Non-binary

Non-binary or genderqueer gender identities are those that are outside the male/female gender binary. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gender that is different from the sex assigned to them at birth, although some non-binary people do not consider themselves transgender.

Non-binary people may identify as an intermediate or separate third gender, identify with more than one gender or no gender, or have a fluctuating gender identity. Gender identity is separate from sexual or romantic orientation; non-binary people have various sexual orientations.

Non-binary people as a group vary in their gender expressions, and some may reject gender identity altogether. Some non-binary people receive gender-affirming care to reduce the mental distress caused by gender dysphoria, such as gender-affirming surgery or hormone replacement therapy.

The term genderqueer first appeared in queer zines of the 1980s and early 1990s. It gained prominence in the mid-1990s through activists, such as Riki Anne Wilchins, who used it to describe individuals deviating from traditional gender norms. In a 1995 newsletter published by The Transexual Menace, Wilchins wrote that the new fight against gender oppression was political and:

It’s about all of us who are genderqueer: diesel dykes and stone butches, leatherqueens and radical fairies, nelly fags, crossdressers, intersexed, transexuals, transvestites, transgendered, transgressively gendered, and those of us whose gender expressions are so complex they haven't even been named yet.

Similar terms that preceded genderqueer included genderfuck and genderbender. In the context of 1990s early queer activism, genderqueer began as a political stance for resisting the gender binary; the term carried the non-normative and anti-assimilationist connotations of the recently reclaimed word queer. In 2002, the term had further dissemination through the anthology GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary.

Genderqueer evolved into both an umbrella term for identities outside the gender binary and an adjective or self-identity term for those who challenge or diverge from conventional gender norms, or who “queer” gender. The rise of the internet and public identification by celebrities brought the term genderqueer into mainstream awareness during the late 2000s and early 2010s.

The term non-binary was not in widespread use until the early 2010s, when it quickly increased in popularity and surpassed genderqueer as the most-used umbrella term for all people who don’t exclusively identify as women/girls or men/boys. The popularity of non-binary is sometimes credited to the fact that it has a more neutral and less political connotation than genderqueer to many people. Some critics of non-binary dislike it because the term itself reinforces the concept of a binary.