It can mean many things as it's both an umbrella-term for a number of identities alongside being one that many people choose to identify with specifically. Fundamentally it means that you don't identify as strictly a man or a woman - that it isn't a binary check mark in one of those boxes to you.
But isn't non-binary to being gendered what atheism is to bring religious? Or am I misunderstanding.
Yes. I grew up in Montreal, QC and now live in Calgary, AB and know friends in both cities that ask for this. The discourse around terms like these develops and grows constantly these days (with the help of public figures like SonicFox, I should add)...by no means would everyone come across it, but it's certainly being discussed.
non-binary people exist all over the world. it's not a modern thing either, many cultures throughout history have had concepts of gender that don't exist within a strict binary.
Why does it use "they" then? When typically "they" refers to multiple persons. I thought non-binary was, sure not a specific gender, but I didn't see it as "multiple".
They is a common way of specifying a person or persons without assigning gender. Like if you don't know if your new boss is going to be a man or a woman, you could say "I hope they're better than the old guy."
They can be used as a singular.
Because you could read this thread or look it up on the internet that's at your fingertips or watch videos on the subject? Instead of just throwing your hands up and saying welp, this is some new age shit, I'll never understand it. What you said was dismissive and tbh, feels like you don't want to do the bare minimum to educate yourself. It's not that difficult.
Unlike a lot of other languages out there on our planet, English has traditionally lacked a gender-neutral singular pronoun that is appropriate for people rather than things. However, seeing a need for such a pronoun, English speakers have at various times tried to create on. Some people have tried to create a new pronoun from scratch to fill this gap, such as "xe/xer/xim" or such, but those attempts never remotely caught on. Instead, adapting "they/their/them" into the role of a singular pronoun has been a much more popular usage.
The singular 'they' has been in use for centuries.
Except there's literally a designation of 'LGBT' - 'LGBTQ2+' - that's primarily used in Canada. Where the 2 stands for two-spirit and in part refers to non-binary gender identities.
It's hard for you to understand why people are supportive of someone coming out as being non-binary?
