I’m reading through papers, books and reports related to queerness, the environment, and occasionally other topics. As I read, I’m taking notes so I can refer back to my old readings and remember their key points more easily. Why not post my notes here, so you can all learn with me?

Each article will open with my reflections on the paper, after which will follow a summary of the reading, which is usually the bulk of the piece. Square brackets throughout the summary indicate comments from me.

Nicholas, L., Clark, S., & Falzon, C. (2024). A scoping review of non-binary research in “Australian” social sciences: Community, solidarity, resilience and resisting marginalisation. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 00, 1–17. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.374

Reflections

There being no formal mechanism to capture non-binary data is the impetus for me reading pieces like this, as I prepare to write a piece about its importance. I appreciated seeing it mentioned in this article.

“A recurring theme specific to non-binary people is the sense of being “not trans enough” or feeling like their identity is not valid.” I feel this. I don’t object to being called a woman, and I actually identify with it strongly; it’s how I’ve been perceived my whole life, and it’s never bothered me. But it doesn’t encapsulate the whole of me. I am more than just woman; I am man, too, and sometimes I feel like neither or, somehow, both, or some weird mix of them and somethings else. But because I do partially identify as a woman, because I can comfortably (in the physical and emotional sense) pass as one, I feel like I’m not trans enough. It’s a similar thing with being pansexual, which bisexual people also talk about; when my partner and I presented as a straight couple, I felt I was not gay enough to belong in the community.

The “wrong body narrative” plays into this, too. In discussions I have with cis friends, I find people can more readily understand feeling like one’s body is wrong. But I don’t know how to explain to people that the body can be mostly right, but only sometimes feel wrong in some contexts. One for me is that I like having breasts when I’m lounging at home and in intimate contexts, but outside of that, I would prefer they didn’t exist. I get self-conscious, afraid of being objectified, and, frankly, they get in the way. In historical fencing in particular, there is no good chest protection solution for someone with big breasts. The one designed for big breasts is not flat, so any hit will funnel the power of the opponent’s strike into the centre of the chest, making it more painful and dangerous. I can’t wear the flat chest protector because the corners dig into my arms. I could cut off the corners, but then the area between my armpits and breasts would be unprotected. Someone else at fencing wears a flat chest protector over the top of the ones designed for breasts, which is probably the best solution, but it looks annoying. It also protrudes further, making it easier for opponents to hit me. In more mundane settings, I am tired of reaching over a table and accidentally knocking over a glass or bottle. People laugh and I try to laugh it off, but it’s humiliating and I hate it and really wish they’d just fucking ignore it. And I have no easy way to explain this to people; I want to leave my breasts at the door or when I’m doing housework, and put them back on when I sit down to play games.

I often wonder why it is that not feeling gay or trans enough is so widespread. Some element of it is that I don’t suffer like some gay and trans people do, which is kind of fucked up. Yes, shared suffering binds us, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing, and it shouldn’t. It should not define us. We fight to build a world where that hurt doesn’t exist; if being gay or trans enough rests on having to have suffered, would success look like a world with no gay or trans community because no one is suffering for it anymore?

Having written that down, I wonder, would that be a bad thing? Would such a world need a gay or trans community if we’re not having to fight for our rights? If we could just… be?

“In Western Australia, challenging homo- and transphobic bullying has become politicised, leading to reluctance from administrators to do so.” Hate this. They do this shit because it works. Never underestimate a good harassment campaign. We need to push back against it because when we don’t, they win, and shit like this remains the norm.

I had never thought about the X marker for a “third gender” being problematic. But I can see it; by shoving all of us into a third category, they can just pretend we don’t exist. And by putting us all together, they’re still successfully stifling our diversity; we’re all compressed to fit into a single label, the metaphorical fuck-it bucket. It looks like progress, but it’s performative when it fails to capture the full, glorious breadth of humanity’s gender diversity.

“Importantly, much of the literature emphasised the structural and systemic nature of this discrimination.” This is great to see after the last paper I read, which was published 15 years prior to this one. It said there was a tendency to focus on transphobia and transphobic acts, and that this focus was preventing work on the underlying mechanisms of those individual acts. Seeing that it’s reversed to some degree was awesome to read.

“…possibly the delegitimising of identities outside the gender binary.” I find this interesting. This implies that trans people, while still copping a lot of bullshit, have to put up with less of it to some degree if their gender identity falls within the gender binary. I think this makes sense, but I’d never thought about it before.

