This non-binary pride flag was created by Kye Rowan in February 2014, for our community use. (License: Creative Commons, Universal Public domain, all rights waived.) Why? Because the non-binary community felt they needed their distinct own identity and flag, rather than always being subsumed into the genderqueer identity and flag. Genderqueer and non-binary identity descriptions overlap quite a lot, yet there are some differences and they are distinct identities. Although I think the genderqueer flag is rather attractive and appealing, partly because it reminds me of the suffragette flag which is so similar to it, personally I'm not drawn to the word queer (although other LGBT+ people are and that's obviously fine by me). I know it's been reappropriated so strictly speaking it no longer has the historical overtones of terms of abuse and rudeness about LGBT+ people. However, I struggle to see past the linguistic connotations that queer traditionally has for describing something or someone who is odd and not normal. LGBT+ identities should no longer be associated with being abnormal, or even outside societal norms. Even if our identities are still treated as non-conventional and not within typical societal norms, that's just a failing within illiberal societies, not something true of or inherent in our identities. Nevertheless, when society attempts to suppress LGBT+ identities, it can expect people to rebel and delight in going against norms by, for instance, appropriating the meaning of queer and supporting genderpunk movements in order to push back and reassert their naturally occurring identities. And that sense of queer I can get behind! 💪
So thank you, Kye, for giving us this fabulous flag, which I'm posting today to raise awareness of non-binary identity!😍🤗👏
International Non-binary People's Day was created by Katje van Loon and takes place during Non-binary Awareness Week, which was created even later in 2020 😱 and taking place this year between Monday 11th - Sunday 17th July. This awareness week is deliberately half way between International Women's and Men's Days (July being the midpoint between March and November).
Today's celebrations for International Non-binary People's Day are held annually on the 14th of July. It was first celebrated as late as 2012 - OMG! 😯 I was already in my mid-20's and going into my last year of my part-time philosophy degree at uni! Seems like the dark ages already, since Gay Marriage didn't exist in the UK (although it did in Canada), so many LGBTQIAPDenby2S+ identities hadn't been named or appreciated yet and numerous LGBTQIAPDenby2S+ flags hadn't even been created.
Constantly expanding the number of LGBTQIAPDENBY2S+ identities and colours, flags etc may seem a bit unnecessary, OTT, overcomplicated, annoying and confusing to some, but it's an important exploration and journey for others. It's even more difficult to understand non-binary people (and other LGBT+ people) when they have limited language and concepts to use to explain and express how they naturally feel within themselves. If LGBTQIAPDENBY2S+ terminology is all too academic for politicians, then maybe they are not up to working in politics.
Pink News made a great point today: It's not actually supposed to be up to us to keep having to explain everything and fight for our basic freedoms and rights. If you claim that we live in a democratic society, then we should be able to sit back and know that our rights will be respected and protected while we get on with focusing on simply living our lives. As political philosophy often points out, governments are meant to provide the good life and opportunities to flourish for all, not bring about stress, poverty, discrimination, and start barging into people's private lives and creating a bad life for their population.
LGBT+ rights are an important barometer for everyone in society because their rights are often attacked before governments destroy other groups' rights. And it's not for anyone, individuals or governments, to try to control individuals or groups through monitoring whether they comply with some invented expectations or illogical rules eg when they can / can't leave the house and for what reason (freedom of movement), who they can or cannot meet (freedom of association). Some even try it on and harass people (whether they are LGBT+ or not) with rules that don't even exist anywhere or are even contrary to accepted opinion eg who opens the door to anyone who feels like knocking?! There's no obligation to do so and if an incident (and there have been numerous reported in the news over the years about a wide variety of types of likely and unlikely perpetrators) were to occur as a result, people would soon quickly change their tune considering it stupid and naïve. And women, non-binary people and LGBT+ people in general have to more careful than some groups in society since they are more targeted for hate crime. Both women and gay men/women have suffered from politics taking away their right to privacy and their ability to feel safe in their own homes.
Non-binary people/women are nothing new and politicians are not so uneducated that they don't know their history so it's about time politicians and society stopped feigning ignorance and being bigoted about non-binary people and their ways of expressing their type of non-binary identity. Furthermore, in a democracy, you should not allow anti-minority pressure groups to twist the arm of governments to pass laws that infringe international human rights (and often aren't even supported by the majority of the population), such as not including gender identity under the proposed Conversion Therapy ban in the UK. After all, no gender identity is included in the UK ban: trans have been explicitly removed from the ban while non-binary people (of any description) have simply never been referred to/included in the ban in the first place. So non-binary identities were not there to be removed from the ban thus were excluded from the beginning. And if you look at international guidelines in combating conversion therapy, it is only something that affects LGBT+ people, not cis people or heterosexuals. So it's a nonsense for certain pressure groups to pretend there's a need to protect cis people (because they often think everyone without exception is cis) from somehow being talked into falsely believing they are trans or non-binary. It's also unacceptable for such pressure groups to 1) falsely depict anyone supporting an LGBT+ person to see their identity positively and affirm their sense of self; falsely depict gender affirming medical procedures to transition as somehow abusive and akin to homophobic/genderphobic conversion therapy.
Being non-binary is perfectly normal and natural. Ancient cultures didn't have any trouble getting their heads around non-binary identities such as Two Spirit and embracing them. Some Native American tribes traditionally even thought being Two Spirit was better than being (what we call) cis, considering them to be more talented. Science and modern Western societies and politics have invented artificial categories of binary polar opposites (that don't even fit what can be empirically observed because even biological sex is not binary) then they act surprised when you find something that doesn't match up neatly to it. In philosophy, if you argue in a binary either/or way, busily ignoring any grey areas or hybrids or other alternatives, then you are committing a fallacy in your argumentation. It's called the Fallacy of Bifurcation; a False Dilemma; a False Dichotomy.
Moreover, it's actually the exaggerated notions of male and female stereotypes that constitutes an ideology, and it's politically highly dangerously to insist that everyone sticks to such fabricated gender social constructs, as we can see by fascism. So portraying LGBT+ as an ideology is completely out of line and has no place in a democracy.
In a very broad sense, everyone is non-binary, because 1) gender is a social construct so nobody can be naturally 100% gender conforming 2) both sex and gender is naturally on a spectrum, so 100% male and 100% female doesn't exist.
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