“Picking the ‘Other Box’”
“Picking the ‘Other Box’”
Troubling the (Non)Binary
This chapter examines parents’ newfound awareness of nonbinary possibilities. These were often described as being “somewhere in the middle” of the spectrum, where a child “doesn’t have to be just one or the other.” Despite increasing sociopolitical emphasis on nonbinary, gender-fluid, and/or genderqueer possibilities—especially those that defy trans-normative, gender-normative ideals—most of the children in this sample were adamantly binary-identified. For many of these parents, nonbinary possibilities proved more of a crutch to evade “truly transgender” outcomes than any reality of their children’s authentic selves. In making sense of these options, parents engaged in queer deconstructionist debates about the gender binary, hearkening to age-old polemics about “reifying the binary” or not. However, this material also emphasizes the challenges of living out nonbinary identities for male children specifically.
Keywords: nonbinary, gender binary, queer, transgender
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