“Viewing identity creation as an ongoing process is described by non-binary individuals as liberating, freeing them from the expectation of knowing exactly what their gender identity is at a specific time and enabling the flexibility of changing their identity in the future”. This is another statement I strongly identify with. “Genderfluid” is an accurate term because my feelings of gender change all the time. I’d like to identify differently whenever I have to discuss my gender to more reflect how I feel at that point in time, but there is no allowance for my gender being “at that point in time”. There is no easy way for me to better communicate the transient nature of my gender in any form or casual conversation because people cannot comprehend that it might be different from last year, last month, last week, or a few hours ago. I cannot communicate effectively because of constraints in language; English was built around a binary gender, and so I have no idea how to describe my state of being, which lies outside of that. I like to play with my language as much as I play with my gender, but I’m stuck on both counts.

One aspect of Seek I’ve been enjoying has been the casual way some characters have had different pronouns and physical characteristics between appearances in the story, and everyone takes it in stride. No one has commented on it. A simple “I’m a her today” and that’s the end of it. I yearn for that.

A thought I had while reading this is that safe spaces are ridiculed because they work. Powerful people in a cisgendered society don’t want us to feel good about ourselves. They don’t want to be disallowed from ridiculing us, as is the case in safe spaces. And so they make fun of us and call us weak for carving out space where we can be our genuine selves. They don’t want us to have even a small space where we can feel as comfortable as they do everywhere else. They created, maintain and uphold a world that crushes us, and then get to work to destroy our places of reprieve.

This is always the case; the ideas, concepts, and practices that garner the most backlash are the ones that actually work. It’s no coincidence; the backlash occurs because they work, and our cisgendered system wants to squash, stretch, and break us to fit into its binary. This system is upheld by individual people, and it can be undone by converting those people to our cause and dethroning the obstinate.

Introduction and Background

• ““Non-binary” has increasingly been used since approximately 2000 across the Anglosphere as “an umbrella term that includes those whose identity falls outside of or between male and female identities””
• Gender diversity has surged across the Global North.
  • “In “Australia”ⁱ specifically, there is no formal mechanism to capture these data at a national level; however, non-representative data indicate a notable rise in its usage, particularly among younger generations.”
• Gender diversity has existed throughout history and cultures.
  • “While gender non-conformity was a regular feature of pre-industrialised societies, the hegemonic notion of a strict, immutable gender binary, based on essentialist beliefs in distinct dimorphic sex, was spread through the violent exportation of western, colonial, scientific and monotheistic doctrines (O’Sullivan, 2021).”
  • “Through this process, the gender binary was established as the global norm, obscuring the rich history of a more diverse and expansive gender order.”
  • It’s important to remember this fact, as opponents of gender diversity claim it’s a modern fad, identity politics, or a rejection of a “natural order”.
• While there has been more research on non-binary and genderqueer people, there has not been much centring our lives and experiences.
  • When we do show up in research, we are often tacked onto trans identities and subsumed under the trans umbrella, or treated as indistinct.
  • The term “trans and gender diverse” (TGD) is useful, but risks implying the two are interchangeable. While there is some overlap, they are not identical.
  • “However, it is still the case that as a sole focus of academic enquiry, non-binary people, or non-binary aspects of gender diversity, remain marginal.”
• There’s a lot that has been written from a clinical perspective. This makes sense given the political struggle for healthcare access.
  • Trans Research Group at the University of Melbourne.
  • In sociology, non-binary tends to only be discussed conceptually, or as a proxy for other arguments.
  • “Common themes in this literature that engages with qualitative accounts of non-binary people themselves are identity, community and healthcare.”
  • “A recurring theme specific to non-binary people is the sense of being “not trans enough” or feeling like their identity is not valid.”
  • Desire for, and perspectives on, gender affirming medical care varies; “research points to the heterogeneity of experiences and uses of non-binary.”
• Review seeks to engage with research on non-binary people and our lives in “Australia” to consider social change and policy needs.
  • “Findings emerged around self-identity and expression, institutions and social contexts, and discrimination and stigma. Within these, key distinctions emerged around enablers and barriers, or the extent to which gender norms and the gender binary are challenged or reinforced, which has shaped the structure of our discussion.”
  • While clinical studies were excluded, there was still a lot of discussion about negative health impacts from discrimination and barriers. “Importantly, much of the literature emphasised the structural and systemic nature of this discrimination.”
  • “Crucially, however, we found that the majority of these papers either centre on, or end with, a focus on how non-binary people are actively participating in collective creation of community and identity and creating and finding safe spaces for affirmation. Resilience, coping strategies and solidarity were key themes and offer important insights into how the barriers identified at the start of the findings can be ameliorated.”

