Binary breakdown As more people realize gender is not finalized at birth, there is still learning to do Katrell Readus
T
1.2 million people in the US are nonbinary 53% of nonbinary people report being bullied 11% of nonbinary adults were exposed to conversion therapy as children 82% of the communities adults faced emotional abuse as children 39% have of nonbinary people attempted suicide
94% of nonbinary adults have considered suicide Page 26
he thought of individuals not confining themselves within the boundaries of conventional gender or not identifying with the gender they were assigned at birth is often regarded as a new, modern-day idea or concept. However, breaking the concept of gender by a lack of conformity and identification has been around for as long as civilization has. Nonbinary identification has been recorded as far back as 400 B.C.E to 200 C.E., when Hijras, people in India who identified as beyond male or female, were cited in ancient text. From the Hijras in India and the māhūs in Hawaii to the two-spirit people in indigenous cultures, there have always been people who do not feel they fit or do not want to fit the stereotype of what it means to be male or female. These examples of gender nonconformity throughout world history laid a foundation for how we understand gender identity today, proving that gender is a spectrum and not set in stone the moment the sex of a child is proclaimed. This foundation was further built upon in the late 1960s and into the 1970s when LGBTQ+ social movements and icons such as activist duo Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera arose. The pair rose to prominence after the events that took place after a police raid of the Stonewall Inn in 1969. On June 28 of that year, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar located in New York City’s Greenwich Village that served as a retreat for the city’s LGBTQ+
Tiger Times
community. At the time, homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois, and bars and restaurants could be shut down for having gay employees or serving gay patrons. Despite this, many gay bars and clubs in New York including the Stonewall remained in operation under the radar of authorities. Police raids on gay bars were common, but on that particular night, members of the city’s LGBTQ+ community decided to fight back, sparking days of protest that would launch a new era of resistance and revolution. By the 1900s and continuing on into the era of the Stonewall riots and the Gay Liberation Movement, homosexual men, particularly, became an increased target for this legislation. This began when states start to add oral sex to their anti-sodomy laws. These antiLGBTQ+ laws prompted police and vigilante groups to go out in search of gay men engaging in sexual activity to arrest or physically assault them. This legislation came into play in a culture already increasingly hostile to LGBTQ+ people. Anti-sodomy codes also fueled raids on gay bars like that which sparked the Stonewall Riots in 1969. This is when Johnson and Rivera rise up as leaders in the Gay Liberation Movement. They co-founded the group STAR, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, offering housing to homeless and transgender youth. The pair recognized that many transgender people turned to sex work after being turned away by their families, and faced additional struggles and dangers through being unsheltered. Johnson and
readukat000@hsestudents.org Rivera opened the first LGBTQ+ youth shelter in North America and became the first Trans women of color to lead an organization in the United States. However, the work of this team was cut short by Marsha’s death in 1992, a death ruled by a medical examiner to be a suicide, but believed by family and friends to be a murder. A decade later, Sylvia met an untimely death due to cancer. Unfortunately, in today’s society, the idea that people are breaking down the boxes of traditional gender is still foreign to some despite the work of previous generations. This uninformedness and bigotry all too often are the catalyst for fatal acts of hate. In 2020, Human Rights Campaign, an organization focused on the fight for equality across all communities, tracked a record number of violent and ultimately fatal incidents against transgender and gender nonconforming people; A total of 44 fatalities were tracked, marking 2020 as the most violent year on record since crimes of this nature began being tracked in 2013. Sadly, 2021 has been no better. According to the HRC, at least 40 transgender or gender non-conforming people, ranging in age from 16 to 49, have been killed already this year. While the details of the cases seen this year differ from one another, and affect trans and nonbinary people of all races and ethnicities, it has become evident that this type of violence is disproportionately affecting transgender women of color, specifically Black transgender women. The crossover of racism, sexism and transphobia is becoming more and more apparent as the number of cases like these rises. Crimes like these have increased danger and hate coming toward these
November 2021
