- Gender doesn't exist. (laughs)
Gender is a lie.
- Sis, you're not cis.
- I am they,
I am she,
and I am free.
- [Crew] Mark it.
- Hey, nerds.
A nonbinary person is someone
whose gender identity does not conform to the gender binary,
what we know as male and female.
Some nonbinary people prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns,
such as they/them, or neopronouns,
such as ae or thon, to describe their gender.
Nonbinary is used as an umbrella term
for genders such as agender, bigender,
genderqueer, genderfluid, and more.
Some nonbinary people identify as transgender,
though not all do.
- Nonbinary to me means freeing yourself,
not just living here or there,
but embracing all parts of it.
- Being yourself.
Not really confining to a script of society.
- It feels like a universe
with little pinpoints of stars.
Each star is a different person, a different gender,
a different identification,
and you can literally fall anywhere within that universe.
I've been feeling gender dysphoria
since probably middle school or earlier,
and I just didn't have a name for it.
I found further evidence of that,
like journal entries from when I was 12 years old,
writing things like, "I am a boy.
No, I am a girl."
There was a Facebook photo that I found recently
where my mom and I were standing
in front of a women's restroom
and I was making a face like this.
The caption I had written was, "Am I a girl?
Hmm, I forget."
- I grew up with family and my sisters,
and it was a really religious background.
I guess I got the double whammy
because my family's Jamaican as well.
And then you're different on top of that,
it's just like, "Okay.
Get ready for World War IV."
- I was in the fifth grade,
and I was writing a boy's name down on a paper or something.
But then I realized that I was writing a boy's name down,
and I discovered my sexuality.
- So as a child, I just naturally went towards...
If I was in a shop,
I would naturally go towards the boy section
and put on, like, the basketball shorts and the jersey
and felt really comfortable at home in that,
and so everyone called me a tomboy.
If it came to weddings, special events,
I was always asked to put on a dress or a skirt,
something with ruffles.
And I didn't feel comfortable doing it,
but I noticed that when I would dress that way,
my family would be really happy.
- I wasn't always knowing that I was nonbinary.
Me figuring out that I wasn't trans,
I feel liberated now that I know that I'm nonbinary
and that I don't have to look a particular way.
- It was, I think March of 2020.
I had really, really long hair,
and for a long time, it was a point of pride for me.
There came a point where it started to feel
less like a point of pride and more like a vestige
of a person that I did not feel a connection with anymore.
And so I got a haircut,
and immediately things started to shift for me.
When I looked in the mirror,
it felt like I was seeing a truer version of who I was.
- I started to notice that I was dressing
in a more feminine way,
and I found a way to comfortably do it.
And so that would be flowy dresses or pants or skirts,
really interesting patterns.
I realize that there is a femininity that I have.
It's not what was maybe expected of me from my family,
but it is my own version of it.
- I started to dress differently.
I started to present in a way that made me feel euphoria
as opposed to dysphoria.
I started playing around with pronouns.
My name, at a certain point,
started to feel like my hair.
It felt like I needed a name that was less femme
so that I could introduce myself to people
or when people saw my name, you know,
they didn't assume who I was from the get-go.
- I did this short little theater thing with my partner,
and it required me to play a man.
My partner comes into the dressing room
and hands me a pair of socks.
And then I realized he was referring to creating a bulge,
and so when I put that underneath my pants,
it awoke all these feelings that I had as a kid
that I realized I had put away, which was,
oh, my God, this feels really comfortable, too.
- Today, a lot of Spanish speakers
are replacing the masculine or feminine endings of,
like, -o and -a with -e
to accommodate different gender identities.
We can say elle, which is E-L-L-E,
which is a nice little neutering,
that, in taking out the binary.
- I wanted to pick a name that started with the same letter
and that had the same sort of meaning as my birth name,
so I chose Sage.
In the past few months since I've changed it,
you know, when I introduce myself to them,
they're like, "Oh, my God, that name suits you so well,"
or, "That's such a pretty name, I love that name."
It makes me feel so happy.
My favorite thing is saying, "Thanks, I chose it myself,"
and seeing the look on people's faces. (laughing)
- So spelling out freedom,
how I'm feeling every single day.
- My imprint is making sure that people can authentically,
unapologetically be themselves.
- When someone uses my pronouns, it feels so gratifying.
- And so now, I use they/them/theirs and she/her/hers.
I move in between the feminine, the masculine,
the energy that has no gender.
I keep she/her/hers as a way of honoring the fact
that I did find a femininity that I really, really love.
And so that's why I use both.
- If I had known at the age of 13
that it was possible to exist like this,
I don't think it would've taken me another 12 years
to figure it out.
I'm at the beginning of this journey,
and I'm so excited to see where it's gonna take me.