Methodology

• Scoping review aimed to:
  • Review the extant literature on non-binary and genderqueer people’s lives in “Australia”;
  • Determine what fields they come from;
  • Review the themes in the extant literature; and
  • Determine any current gaps in the literature.
• Research question:
  • What does research tell us about genderqueer and non-binary people’s lives in Australia?
• Ended up with 25 papers total.

Findings

Overview of included literature

• Findings have been divided into two categories:
  • Barriers
    • Discrimination and bullying
    • Impact of gender normativity
    • Compounding impacts of intersectionality
    • Institutional barriers
      • Legal recognition 
      • Healthcare gatekeeping
    • Impacts of all of the above on health and wellbeing
  • Enablers
    • Representation and visibility
    • Identity creation
      • Self-representation
      • Communal identity creation
    • Finding and creating safe spaces
    • Strategies for resistance to barriers and oppression
    • Importance of cisgender allies

Barriers

Discrimination and Bullying

• Research found that “high levels of harassment, abuse, and prejudice that trans people experience are associated with poorer mental health outcomes and suicidality”.
• Prominent themes of discrimination are in the context of:
  • Daily interactions, the home, subcultures, educational contexts, workplaces, healthcare, within LBGTQ communities
• Trans-spectrum young people “experienced higher levels of homophobia, transphobia and cissexism than their cisgender counterparts.” 
• Discrimination was more likely in the home then cis counterparts.
• “Jones and Hillier (2013) also described a higher likelihood of encountering rejection for “trans-spectrum” young people than the wider LGBQT sample from the study.”
• Higher rates of suicidal ideation and attempts as a result of rejection from family, friends and healthcare professionals after disclosing gender identity.
• “…trans-spectrum youth reporting 81.2 per cent of the homophobic/cissexist abuse they experienced occurred at school”
  • Reported greatest rejection from those who they would turn to for support.
    • Teachers, school nurses and student welfare coordinators / counsellors
  • in Western Australia, challenging homo- and transphobic bullying has become politicised, leading to reluctance from administrators to do so.
    • This has led to a lack of compulsory policies to address the safety and wellbeing of gender diverse students.
    • This is likely to be true nationwide.
• Workplaces are notable sites of discrimination.
  • Sexual harassment as a result of gender identity.
  • More policing of appearance and gender than binary-identified trans respondents.
    • “…exacerbated by less capacity for passing, and possibly the delegitimising of identities outside the gender binary.”
• Misrecognition and/or misgendering with pronouns
  • “This was mostly understood to result from a lack of knowledge or a resistance by others to challenging norms.” This was particularly linked to transnormativity, or, the prevalence of the “wrong body narrative”.
  • Discrimination also comes from progressives like feminists, other trans people, and older members of the trans community
  • Discrimination compounded by other intersectional factors.
    • “…unintelligibility was compounded for non-White non-binary people due to “the norm of Whiteness in nonbinary communities””

Erasure, invisibility and representation

• Binary genderism is rife in “Australia”, as was cisnormativity.
• “Hostility to non-binary is tied up in wider transphobic public discourse in “Australia,” “especially in relation to gender affirmation and medical intervention in media and medical circles”.”
  • Broader political discussions often use gender diversity as something to mock and use as proxies in scare campaigns. Safe Schools and marriage equality were brought up as examples that were named several times.
• Invisibility from methodological limitations in data collection.
  • Many “Australian” or Aotearoan surveys have only two gender options.
    • The last “Australian” census had a single question that conflated sex and gender, and only offered options for “male,” “female” or “non-binary”. This generated confused responses and muddled data analysis.
      • [You can read more about it in The Conversation; one of the authors of that article is the second author here.]
      • More recent ABS advice distinguishes between sex and gender, and offers more than two options for each.
    • Queer research institutions are also making progress. Sydney Women and Sexual Health (SWASH) has a survey which has been running for 25 years.
      • “One iteration, for example, ran with a question about sex recorded at birth with three options and an open-text option for gender and found a significant diversity in genders, including a significant proportion of people who identified as woman and non-binary.”
  • Gillard (2022) described institutional “blockages [they] faced in having [their] non-binary identity recognised in an online research context, and the second occurred within the university’s student administration infrastructure.”
  • “Both explicit trans erasure and transnormativity in school policy erases or delegitimises non-binary.”
    • Kids are referred to as “he” or “she”; the gender binary and cisgender status are assumed.
  • Legal discrimination
    • Before marriage equality, if one wanted to marry, they had to “choose their sex” within the binary.
    • Universities and other institutions require “proof” of gender in the form of a birth certificate or other document before they will issue documents labelled with one’s preferred non-binary gender.
    • In NSW, sex affirmation surgery is required before one can change the gender on their legal documents.
    • “While some progress has been made such as the High Court Ruling that allows for recognition of a third sex option, Bennett has argued that this does not “solve” the issue of real inclusion. Bennett argues “a ‘third’ sex could simply then become a ‘segregated, ghettoized category’ that contains and delimits sex and gender diversity in order to preserve normative ideals of male/female.””

