Does Liking a Nonbinary Person Make You Bi or Pan? Not Necessarily

You can find an abridged version of this article here.

Increased awareness of nonbinary identities has complicated many people’s understandings of sexuality. “If I get a crush on a nonbinary person,” some ask, “does that mean I’m no longer straight/gay/bi?” Many people think the answer is “yes.” Some create new labels that specify attraction towards us specifically, while others insist they don’t find us attractive whatsoever. While these are well-intentioned responses, they arise from ignorance about what it actually means to be nonbinary.

People like us have existed for a long time¹, but only recently was the term “nonbinary” (an adjective, not a noun; calling someone “a nonbinary” is incorrect) presented to a wider public. While many of our identities predate the language we’ve given to them, we’re still “newcomers” in the public eye, so misconceptions are bound to arise. This is an attempt to clear things up.

Nonbinarity: A Primer

“Nonbinary” is a catch-all for those who do not fully and exclusively identify as male or female. It describes how we experience (or don’t experience) gender, just like “transgender.” Nonbinary folks aren’t merely an “other” category next to “male” and “female.”

Nonbinarity (or “nonbinarism”) is also not the same as being gender-nonconforming (GNC), a term that primarily refers to behaving or appearing in ways that differ from the cultural norm of one’s gender (e.g., a masculine- or androgynous-presenting woman is GNC, as is an effeminate man). That said, some people describe their gender exclusively with that term (rather than “male” or “female”), so it can occasionally be considered a nonbinary identity within certain contexts.²

While for some, “nonbinary” is their gender, this is not universal and we mustn’t apply this reasoning to the entire nonbinary identity. A considerably chunk of us are explicitly alienated by descriptions of nonbinarity which only acknowledge a state of being that “is neither male nor female.” What about genderfluid people? What about bigender people? What about nonbinary wo/men?

Some of us are a neutral gender, and others don’t have a gender at all, but we can also partially identify as wo/men. For others, their gender depends on the day. A person who feels 90% male is still just as nonbinary as an agender person, just like a bisexual who feels their attraction is “90% towards women” is just as bisexual as someone without a preference at all. Nonbinary experiences and identities are so diverse that presenting us all as merely a “third” gender is incredibly inaccurate and dismissive at best.

Being nonbinary does not determine how we dress, how we act, what we look like, what pronouns we use, or whether we undergo hormone replacement therapy or reassignment surgery. The word doesn’t even tell necessarily you what our gender is, only what it isn’t (exclusively and entirely either male or female). It covers a vast swath of experiences, and not all of us consider our identities to be genders on their own to begin with. For instance, “bigender” is meant to denote someone with two genders (typically both male and female).

There’s no “typical” characteristic that can adequately distinguish between us. We can describe our identities in very similar ways to our cisgender or “binary” transgender counterparts. There’s nothing a man or a woman can look like that we couldn’t, nothing that can physically mark someone as genderfluid besides a shirt that says “I’m genderfluid.” It may not even be possible to have a general conception of our identities because even with more specific genders, there’s no preconceived way for people with those genders to look, dress, or act like.

Nonbinarity and Sexuality

Love at first sight?

We can “see” men and women because society has assigned both genders appearances, styles of dress, and behaviors. It teaches them to us from birth. Ergo, we subconsciously assign these genders to people based on appearance. There are systemic benefits or punishments not only for people who identify as male or female but those attracted to men or women (or both).

While a number of people expect androgyny from nonbinary people, virtually no defined societal frameworks exist for individual nonbinary identities the way gender expectations exist for men and women. You’re not going to look at a random person walking down the street, take note of their body type and subconsciously think, “wow, that was a pretty genderfluid person.” Nobody’s been trained to physically differentiate between genderfluid people and people who exclusively identify as wo/men, and — unless one denies that men and women can be androgynous — trying to do so is impossible as no physical characteristic exists that hasn’t already been assigned to either men or women.

