Although people have always been living beyond and outside of the gender binary, there has been little research so far about nonbinary people. In fact, we had no way of knowing how many nonbinary people even live in the United States until a first-of-its-kind study, published Tuesday by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, revealed that number — and much more.
The Williams Institute, a highly reputed source for LGBTQ+ demographic data, examined two large-scale studies to estimate that there are more than one million nonbinary adults currently living in the United States.
It is the first-ever population-based estimate of the number of nonbinary people in the country.
“That number says, ‘This is part of who you’re talking about when executive orders are signed to protect people against discrimination,” study co-author Bianca Wilson told the Washington Post.
Of the roughly 1.2 million nonbinary adults in the U.S., 58% are white, 16% are multiracial, 15% are Latinx, and 9% are Black. (According to the Williams Institute, Native Americans and the AAPI community were underrepresented in the data they used to create the estimate).
Notably, 76% of nonbinary adults are between the ages of 18 and 29 — a trend in line with previous studies finding that younger generations, like Gen Z, are more comfortable openly identifying as LGBTQ+ than older generations were in the past.
Nonbinary people don’t just live in blue coastal states, either. According to the Williams Institute, the nonbinary population in the United States is geographically diverse, with 31% living in the American West, 27% living in the South, 25% living in the Northwest, and 16% calling the Midwest home. However, the vast majority of respondents (89%) reported living in urban areas.
The Williams Institute also dove deeper, analyzing the socioeconomic situation of the nonbinary community. Across their data sets, 68% of respondents reported not having enough money to make ends meet, with 43% of respondents reporting that they lived in a low-income household. Additionally, 11% of respondents reported being unstably housed, whether homeless, living in a shelter home, or staying with others temporarily.
While the study notes that not all nonbinary people identify as trans, the data does show a significant overlap with statistics on trans populations. For example, over half of nonbinary people (55%) reported having been physically or sexually assaulted at some point since becoming an adult, with significant percentages reporting emotional abuse as well.
Grimly, more than one in ten respondents (11%) reported having undergone anti-LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, a harmful practice that seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Nearly all nonbinary adults (94%) reported experiencing some form of suicidal ideation, with 89.5% reporting moderate distress or serious mental illness and 74% reporting non-suicidal self-injury.
Wilson told the Washington Post that these statistics are in line with general observations about the LGBTQ+ community. Previous studies, as Wilson pointed out, have long established that social discrimination causes “psychological distress” for marginalized people, including queer folks. However, more research is needed to determine whether or not nonbinary people are particularly susceptible to that minority stress.
“Research has shown that the stress from being a minority — stress from being a sexual and gender minority in particular — is related to psychological distress,” Wilson told the Post. “And being nonbinary is a unique kind of gender minority experience because you are constantly surrounded by binary-identified people.”
How Do I Know If I’m Nonbinary?
A guide for anyone questioning their gender identity, with emphasis on one important point: There’s no right or wrong way to find out where you fall on the gender spectrum.
On the brighter side of things, over half of respondents (53%) reported being “pretty happy,” with 44% describing the conditions of their life as being excellent, and 42% describing themselves as satisfied with their life.
Although the study authors acknowledge that their data, collected from 2016 to 2018, “reflect a particular historical moment,” it’s worth noting that identifying as nonbinary isn’t just a “trend.” Rather, as the researchers note, “identities and terms related to gender and sexuality shift across time.”
In other words, nonbinary identities aren’t new, but people may be increasingly finding that the term “nonbinary” describes their relationship to their gender identity.
“Given data from large-scale youth surveys illustrating that 2-10% identify with gender minority labels, and many of them identified with gender nonbinary terms, both cisgender and transgender nonbinary subpopulations are likely to be a growing dimension of the LGBTQ population,” the researchers predict.
It’s safe to say this first-of-its-kind study won’t be the last.
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