ABSTRACT
While gender diversity has existed in many cultures throughout history, recent decades have seen growing awareness and visibility of gender identities and experiences beyond the masculine‒feminine dichotomy. In particular, although transgender people’s experiences are becoming increasingly visible, little is known about non-binary people’s lived experiences of gender, sexuality, and sexual health. Non-binary refers to a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine, or identities that exist outside this gender binary. This chapter explores how non-binary people who were assigned female at birth understand and articulate their gender identities. Unlike previous work, this chapter considers how post-feminist gender politics may have influenced some non-binary people’s early approaches to identity, including their childhood experiences as tomboys. Following this, three distinct types of non-binary identity are explored: gender as fluid, gender as blended, and agender as choosing nothing. Throughout this chapter it is argued that some emerging non-binary identities are symptomatic of queer post-feminist disidentificatory gender politics that appeal to a particular group of young people influenced by both post-feminism and queer post-structuralism.
