From England to Samoa, travel around the globe with us this Non-Binary Awareness Week
BY EMILY O’MULLANE
This week we are celebrating Non-Binary Awareness Week, an international event which recognises those who exist outside of the gender binary such as people who identify as gender queer or gender fluid. Non-binary identities come in many shapes and forms and so does the way that non-binary identity is expressed in languages and cultures across the globe.
English
In English, the most used pronoun for non-binary people is they\them. In 2019, The Merriam-Webster dictionary added an extra definition to “they” to signify that non-binary people identify with the pronoun. In addition, many non-binary people in English use neo pronouns such as xe/xem to identify themselves.
Romance languages
In romance languages such as Spanish and French, which have a gendered system of grammar, there have been different approaches to adapting the language for non-binary inclusion.
In French, a new pronoun “iel” which combines both the masculine “il” and the feminine “elle” has been created to express non-binary identity. In contrast, Spanish has adapted the end of gendered nouns that end with “o” or “a” and replaced them with “e”. For example, hijo/hija (son/daughter) becomes hije in the gender neutral.
South Asian cultures
While in many European cultures adaptations to language have had to be made to include non-binary identities, in other societies the vocabulary to describe these people has existed for thousands of years. In many Hindu communities in South Asia, there exists a few different groups of third-gender people, the most common of these being the hijra group. In India, hijras consider themselves to be completely separate from male or female.
Native American
In some Native American cultures, there exists an identity called Two-Spirit. The term Two Spirit describes people who fill gender non-binary identities. This term was coined in 1990 but the idea of other genders in Native American communities has existed since pre-colonial times.
Samoan
In Samoan culture, there are four accepted genders: male, female, fa’afafine and fa’afatama. These third and fourth genders have an important role to play in society as they are crucial in preserving the taupou dance which was traditionally used to welcome visitors. In addition, fa’afafine and fa’afatama participate in pageants across the island whose profits go to local charities.
DIVA magazine celebrates 30 years in print in 2024. If you like what we do, then get behind LGBTQIA media and keep us going for another generation. Your support is invaluable.
