Seasons of Nonbinary and Neurodivergence; or, So What If We’re All X?

Abstract

Abstract: The category of nonbinary has entered a new season. No longer emergent but maturing, it is facing new, pressing questions about what the term means, who it is for, in what ways it can be mobilized toward specific political agendas, and how it facilitates or impedes forms of community. In this essay, I unpack the anxieties that some trans and nonbinary people have expressed toward these questions and that are sometimes invoked to cast doubt on the politics or ethics of nonbinary . Rather than accept or reject these anxieties at face value, I re-story them to honor their sources while yet insisting on a path forward for nonbinary , a path that depends not on how we define it but on how we occupy it. By allegorizing the anxieties in nonbinary and neurodivergent communities, I propose that the language of access needs and disability impacts may provide models for negotiating accountability and care in pursuit of trans justice.