward, actually. Just call me by my preferred name and pronouns. That’s really it! You don’t even have to get it right all the time, I know, as I said, that they/them can be strange. As long as you’re trying, that’s what counts.

By doing this, you’re respecting me. If you can respect me, I can respect you.

As Fall wrote:

I ask for your empathy, not your sympathy.

Thanks for reading. ∎

~/mel