I consider myself pretty progressive, but I'm getting older and less in touch with mainstream culture, so inevitably I've been slipping. Having gotten used to the infuriatingly slow, incremental progress made in the depiction of racial minorities over the years by Hollywood, I was completely caught off guard by the recent surge in LGBT, transgender, and most recently nonbinary characters. I'll be honest. I haven't been paying as much attention as I should, and I'm still working on parsing what nonbinary means.
Yes, I've been well aware of the recent push to normalize new gender inclusive pronouns like the singular "They/Them," and "Zie/Zir." I've started getting work e-mails with "she/her/hers" as part of the signature line. I've only seen this brought up once in person - if a Zoom meeting counts as in person - as part of someone's introduction, but I expect it'll happen more often. I was vaguely aware of more people identifying as nonbinary in Hollywood from various press announcements, but didn't connect the term to the older identifiers like "genderqueer," or "genderfluid," or "androgynous," (which have nothing to do with biological gender non-conformity terms like "intersex.") I was not watching recent shows like "Good Trouble," "Carmilla," or "Deputy" that feature nonbinary characters. I didn't know about Syd from "One Day at a Time."
I want to point out that there have been plenty of nonbinary characters in older media, but they weren't identified as such, and they didn't reflect the way that nonbinary people wanted to see themselves onscreen. What we've been witnessing in the last four or five years has really been a solidifying of nonbinary as a genuine gender identifier, along with a much more respectful framing of the portrayal of nonbinary characters. There's also been a clearer demarcation between someone who is transgender and someone who is nonbinary, though nonbinary is itself a pretty broad umbrella term that covers people who use he/him and she/her pronouns, peoply who consider themselves truly androgynous, and plenty more on the gender spectrum.
The surge in representation finally caught up to me when I was catching up on the latest season of "Star Trek: Discovery," which has been all about showcasing diversity. We were introduced to Adira Tal (Blu Del Barrio), the show's latest Trill/human symbiote character. Del Barrio was identified as nonbinary by the trades when they were cast, and the character of Adira came out as nonbinary about halfway through the season, complete with a request to use they/their pronouns. This episode was the first time I'd had an actual demonstration of how singular they/their pronouns work, and frankly it's going to take me a while to get used to this. The grammar implications alone make my head hurt. However, I will get used to this. I promise.
But, it's going to take some work on my part. While I'm glad to see more inclusivity and more empowerment of the nonbinary community, ths one's going to be hard for me. I know several LGBT folks, and two transgender people in real life. Nonbinary individuals, however, are completely off my radar - to the extent that it took me until 2020 for it to sink in that this was a real, honest-to-goodness, community. And the most prominent members are mostly younger, which makes sense, and belong to a cultural milieu very separate from my own. Or maybe I do know someone nonbinary and never realized. Can't make any assumptions these days.
And this makes me feel very old and ignorant, suddenly, but also grateful that social justice marches on, whether or not I'm paying attention, and Hollywood has been more on the ball than I have. So, if one day one of my kids decides he or she is now they, I won't be caught totally off guard and I'll have some examples to work with. I may have to secretly pretend they're a symbiote for a while to get around the pronoun thing, but we'll make it work.
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