Being Non-Binary: A New Trend… Or Not?

Non-binary experiences and invalidation

Even within feminist and LGBTIQ communities, including the trans community, debates about non-binary people continue. A significant proportion of seemingly progressive people try to erase non-binary identities. Non-binary people’s experiences are often ridiculed in society, and most countries offer no legal recognition at all — including ours.

Even the part of the progressive community that affirms non-binary experiences and recognises non-binary people’s right to self-determination often unintentionally devalues those experiences by continuing to treat them as a “subculture”, a “desire to stand out” or “personality and perception traits”.

The trans community as a whole often encounters this, but such invalidation is particularly painful for non-binary people. Sometimes it is justified by claiming that there are “so few” non-binary people that they amount to a “statistical error”. But is that true?

Myth: there are very few non-binary people

Reality: non-binary people make up as much as a third of the trans community.

Despite the popular myth that non-binary people are statistically insignificant, as many as a third — thirty to forty per cent — of trans people identify as non-binary in surveys in the United States, including more recent reports, and the United Kingdom.

Myth: non-binary people cannot call themselves transgender

Reality: being non-binary falls under the trans umbrella.

Like transgender, non-binary is an umbrella term bringing together many different people with very different experiences. The non-binary umbrella, however, sits entirely beneath the transgender umbrella.

Being transgender means that one’s gender identity does not match the gender assigned at birth, or AGAB.

Despite what many exclusionary activists say, non-binary people therefore remain an integral part of our community.

Myth: no non-binary people experience dysphoria

Reality: non-binary people share the full range of trans experiences.

Non-binary people can experience gender dysphoria, want to transition and do so, take HRT and undergo other gender-affirming interventions — or do none of these things!

The claim that “only binary trans people can be transgender” excludes a significant part of the community and is no more accurate than the argument that “not all non-binary people consider themselves transgender”. Many trans people who are in denial, living stealth or motivated by other ideological reasons also do not call themselves transgender.

Myth: being non-binary is made up and means refusing to belong to either “camp”

Reality: being non-binary, like being transgender, has scientific grounding and evidence.

For example, Joel et al. (2015) showed that the brain cannot be clearly divided into only “male” or “female”. Each person’s brain is a mosaic of characteristics: some areas may be more “typically male”, others more “typically female”.

The researchers set out to test whether sex differences in the brain really form two separate categories with shared and, crucially, internally consistent characteristics.

How the brain was studied

The study used MRI scans of more than 1,400 human brains from four different databases to rule out chance results.

For each sample, researchers analysed only the grey matter, white matter or neural connections showing the largest sex differences, with Cohen’s d greater than 0.70: areas where the overlap between male and female measurements was smallest. Cohen’s d is a statistical measure of the practical magnitude of a difference between groups or the strength of a relationship between variables, independent of sample size.

Using each region’s distribution, they defined a “male end”, containing the measurements of the most extreme 33 per cent of men, and a “female end”, containing the corresponding 33 per cent of women. Measurements between these ends were assigned to an “intermediate zone”.

To analyse individual brains, the researchers examined each person’s MRI to assess which characteristics were combined within one head.

What did they find?

Even in regions considered to have the largest differences, male and female measurements overlapped considerably. Forms of brain structures characteristic of most women were also characteristic of most men.

The proportion of people whose brains were entirely “pure”, with exclusively female or exclusively male characteristics in every area studied, was tiny: from zero to a maximum of 8.2 per cent, depending on the sample.

In 23–53 per cent of cases, the same individual brain combined clearly “male” and clearly “female” measurements in different regions.

The study therefore demonstrates that there is no absolute binary at the neurobiological level. Our brains are closer to a mosaic structure.

Unfortunately, our culture tends to classify people solely by superficial external features. This complicates legal and institutional systems, particularly national laws on legal recognition for non-binary people — or even the archaic requirement to include a gender marker in documents.

Myth: being non-binary is a new trend and a rarity

Reality: the binary is a local construct.

Non-binary people have existed throughout human history. In anthropological terms, “traditional roles” began appearing relatively recently. This process is no less constructed than any other gendered social model, which is not bad in itself.

Many non-European and non-white cultures and Indigenous peoples maintain traditions that recognise other gender identities and roles.

Non-binary people exist! Non-binary people are valid!

Sources

• Emancipation NGO’s original Instagram carousel.
• U.S. Transgender Survey (2022).
• Williams Institute: Trans Adults in the United States (2025).
• KFF / Washington Post Trans Survey (2022).
• Joel et al. (2015): Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic.

With support from

Created with support from RFSL — the Swedish Federation for LGBTQI Rights.