Medical and healthcare barriers

• “Institutions and systems were found to wrongly have greater power than individuals to determine a person’s gender.”
  • Doctors, who may have little to no knowledge of an individual’s gender experience, have greater authority to determine someone’s gender.
  • “Davis describes how psychological and medical professionals “are installed as gatekeepers to non-binary gender recognition” and have complete control over whether an individual is able to legally change genders or receive treatment.”
• Lack of education amongst medical professionals. The trans-affirmative training for healthcare professionals that does exist does not discuss non-binary people.
  • Non-binary people endure non-affirmative treatment in fertility clinics.
  • Medical interventions for trans people may not take identities outside the binary into account.
  • “…many gender services traditionally have binary treatment pathways, often requiring people to live as the opposite sex or undergo hormonal therapy prior to accessing gender-affirming surgery. These pathways are unlikely to suit people with nonbinary identities and form a barrier to accessing necessary treatments to relieve a person’s dysphoria, depression, and anxiety.”
  • Non-binary people reported lower levels of recent suicide attempts relative to transwomen and men. This may be due to non-binary people being less likely to seek gender-affirming surgery, which means they do not experience the discrimination in that process.
  • “Despite many negative accounts, progress is apparent and possible in healthcare contexts, with non-binary participants who had suffered miscarriages experiencing “hospital staff acting in trans-affirming ways, and providing reassurance that the pregnancy loss was not a trans-specific phenomenon.””

Enablers

The importance of representation and visibility in the public sphere for the creation of non-binary identities

• Non-binary people consider self-representation to be vital in gaining visibility. This allows marginalised people to control how others see them by sharing their own stories and images on their own terms.
  • People emphasised mainstream representation as a way to guide non-binary people through self-discovery.
  • This allows non-binary people to feel empowered and inspire others in the community.
  • “…expressed poignantly by a gender-diverse participant who aspired to become for others “exactly the idol [they] needed [their] whole life.””
• Non-binary people seek guidance in pop culture and media.
  • It is particularly useful in providing language to describe and understand themselves.
  • Safety is dependent on visibility in the public consciousness; good representations develop understanding of gender diverse individuals.
  • Affirmative media representations can serve as an intervention to reduce suicidality.
  • Visibility that normalises us is vital for wellbeing, especially for those seeking DV and family abuse support. It also enables policymakers and healthcare providers to capture us in research.
  • “Overall, a recurring notion throughout the literature is that representation normalises non-binary identities and offers role models to assist those in the midst of self-discovery to understand their feelings.”

Identity creation as communal and collaborative

• “The literature highlights that non-binary people view identity development as a collaborative rather than individual process.”
  • “…collective journey of questioning oneself and experimenting with labels among one’s friendship group.”
  • “…support from other gender-diverse people helps individuals to resist the negative effects of cisgenderism and feel more confident in their identity and desires.”
  • “…testing pronouns and labels with fellow gender-diverse individuals fostered confidence in who they are, emphasising that non-binary identity creation is inherently communal and has a “fundamentally social nature.””

Identity creation as ongoing process

• More gender-related labels allows people to try on different identities and see which fits.
  • “Thus, rather than being restricted to a singular identity forever, gender-diverse individuals can continually adjust their understanding of their gender as more apt terminologies emerge”
  • “Viewing identity creation as an ongoing process is described by non-binary individuals as liberating, freeing them from the expectation of knowing exactly what their gender identity is at a specific time and enabling the flexibility of changing their identity in the future”
  • Younger gender diverse people seem to be eschewing fixed labels, treating gender as malleable. “The freedom to change identities over time generates greater understanding of oneself, enabling gender-diverse people to “precisely capture their gender subjectivity.””

