What’s the Story? Exploring Online Narratives of Non-binary Gender Identities

Currently, people with non-binary gender identities – those who identify as either both genders or neither - are gaining more social visibility, suggesting that changes in social understandings of gender are now underway. Facebook, for example, has recently introduced a range of non-binary gender options for user profile pages; indeterminate and ‘third gender’ identities are now legally recognised in a number of countries, including Australia, Germany, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, New Zealand and Thailand; and the term ‘cisgender’, which refers to those whose self identity matches the gender and biological sex assigned to them at birth, has now entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Typical spaces where personal narratives concerning non-binary gender identities are generated and shared are Internet blogs and online discussion forums. However, as yet these narratives have not been explored and non-binary gender identities remain largely under researched within the social sciences. This paper begins to address this gap through the presentation of some initial research findings from a qualitative study of online non-binary gender identity narratives. It explores some key themes within and across the narratives of younger and older generation non-binary people produced within a sample of blogs and forums, and draws out their implications for the development of further research.