Here's What You Need to Know about Gender Fluidity and How It’s Different from Non-Binary

It’s 2019 and the conversations around gender are fast changing. While we’re trying to be more inclusive of and sensitive about people’s identities, it’s imperative to acquaint ourselves with different queer terminologies. One such term is ‘Gender Fluid’.

 

What exactly is gender fluidity?

 

Dictionary.com defines the term as, ‘Gender-fluid is a nonbinary gender identity that’s not fixed and is capable of changing over time’. Under the gender binary model, which has only man and woman as options, a genderfluid person could be a man, a woman, or something entirely different at any given point of time.

 

 

The term ‘gender fluid’ first gained popularity in the 1980s. Philosopher Judith Butler has been credited with popularising the term with her work on ‘gender performativity’. In their 1990’s book, Gender Trouble, Judith argued that ‘gender proves to be performative—that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be’. It essentially means that gender is a social construct and we’re acting in a ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ way because society has defined these acts for us. They further add, ‘gender is an act [in a play] which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualised and reproduced as reality once again’.

 

You can watch this video to further understand their POV.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc

 

While we try to understand ‘gender fluidity’, it’s important to understand that a person isn’t gender fluid merely because act masculine on some days, and feminine on others. It’s more about their personal identity and less about the way they act as per the gender binary norms.

 

In the past, actor Ruby Rose (of Orange Is The New Black fame) came out as gender fluid. In an interview to a popular magazine, she said, “Gender fluidity is not really feeling like you’re at one end of the spectrum or the other. For the most part, I definitely don’t identify as any gender. I’m not a guy; I don’t really feel like a woman, but obviously I was born one. So, I’m somewhere in the middle, which—in my perfect imagination—is like having the best of both s**es. I have a lot of characteristics that would normally be present in a guy and then less that would be present in a woman. But then sometimes I’ll put on a skirt—like today.”

 

Is gender fluidity the same as non-binary?

 

The two terms are often confused but they aren’t the same. Non-binary is an umbrella term and gender fluidity is only an aspect of the gender identity spectrum. A non-binary person can identify as having more than two genders, no genders, or even a third gender, among other things. So a gender fluid identity can count as non-binary, but not all non-binary identities are gender fluid.

 

If you need to understand more about gender fluidity, here’s a helpful video, in which Durga Gawde answers a lot of questions on the term.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzK5_ogMOg8