In Transit

Much of what has been written about trans and gender-diverse people has come through a medical framework, in which cisgender doctors catalogued diagnoses and symptoms, or through a political one, in which lawmakers built dangerous caricatures to hold on to their power. Non-binary people, the book argues, deserve a conversation of their own. That conversation grew out of the transsexual movement, was absorbed into the wider idea of transgender identity, and is only now emerging as a category in its own right.

Non-binary writer Dianna E. Anderson traces the history and theory of non-binary identity and shares the story of their own coming out. Along the way the book takes up what being non-binary might mean and where non-binary people belong within the trans and queer communities. It places these identities within a long history of gender nonconformity and looks past the rigid roles society assigns to men and women, giving readers room to get to know, test, and understand themselves.

The book imagines a future in which people can simply be who they are, in whatever form that takes, without having to meet suspicion or justify themselves at length, and are met instead with acceptance and affection. At its heart, it suggests, being non-binary means finding a home in the in-between places.