Safe Spaces

• “The vastness of online spaces enables diverse gender expression, thus being perceived by non-binary people as freeing compared with the rigid gender boundaries of daily life.”
  • Drop-down menus allow people to develop identities that more align with their gender identity outside the binary.
  • The internet allows non-binary people to access information about non-conforming identities and judgement-free spaces for identity development and support.
  • Social media reinforces gender identities, as the algorithm shows them more of what they interact with, “enabling liberation rather then confinement.”
  • Anonymity of online spaces allows non-binary people to distance themselves from their physical identity and create a safe space from discrimination.
  • “Ultimately, non-binary individuals utilise online spaces to foster community and support, which is frequently absent in cisgenderist society.”
• Safe spaces in real life
  • “The resounding definition of a safe space for non-binary individuals featured liberation from gendered assumptions, freedom of expression, and the ability to exist as their “whole complex selves.””
  • Do others see non-binary people as the correct gender, and validate that identity? Safe spaces allow non-binary people to escape the constrictiveness of binary gender, and avoid harmful experiences such as misgendering.
  • Safe spaces offer a reprieve from “the repressive gendered conventions of society” and allow for a sense of security, knowing they will engage with people who will accept them.
  • Safe spaces were found to protect against suicidal ideation. They also provided support networks which could “enable them to overcome rejection of their gender identity, enhancing resilience.”
• Allow them to access other important environments, such as schools or workplaces.
  • “…inclusive school environments counter transphobic bullying and can foster affirmative representations of non-cisgender individuals.”
  • Clear acceptance enhanced work satisfaction.
• Pets
  • Pets don’t care about your gender and can foster safe spaces where non-binary people escape social ostracism.
  • Pets provide joy and relief, which “non-binary people reported to be meaningful in a world where they are regularly alienated for defying normative gender conventions.”

Strategies of coping with oppression

• Normative resistance – Making decisions using methods that diverge from societal expectations.
  • Treating contraception as routine despite not being a cisgender woman.
  • Joking about gender identity.
  • De-emphasising the importance of gender identity. “[N]on-binary individuals indicated that their unregimented gender subjectivities highlight a refusal to acquiesce to the cultural demand for intelligible gender categorisations, challenging the cisgenderist need for coherent identities.”
  • Removing gender identity from legal documents altogether would allow non-binary people to avoid having a defined gender category, while still retaining access to legal rights.
    • It also challenges the use of of the X marker for non-binary gender. The X marker upholds the gender binary by purging gender non-conforming people from the male or female categories.
  • “Therefore, de-emphasising gender is a recurring form of normative resistance, allowing non-binary people to disrupt cisgenderist expectations and escape imposed norms of stable and defined gender identity.”
  • Living openly as a non-binary person is normative resistance, as it threatens the gender binary and cis expectations. Caring and having compassion for each other is normative resistance, too, as inclusion and safety for us fosters other gender non-conformists.
• Inventive pragmatism – “[S]trategies that manipulate existing social norms and hierarchies to access resources.”
  • Accessing donor sperm outside of clinics.
  • Adapting personality, appearance and mannerisms to fit different social contexts for safety. Style was cited as a way to be better understood by others.

Discussion and policy implications

• This review has discussed the positive impacts of non-binary people creating and finding communities. However, this is often a strategy in response to non-affirming wider contexts.
• “…more than passive and symbolic inclusion is required, and truly consultative and culture-wide change is necessary to ensure the full inclusion and maximum wellbeing of non-binary people.”
  • Needs to happen in education, workplaces, health, policy, law, and general attitudes and representations.
• Several participants and authors discussed ““dis-establishing gender from the state” and degendering the policy and legal domains”. Another argument called for a “blended affirmative approach”, which allows people to legally identify with a diversity of genders.
• Self-categorisation in clinical contexts provide an opportunity to move away from the binary model of diagnosis.
  • All clinical services and research “must be tailored to be inclusive of non-binary individuals.”
• The focus mustn’t stay on non-binary communities, but must expand to the actions of the cisgender population.
  • Allophlia refers to feelings of genuine kinship with people who are different to oneself. This is associated with reduced prejudice and increased supportive behaviours.
  • Allies are vital to creating safe cultures; this was particularly emphasised in the workplace.
  • Reduced suicidal ideation was reported amongst non-binary people who felt accepted at work, with family members, or who felt their gender was respected when accessing mainstream healthcare in the preceding 12 months.
• Cisgender people must recognise the role they play in empowering the non-binary population and fighting for societal acceptance.
  • Need to challenge erasure and invisibility.
  • “[F]oster non-binary literacy and capacity to recognise and validate non-binary both in and out of queer contexts.”
  • Primary prevention strategies
    • Promoting affirmative representation in the media and news.
    • Education strategies not dissimilar to Safe Schools.
  • “The well-being of this group must be increased through measures aimed both at strengthening their resilience and making their social environments more liveable.”