Many nonbinary labels can only really tell you how that person describes their gender. There will be overlap in experience by people using different words; you can’t fully separate “agender” from “nonbinary” because two people may use two different words (these, in this example) to describe the same experience. When does an individual label become its own cohesive category?

This is the main distinction between “binary” and nonbinary identities (keeping in mind that nonbinary people can and do sometimes identify as the binary genders). While “male” and “female” are established categories within an oppression dynamic, nonbinary identities are often more individualized. The standards some people may place onto nonbinary people are distinct from fe/male gender roles because the majority of the population sees nonbinary identities (which are unnecessary to the patriarchy) as debatable, if in any way real.

Even if we consider gender nonconformity a nonbinary gender norm, would anyone be able to dissect such nonconformity into types where one would tell apart an agender person, a neutrois person, a genderfluid person, a bigender person, and a demigender person via their presentation?

In the words of nonbinary activist Verity Ritchie:

How did you figure out you were “only attracted to men and women”? You met one nonbinary person after the thousands of men and women you met throughout your life and you didn’t find that one nonbinary person attractive? You saw a picture of Ruby Rose and you didn’t find them hot? You saw a nonbinary person on Tinder and you didn’t want to bone them? You aren’t into androgyny?

You’ve met tons of nonbinary people you didn’t know were nonbinary. To ever claim that you aren’t attracted to nonbinary people is to have made a decision that nonbinary people CANNOT be anything like men and women and that men and women are clearly defined distinct categories, that men and women can’t be androgynous or trans, that nonbinary people are required to be androgynous. There is no average nonbinary person. You can’t make a call as to whether or not nonbinary people are one of your base gender categories for attraction.

Gender identity is intangible and independent of appearance. As a bisexual, while I tend to find people more attractive if they’re men, I don’t consider my attraction to be one towards any abstract concept of gender on its own (though I still enjoy homoeroticism a great deal, and gender dynamics influence how I view potential relationships). We can hardly define what makes a man a man. People with the types of looks I like just so happen to attach themselves to manhood most of the time.

Virtually everyone has found somebody attractive without 100% knowing what their gender is. Some people may lose attraction to someone after finding out their gender, and there are instances in which someone may need to know the identity of a potentially attractive person before confirming attraction, but not many people necessarily require knowledge of someone’s gender before (at least considering) finding them attractive. Before finding out they were women, I unwittingly fancied a few transgender women when I was gay because they matched the body type of what I typically expect from — and desired in — men.

When most straight men think about women, they’re primarily thinking about a body type they consider feminine. The person with that body just so happens to also identify as a woman. When I was gay (and before that, a straight girl), it wasn’t like I was explicitly and solely attracted to the abstract concept of men — it was more like all the people I crushed on identified as men and fit into physical societal expectations of what “men” generally look like. Perhaps taking a step back can be a useful way to interpret attraction in general: less focus on gender concepts themselves, more on the people who have the genders.

There’s a reason many people — including nonbinary folks themselves — don’t accept that every sexuality includes us: they assume every sexuality must take in all of us, which would invalidate some of our identities. However, this isn’t what I mean when I say all sexualities inherently include nonbinary people. I mean some nonbinary people. (After all, no one’s sexuality includes every single person of a gender; straight women aren’t attracted to every single man; they like certain men.)

It’s like when we say all sexualities are inherently transgender-inclusive. We don’t mean that a straight man can date transgender men and still consider himself straight. Instead, we assert that excluding transgender people as a whole is transphobic — and virtually impossible, unless one abstains from relationships altogether — because it makes assumptions about transgender people which almost always come from bigoted stereotypes or societal conditioning to find transgender people unappealing. (More on this topic here, here, and here.) We can apply this same idea to nonbinary people. The only way to justifiably never have relationship-oriented interest in the “nonbinary” category is if you’re an aromantic asexual.

It’s important to note that we can often distinguish attraction with a willingness to date or sleep with someone (even though, for many others, attraction is this willingness; it isn’t clear cut by any means). There are plenty of people I find attractive who I would hate to enter a relationship with; I used to joke about (and would genuinely consider), as a gay man, eating out one of my female friends even though the thought didn’t turn me on at all (I saw it as a platonic gesture).

