Representation Matters – Beyond the Binary: A History of Gender and Sexual Fluidity

Many people are confused by the seeming influx of new terms to describe gender and sexuality that have emerged in the last decade: nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer, pansexual, polysexual, and so on. But fluid conceptions of gender and sexuality (those that fall outside the binary concepts of male/female or heterosexual/homosexual) have been around for a long time. And for as long as they have been around, they have complicated attempts to organize human sexuality and gender into clear boxes. Join us for a look at the history of nonbinary gender and sexual identities across cultures and the often-fraught attempts to organize and understand these identities, from the nadleehi of the Navajo Nation to modern celebrities such as Janelle Monae and Jonathan Van Ness.

This program is part of the Representation Matters series hosted by Arizona Humanities.

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David Boyles (pronouns: he/they) teaches writing and rhetoric at Arizona State University, where they also developed the Discovery Seminar course, “Speaking OUT: LGBTQ+ Youth in Pop Culture and Politics.” They are co-founder and president of Drag Story Hour Arizona and were honored for their contributions to the Phoenix LGBTQ+ community with the 2022 Phoenix Pride John Bircumshaw Community Spirit Award. They are also the author of the recently published Young Adult novel Life is a Banquet.