I am nonbinary. By definition, nonbinary is an umbrella term to describe any gender that is not strictly 100% girl or 100% boy. It can be abbreviated to “NB” or “enby”. It is used by people who are partially woman or man as well as nonbinary, hence the term “nonbinary woman” or “nonbinary man”. A person can also be nonbinary in addition to being completely woman or completely man, hence “nonbinary and woman”, etcetera. Agender (meaning being genderless or having no gender) people also fall under the nonbinary umbrella. It’s a catch-all term for multitudes of more specific genders or lack thereof, that are anything but all girl and all boy. For me, I don’t fall somewhere between man or woman. My gender is completely separate from the binary.
…show more content…
I have always felt nonbinary, but it wasn’t until high school that I became aware of nonbinary genders. Up until that point in my life, nothing else but man and woman existed. Nothing society gives us suggests otherwise. The gender binary is something, like many other constructs, that “people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality” (Peter Berger, 262). Examples of its objectivation are all around us, including everything from bathrooms, to sports, to clothing, to housing, to language. Growing up, rarely is any child told specifically that “there are only two genders; male and female”. There is no need, for the environment of society says it all nonverbally. The only time something similar would have to be said is if a child acts outside of their expected gender role and is corrected by a parent. By only presenting and consequently validating two genders, it is most people’s natural instinct to accept the two as being the only options. As Berger and Luckman said, “the social order” (in this case, gender) “exists only and insofar as human activity continues to produce …show more content…
Demigenders (such as demigirl, demiboy, demienby) are nonbinary genders and umbrella terms to describe having a partial gender. The term does not indicate how much, as in percentage, someone identifies as a gender; it solely depends on if a person identifies as partially so. Some people may partially identify with two or more genders while others may not. As I was discovering, there were no rules for gender, contrary to popular belief. I had found a term that I could use as a way to try to gently segway my parents into accepting that I wasn’t cisgender (identifying as the gender one was assigned at birth). Saying that I wasn’t completely a girl seemed like a nice jumping off point to introduce the concept of having a trans
I have always felt nonbinary, but it wasn’t until high school that I became aware of nonbinary genders. Up until that point in my life, nothing else but man and woman existed. Nothing society gives us suggests otherwise. The gender binary is something, like many other constructs, that “people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality” (Peter Berger, 262). Examples of its objectivation are all around us, including everything from bathrooms, to sports, to clothing, to housing, to language. Growing up, rarely is any child told specifically that “there are only two genders; male and female”. There is no need, for the environment of society says it all nonverbally. The only time something similar would have to be said is if a child acts outside of their expected gender role and is corrected by a parent. By only presenting and consequently validating two genders, it is most people’s natural instinct to accept the two as being the only options. As Berger and Luckman said, “the social order” (in this case, gender) “exists only and insofar as human activity continues to produce …show more content…
Demigenders (such as demigirl, demiboy, demienby) are nonbinary genders and umbrella terms to describe having a partial gender. The term does not indicate how much, as in percentage, someone identifies as a gender; it solely depends on if a person identifies as partially so. Some people may partially identify with two or more genders while others may not. As I was discovering, there were no rules for gender, contrary to popular belief. I had found a term that I could use as a way to try to gently segway my parents into accepting that I wasn’t cisgender (identifying as the gender one was assigned at birth). Saying that I wasn’t completely a girl seemed like a nice jumping off point to introduce the concept of having a trans