Nonbinary people living in a binary world: Minority stress in public and gendered places

Abstract

Introduction

Nonbinary gender identities are widely erased and invalidated in Western societies, due to binary normativity. The segregation by binary gender of public spaces and sports categories may cause unique sources of stress for nonbinary people, manifesting at a structural and interpersonal level. Utilizing the nonbinary minority stress framework this study explores how the dichotomous gender division of public restrooms, store dressing rooms, locker rooms, and sports categories is associated with distal and proximal dimensions of minority stress.

Methods

The study was conducted in Italy and involved 40 nonbinary individuals aged 19 to 36 years in a semi-structured interview. The research team comprised a diverse range of positionalities, including trans, nonbinary, queer, bisexual, lesbian, and cisgender heterosexual-allied researchers.

Results

Through reflexive thematic analysis combining deductive and inductive orientations, themes were organized in two macro-areas representing distal and proximal stressors. Distal stressors encompassed experiences of bullying, harassment, discrimination, social intrusiveness and control, non-affirmation, invalidation, and the burden of powerlessness. Proximal stressors included internalized invalidation, avoidance coping, negative expectations, disclosure negotiation, and gender dysphoria.

Conclusion and discussion

Findings showed that intrusiveness, control, non-affirmation, and social invalidation represent pervasive elements in the daily experiences of nonbinary individuals, contributing to the internalization of negative emotions referred to the self, including discomfort, shame, and a sense of social inadequacy. Nonbinary individuals may prioritize the comfort of others in social interactions, negotiating the disclosure of their identity to prevent others from feeling uneasy in their presence. Implications for clinical interventions, policy, and future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Disclosure negotiation
• gendered places
• invalidation
• minority stress
• nonbinary

Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply grateful to the nonbinary people who agreed to participate in the research by sharing their life stories. Their invaluable contributions significantly enrich the body of knowledge pertaining to the phenomenon of nonbinary identities within the scientific literature.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article

Ethical approval and consent to participate

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The research was approved by the Ethics Commission of the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome (protocol number: 0001088; date of approval: 9 September 2021). Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Notes

1 We chose to use the terms ‘trans men’ and ‘trans women’ rather than ‘trans binary’ since we believe that the binary vs. non-binary dichotomy constitutes a cisnormative approach to comprehending the more complex experiences of transgender individuals (National Center for Institutional Diversity, 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research: (1) Grant PRIN 2022 [2022HN5SFZ] “Fostering the Right to Equality in Education (FREE): Mental health and academic achievement among LGBTQI + university students.”