I’m non-binary — here’s how you can be my ally and gain my respect

Bel Bale | they/them

I came out as non-binary seven months ago to two of my closest friends sat on our sofa. Well, I say I did, but I remember feeling as if the words were literally pulled right out of me by someone else before I could hold them back.

Calling me they is you recognising me, respecting me, and affirming my identity

It almost felt like an accident — right after saying it, I instantly felt embarrassed and almost as if I had just told them a lie. It wasn’t until later that I realised, with a huge sense of relief, I’d been wanting to tell someone for months, but been unable to phrase it.

Being a queer woman had prompted many a challenge in my daily life ever since I came out at 16, but being non-binary? I was reminded of what one of my relatives had told me when I came out to them as a teenager; that it would be ‘a difficult and sad life’. At that time, those words had strangely given me even more courage to be myself — a kind of righteous anger that I used to try to protect myself. Now, they made me feel desperately lonely.

Becoming visible

There’s a unnamed game we like to play in the queer community. The rules are simple — you sit and think of all the signs from your childhood that point to your own queerness and laugh about your (and your family’s) obliviousness to your own identity. It gives you the power to laugh about your own childlike struggles from afar, venerating them in a way, whilst knowing that at the time they might have been reasons for your own discrimination.

I’ve played it for years as a queer person, but when it came to thinking about my gender identity I felt like I was scraping the barrel for signs that I was different. I even started to make some up in my head, just to try and make myself sure that what I was feeling was actually true. Because, once we start thinking about it, what does gender non-conformity look like?

The answer is in the very definition of being non-binary. Collins recognised the word in November 2019, and define it as ‘relating to a gender or sexual identity that does not conform to the binary categories of male or female, heterosexual or homosexual’. For me, being gender non conforming (GNC) is inherently political.

I don’t choose the way I feel in my body, but calling myself non-binary and having different pronouns is indicative of my desire to exist outside of the majority — deliberately so — and to reject those values on purpose, so that I can be myself.

The non-binary flag was designed by Kye Rowan in 2014 — its purple stripe, which is a mix of pink and blue, represents people who feel their gender is between, or a mix of, female and male

Some GNC/non-binary people see themselves having as being both feminine and masculine, and identify in this way to express this. Personally, for me, it means being neither one nor the other, but lingering outside of structure in an unknown, ambiguous space.

This space was something that I knew I was part of, but didn’t know how to quantify or explore, which made me fearful to claim it as my own or to interact with it as a free zone in which to express myself. However, with the support of wonderful friends, I claimed it then on that sofa, and I do every day, by using my own pronouns — which are they/them.

This is, of course, really particular to me. Plenty of GNC/non-binary people use more binary pronouns, or use any interchangeably, or even use ones that are not featured in the dictionary, or just use their names. Different languages hold different terms for us — some that are current and in common use, such as the Danish neutral term ‘Hen’, and some that are older and have been reclaimed by the community.

Reclaiming these words allows GNC people to connect with their heritage, and to understand themselves and express themselves in an intersectional way. One of the performers I met as part of my dissertation told me that their own idea of being non-binary came from their rejection of white, idealised femininity. As a person of colour, calling themselves genderqueer enables them to reassert themselves as having power and autonomy outside these gendered expectations, and allows them to conduct their body in a space without these limitations.

This creativity and reclamation is something I love most about being from the community I’m part of — the confidence to name and rename themselves, and to find names and pronouns that are so representative of them. For me, using they/them pronouns gives me the same element of strength. I like their plurality — even when someone is talking about me in the singular sense, I feel like there’s more of me to reckon with. I even like they take more time to say — they make my identity more recognisable, and they prompt people to think before they speak. Restructuring sentences to fit with it takes up time and space linguistically, just as I want to take up space in real life.

YouTube’s Jake Edwards breaks down the history of pronouns and has a few solid points on why it’s so important to use a person’s correct pronouns

I know that bringing up pronouns presents difficulties. People aren’t used to thinking about them in the way I do, to which I say this: being misgendered if you are trans, is not only horrible to experience, but is also incorrect.

Of course, it is hard to get to grips with, and for those who know me really well and have done before I changed pronouns it can be difficult to remember how to refer to me. But I can also tell when someone is deliberately misgendering me. Deliberately referring to someone with the wrong pronouns repeatedly can be a hate crime, and is an erasure of our existence. It is something that many trans people across the world have to face, day in and day out.

My privilege as a white middle class person affords me some safety in being able to voice my discomfort, but for others it can sometimes be dangerous to do so, which is why we must take greater care with the language you use and the way you treat people you come into contact with.

This is even more crucial in situations such as these, when many trans people worldwide are under lockdown and living with people they haven’t come out to, or who don’t respect their identity. Personal stories I’ve seen all over my social media details the difficulties that come from coming home to families who still use dead names, misgender individuals with and without knowing their gender identity, and act offensively towards people who can’t leave their houses due to the pandemic. In this way, it is even more important to share our love and solidarity to those who may not have the freedom or ability to express themselves as readily as some of us might do.

How can I be an ally to trans and non-binary people?

Here’s a list of ways you can support trans and non-binary people around you:

1. Don’t assume anyone’s gender identity — even if you think you have a good idea about what pronouns people use, you will never be sure unless you ask and making wrong assumptions can be hurtful.
2. Ask for people’s pronouns at meetings in the workplace so that everyone can refer to each other correctly in a professional context.
3. Make sure that equality and diversity initiatives also include spaces for trans people, and speak up if you think they need more space.
4. Never ask what someone’s ‘real’ name is if you know they are trans — this can cause a lot of discomfort for people as bringing up their birth name (also known as a ‘dead’ name) can be traumatic.
5. Similarly, asking questions about people’s surgical status or sex life, however much it interests you, is incredibly intrusive — so don’t do it!
6. Don’t ‘out’ anyone without their consent! People are at a liberty to tell whomever they want, whenever they want about their identity.
7. Research and read up on trans people and their experiences. If you have any questions it’s a good idea to do this first as it can be very draining for people to give you answers. A great online resource is Them magazine which features lots of good diverse and intersectional articles! Good people to follow on social media are: Munroe Bergdorf, Indya Moore, Alok Vaid Menon, Travis Alabanza and Janet Mock. Sharing their content on your own accounts, or with your friends and family is a way for you to show support also.
8. Donate to trans charities and organisations, such as Gendered Intelligence, or see if any performers are posting anything online to watch during this time. Sites like Patreon allow you to pay a subscription to view performances, get zines delivered to your mailbox, or look at art pieces they have created while contributing to their income which for many queer artists has been heavily affected by the pandemic. Support those who are self-employed!

The most important thing about being an ally to people like me, both within the queer community and outside of it, is respect and recognition. Calling me they is you recognising me, respecting me, and affirming my identity. It shows that you care about our relationship, and about your relationship with others like me, but also that you are happy with me existing in that space.

Learning the experiences of others, listening to their suggestions and making sure they are included by calling them by their right names is a step on the way forward to dispelling the fear that people such as myself felt the day I came out, and do every day.

Bel Bale is Student Communities Development Coordinator at MDXSU and Co-Chair of the Middlesex University Gender Network