Non-Binary Life is a call for thinking about the possibilities of life outside of, and irrespective of, gender. While it concerns a nonbinary person-the author- it is also much more than merely a plea for the broader social world to "accept" non-binariness as "valid." Instead, Marquis Bey offers the opportunity to refuse to have gender be something we carry for ourselves and others. What if, this book asks, we no longer let gender be a way of organizing ourselves? To write, to think, to imagine, to agitate, to tremor through relationality and spatiality without regard for gender is what might be called a nonbinary way of life. In chapters that span the topics of pronouns, strategically enacting gender out of necessity, masculinity, love, family, language, and even the Redwood National Forest, Non-Binary Life provides a more robust and personal treatment of what it means to live with and as nonbinary. A foundational text for those interested in gender and trans studies, as well as memoir and autobiography, for it does not simply recount already-believed truths about nonbinary gender. Instead, Bey provides the first sustained treatment of nonbinary theory, of questioning gender and the gender binary from the perspective of nonbinariness.

Autorentext

Marquis Bey is Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University, USA. They are the author of Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (2022), Black Trans Feminism (2022), Anarcho-blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism (2020), Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism (2019)****

Klappentext

Nonbinary Life is an invitation to imagine the possibilities of life outside of gender.

To write, to think, to imagine, to agitate, and to love without regard for gender is what might be called a nonbinary way of life. In this genre-defying work of autotheory, Marquis Bey proposes a radical refusal: to relinquish gender as a framework we carry - for ourselves and for others - and to embrace modes of being that exist outside of its grasp. What if we no longer let gender be a way of organizing ourselves?

Spanning the question of pronouns, masculinity, love, family, language, and even the Redwood National Forest, Nonbinary Life blends memoir and theory to provide a robust and personal treatment of what it means to live beyond the binary.

Inhalt

Author's (love) note (Introduction)

Part One

1. Carrying What is Not Mine to Carry

2. Gender is Not the Thing

   Part Two

3. Burner Gender

4. He/They, She/They

   Part Three

5. A Man's World

6. 16 bars

   Part Four

7. nbffs (nonbinary friends forever)

   Redwoods (Conclusion)

   Index