ABSTRACT
Genderqueer identities are diverse but share dis-identification with rigid gender binaries and in some cases, a direct challenge to the social institutions that perpetuate binaries. Like genderqueer, non-binary can be traced to the work of transgender and transsexual authors who resisted or transcended gender binaries, for example Bornstein, who stated that ‘Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender.’ The last few years have witnessed a shift in the possibilities afforded for gender expression in some countries, however fragile and contingent this development might be. The UK Government Equalities Office found that non-binary people had substantially lower quality of life scores, as compared to cisgender and heterosexual people. The patriarchal and heterosexist underpinnings of gender binarism were discussed by Feinberg in 1996. Bornstein also analyzed heteropatriarchal systems of “gender defence.” Practices of binarism continue, for example the social erasure of third and other sex pronouns such as “ze” and the existence of gender binaried toilets and uniforms within schools.
