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Queer Ministry: Bay Gaillard

This month, on July 14, we are celebrating International Nonbinary People’s Day. So to celebrate, I thought I’d go through some of my favorite nonbinary genders and explain what they are. 

As a reminder, in general, to be nonbinary means to be neither a man nor a woman consistently and solely. Nonbinary is not a gender itself; we’re not replacing the binary with a trinary, three genders and only three. Instead, it’s a catch-all for anyone who doesn’t fit into the binary. 

Since I’m writing this, I’ll start with my own: Genderfluid means that my gender changes from day to day, sometimes more masculine, sometimes more feminine, and often somewhere in between. A person doesn’t have to be fluid between man and woman, however; one can be fluid between any two or more genders. 

Then there’s the other thing I consider myself: a demiboy is someone who is almost a boy/man but not quite for some reason. In my case it’s because, while some days I might be a man, most days I am somewhere in between male and female, but I tend to be more masculine than feminine. There is also demigirl for someone who is not quite but almost a girl/woman. 

Then there’s the other classic: agender, meaning without a gender. One can have no gender at all, which is usually considered nonbinary but not always. It depends on the person if they think they count as nonbinary or not. 

Of course, the binary gender system has been imposed on a lot of people due to colonialism. Many cultures had multiple genders before they were colonized. The Native American and First Nations cultures have an umbrella term, two-spirit, for anyone with an Indigenous gender; typically they will also have a Native word for their actual gender. The Bugis people of Indonesia have five genders: cis man, cis woman, trans man, trans woman, and Bissu, which is a blending of the other four genders into one harmonious whole. In Samoa they have the 

Fa’afafine, which are assigned male at birth and do not consider themselves either male or female; the counterpart is called faʻatama. In south Asian countries including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, they have the hijra, who are assigned male at birth and have a feminine gender expression; like the two-spirit, they are often considered holy and play an important role in spirituality. And in the Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) and Maohi (Tahitian) cultures, they have a gender called māhū, which is neither male nor female and can have any genitalia. 

Just like pronouns, some people find that no existing word describes their gender, and so they make a new gender and see if other people also have that experience. In 1995, the term neutrois was invented to describe people with a “neutral” sense of gender, a gender that exists but is specifically not male or female but something neither. The term maverique has existed only since 2014, though it’s possible people would have identified with it before then had they been given the choice. It is described as a gender identity “characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of self that is entirely independent of male/masculinity, female/femininity or anything which derives from the two while still being neither without gender nor of a neutral gender.”

If you’re interested in very uncommon gender identities, have a look through this wiki page and see what you can find out. Many people deride these gender identities, though I would caution against that, as I know that at least one member of the congregation identifies with one of these genders. They are people’s lived experience of gender, and I think sometimes that can be exceedingly strange and unusual.