Attraction, while additionally socialized, is primarily a subconscious response to stimuli. If one says they’re not attracted to the “nonbinary” category as a whole, they’ve only necessarily made the decision not to act on their attraction to nonbinary people. Once again, we come in all genders, and we aren’t a group someone can decide universal attraction (or lack thereof) to. This active rejection is most likely rooted in ignorance or transphobia.

In any case, fancying a bigender or genderfluid person may indicate — if one views their identity in full — bisexuality.³ Liking genderless people doesn’t necessarily change anyone’s sexuality. This may also be true for neutrois individuals as their gender, while independent, is neutral. But ultimately, it’s largely up to the individual to decide how they want to be seen in their relationships. If a nonbinary doesn’t feel comfortable having their relationship labeled as “straight”/“gay,” they can define it another way themselves.

As a nonbinary man, I’m not comfortable dating straight men or lesbians since I’m not female-aligned. I’d also be a bit offended if a straight woman told me she was now bisexual because she found me attractive (as it implies she doesn’t see me as male at all, even though that’s my primary identity). A nonbinary person may be comfortable dating straight men and lesbians, while another may only want to date bi- or pansexuals. But that doesn’t mean that only these labels include nonbinary people. While some people would naturally not be interested in certain nonbinary people (e.g., a lesbian wouldn’t want to pursue nonbinary men), it’s ignorant and nonviable to say they’re never attracted to any of us.

The Orientation Changes That Aren’t

On another note, one’s sexuality being “towards women and nonbinary people but not men,” “towards men and nonbinary people but not women,” or “towards nonbinary people only, not men or women,” can’t be true, either. Again, nonbinary people can also be wo/men. Treating these categories as wholly separate misgenders a number of us and generalizes us all. It’s like saying — granted that you live somewhere that doesn’t equate shades of colors to hues — that light green and dark green are as distant from each other as green and purple. Light green and dark green, while different shades, both fall within the “green” wavelength of colors.⁴ Perhaps we can understand “man” and “woman” as umbrella terms.

The “women and nonbinary people” attraction description reveals a particular invalidating viewpoint of us as well. Those who say they’re attracted to “women and nonbinary people” are frequently only interested in those of us who identify similarly to women. That, or they only look for nonbinary people who “look like” (their cissexist idea of) women, with no interest in masculine-aligned folks. This lumps all nonbinary identities together while ignoring those that wouldn’t fall under these people’s attraction.

Since all sexualities include some nonbinary folks by default, those attracted to “women and woman-aligned nonbinary people (e.g., demiwomen)” are gay or straight, not bisexual. Keep in mind that many nonbinary people identify as gay, lesbian, or straight.

Some food for thought, as well, if word structure still holds value: The only reason people interpret “heterosexual” as “attraction to the opposite gender” is because when this word was coined, “male” and “female” were commonly thought as the only two genders — which are still polarized today. The prefix “hetero,” however, simply means “different.” Straight people can and do date nonbinary people, and a wo/man is straight so long as they aren’t attracted to the same gender. This is in line with the fact that bisexuality describes attraction to both similar and different genders.

This is why, although I enjoy the gender-neutrality of the “more than one,” “similar and different,” and “multiple genders” definitions of bisexuality, I find them hotbeds for misconceptions about nonbinary identity and bisexuality, especially when bisexual politics has always revolved around the political reality of being attracted to men and women specifically (not exclusively — the idea that bisexuality is exclusive is recent, based on inaccurate interpretations of etymology and ignores decades of actual bisexual literature and community history).

Do “female” and “neutrois” constitute more than one gender? Sure. But a lesbian could date people of either of these identities, and not only would she still be a lesbian, but the oppression she faces does not come from being attracted to neutrois people (society wouldn’t bother to punish folks for dating a category it doesn’t believe exists anyway).

Even if someone says they’re attracted to men, women, and some but not all nonbinary identities (hardly anyone actually lists individual identities when they claim attraction to nonbinary people—and frankly, saying “I’m attracted to agender and bigender people, but I don’t like neutrois, demigender, or genderfluid people” is nonsensical in the first place), I must ask:

How do they identify which ones don’t suit their fancy when society doesn’t teach us how to interpret us? When there are no cues to tell us apart from other people except verbal confirmation? When multiple identities can share virtually the exact same personal experiences and self-perceptions? Does one simply ask their prospective partner and hope they say the right word? What about those who don’t specify their identity beyond “nonbinary,” or even say they don’t fully feel like either binary gender but still exclusively identify as one or the other? Do you know how many identities you’re not attracted to? How many do you recognize in total? Does it make sense to even try putting a number on it?

To say that liking a nonbinary person makes someone bi/pan/omnisexual (i.e., attracted to all genders) would necessitate the belief that “nonbinary” is just one gender, and that everyone who says they’re nonbinary is thus the same gender. This is false. On the other hand, if you acknowledge that but instead believe that all nonbinary identities are equivalently separate from “male” and “female” (which is also false) — and that liking a nonbinary person makes someone bi/pan/omnisexual — you’d be assuming that the person in question, by virtue of being attracted to a person of just one nonbinary identity, would be attracted to the rest of them too, which is illogical.

A (Slightly) New Model

Perhaps it would be more useful today to understand gayness and straightness not only as an attraction to one binary gender but a lack of attraction to the other, rather than just “attraction to ‘binary’ wo/men only.” Back when I was a gay man and dated certain nonbinary people, it wasn’t because they identified as agender or neutrois — and I didn’t just pretend they were men so I “could still be attracted” to them — it was because they weren’t women. That’s what made me gay.

I’d start with an “attracted to all genders” state (not to be confused with implying that people are inherently bisexual) and narrow things down like this:

Straight: Not attracted to the same/similar gender(s) (e.g., a straight man wouldn’t be attracted to exclusively male-aligned people). Gay: Not attracted to the “opposite” gender (e.g., a lesbian wouldn’t be attracted to exclusively male-aligned people). Bisexual: Remains the same. It is defined as attraction to “men and women,” “all sexes and genders,” “same and other genders,” “beyond gender,” or “regardless of sex or gender.” In other words, it’s “an orientation for which sex and gender are not a boundary to attraction.” There are no inherently excluded identities.

A nonbinary person who identifies with both or neither binary gender(s), but only finds one of them attractive, may identify as either gay or straight if they choose, but they may also eschew sexuality labels or adopt newly proposed nonbinary-specific sexuality terminology such as:

Feminamoric: Exclusively attracted to women Toric: Attracted to men, exclusively or not Trixic: Attracted to women, exclusively or not Viramoic: Exclusively attracted to men

Neutral identities (e.g., agender, neutrois, gendervoid) are typically fair game (even some genderless people additionally identify as wo/men); for those that combine different genders (e.g., bigender, genderfluid), it’ll depend on the multi-gendered individual. Most prefer to date bi/pan/omnisexuals, though they’re not necessarily “forbidden” from gay or straight people.

Some (primarily unaligned) nonbinary folks may be upset that I position “man” and “woman” as the only genders that alter sexuality, but I find this grievance misguided. We must remember the political reality of our orientation categories (created to pathologize gays and bisexuals and enforce heteropatriarchy) focuses on these two genders. (I do not face violence for liking nonbinary people; I face violence for liking men and women.) They’re the ones established as social classes, and I heavily oppose efforts to elevate nonbinary identities to their status. Striving for inclusion in an oppressive system only strengthens it. As Alyson Escalante puts it:

The demand “recognize my identity as being as valid as other identities” presumes identity exists as some unassailable and natural phenomena. For example, in the demand that non-binary identity be seen as equally valid to man or woman as identities, there is presumption that we ought not to be critical of the notions of man and woman in the first place.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Considering how specific nonbinary identities can get, someone who claims to only be attracted to [X nonbinary identity] could theoretically only be attracted to twenty people. How, exactly, would one explain why only [X identity] is attractive to them when it has no societal framework, so it wasn’t taught to the person in question who thus has no way to accurately conceptualize it?

On Alternative Labels and the “Gender Trinary”

This is why I’ve grown dissatisfied with terms like “pansexual,” “omnisexual,” and “polysexual.” People adopt these identities primarily with the intent of including nonbinary individuals, which is admirable in theory. However, they also create an implication that straight and gay people can’t include any nonbinary people as this would allegedly mean these sexualities include “more than one” gender. This is not the case. If we can acknowledge that gay and straight people can and do date unaligned nonbinary people — even if others only want to date wo/men — and that we don’t need separate terms to distinguish these two groups in the same sexuality, then we should grant bisexuality the same nuance.

Alternative terms for bisexuality also frequently imply that bisexuality and attraction to nonbinary people are mutually exclusive, even though most of bisexual activism throughout our community’s history centered around inclusion and breaking down gender barriers. Even if some bisexuals don’t believe they’re attracted to nonbinary folks, it’s silly and unfair to insist that new words are absolutely necessary for describing “attraction to men, women, and nonbinary people.”

It’s like demanding that lesbians dating nonbinary people must stop identifying as lesbians or that, since some straight men deny attraction to transgender women, those who do acknowledge their attraction to transgender women require a different identity. It sounds like a natural advance towards inclusion for some, but it’s actually rather dehumanizing.

These new labels also seem to miss one major point of nonbinary identity regarding gender politics. Nonbinary politics — and sometimes bisexual politics — surround the rejection of either/or categorization. Unsurprisingly, those who identify as pan/omni/polysexual explicitly reject the gender binary (which, while obviously good, doesn’t automatically mean they fully respect all or even most forms of nonbinarity), but some also claim that people who don’t use their labels deny nonbinary people’s reality.

It’s contradictory to have an anti-categorization mindset but demand people use labels that explicitly categorize nonbinary genders as part of one’s attraction. We could easily include them in our current sexualities rather than coining new words which, on their own, do nothing to disrupt the gender binary. “Either/or/or” isn’t much better. It makes little sense to “box in” (as much as I loathe that phrase) identities that naturally, when not deliberately, resist cohesion.⁵

Some people who think that sexualities can be formed explicitly around nonbinary people also believe that denying attraction to nonbinary people is transphobic. I wholeheartedly agree with them on the latter, but they fail to realize that the two statements are mutually exclusive unless they also think it’s misogynistic to be a gay man.

There seem to only be three explanations here. Either:

1. “Nonbinary” is just one monolithic gender entirely divorced from “male” and “female,” therefore rejecting all nonbinary people should be as acceptable as excluding wo/men from one’s dating pool,
2. While “nonbinary” is not just one gender, rejecting a person solely due to using that word to describe themselves—even if they’re also wo/men — should be perfectly acceptable, or
3. Nonbinary identities are too complex — some of them contradictory — to define sexuality around them in the first place; people of any sexuality can be attracted to nonbinary individuals.

You can guess which number I’d circle.

It’s understandable that some people coin terms that specify attraction to us out of a desire to express their openness, but we shouldn’t perpetuate the notion that liking us is exceptional. Telling us that only specific people like us is condescending and unrealistic. When the premise is rejecting strict categorization, how sensical is it to demand explicit inclusion rather than asserting that we’ve always been a part of sexuality and that the binary is a sham? What good would a trinary categorization system do, really?

Final Words

Nonbinary identities can’t be pinned down. Trying to fit us into one all-or-nothing category defeats the point, and creating a ternary gender system doesn’t solve the issues with our binary.⁶ Understanding us can be difficult as we don’t fit neatly into models of sexuality. After all, they weren’t made with us in mind. But redefining them to “accommodate” us is counterproductive. We needn’t cram ourselves into it, focusing so heavily on inclusion that we miss the point. The system itself — not the fact that we aren’t in it — is the problem.

Other than the otherwise obvious (e.g., if you don’t consider yourself attracted to men, don’t pursue nonbinary men), no solid rules exist. Some bigender folks date heterosexuals; some nonbinary people are only comfortable dating certain sexualities. We navigate orientation labels within a societal context; they’re not rulebooks. Language — especially that around sexuality and gender — is naturally flawed, and that’s fine.

Plus, people have dated us long before the words “nonbinary,” “genderqueer,” or even our current sexuality terms were coined, because experiences come before the words used to describe them. There are people today who fit the definitions of “nonbinary” and “genderqueer” who don’t use (or even know) those words. We should accept the fact that attraction to people like us happens on a case-by-case basis.

You don’t need to have an identity crisis just because you find one of us cute or hot or whathaveyou, and you shouldn’t try building “boxes” for us when many nonbinary folks literally base their identity around not wanting to be in a metaphorical gender box. Just acknowledge us for who we are, talk to the nonbinary person you’re interested in pursuing a relationship with (if there is one), and you’ll be fine.

Further Learning

As Ritchie once remarked:

People see attraction to men and women as the standard attraction, with attraction to nonbinary [i.e., outside of the gender system construct, not a third gender] people as a variation upon that attraction, when in fact, attraction to nonbinary people is natural, and attraction to the constructs of man and woman are the variation.

If you’d like to learn more about misconceptions about nonbinary identities and sexuality in relation to gender, click here, here, and here for videos from Ritchie.

Notes

1. I am not referring to pre-colonial genders, like hijra or faʻafafine, when I say this. Several problems arise from labeling identities that predate the Western binary system as “nonbinary.” Rather, I’m talking about people living under binary systems that deliberately identified outside of them. Take, for example, the (arguably) bigender Thomas(ine) Hall and Jens Andersson, and the self-identified genderless Public Universal Friend (1752–1819). It’s safe to say nonbinary individuals have existed for centuries, at least.
2. Some nonbinary people, particularly nonbinary wo/men, do not see themselves as GNC if they conform to standards of wo/manhood. There’s an interesting (albeit irrelevant here) inquiry concerning whether certain other nonbinary people can conform to or defy their gender roles. Since many nonbinary identities don’t have gender roles at all (especially those that describe a lack of gender altogether), one could argue that conforming/nonconforming terminology simply doesn’t apply. On the other hand, some unaligned nonbinary people may consider themselves GNC if they defy the roles of their assigned gender, or simply because not having their own gender norms to (dis)obey already defies society’s gender norms — such norms, and thus gender-nonconformity, rely on societal context.
3. I say “may” instead of treating it as an absolute since one does not need to be bisexual to date multi-gendered people. Several lesbians, for instance, describe their attraction as being towards “anyone who is a woman, regardless of any other genders they have.”
4. That said, even our color categories are socially constructed. Russians, whose language regards light blue and dark blue as separate colors, will likely not understand my comparison. Other cultures don’t recognize green as a color at all. My color example can never be perfect as it’s written from an Anglophone perspective, but I hope it proves to at least be reasonable within that sphere.
5. There’s something else that’s been on my mind — though I’ve always had trouble elaborating on my feelings — regarding people who homogenize nonbinary identities and thus deem labels like “pansexual” absolutely necessary for us. They often define “bi” as “two or more” and “pan” as “all.” But how does this — and saying that “women, nonbinary people, and men” = “all genders” while “nonbinary people and wo/men” = “two” — not imply that there are only three genders?
6. After all, pre-colonial multi-gendered systems aren’t inherently less oppressive than ours. We should certainly acknowledge identities other than “male” and “female,” but the problem with our binary isn’t just a lack of acceptable options. It’s that our dichotomy sees men and women as opposites, which produces oppressive stereotypes applied differently to each gender. For instance, if men are strong, women must be weak, therefore it’s “wrong” for women to be strong and men to be weak.