# Non-binary / Nonbinary



## macdevster

Hi all - How are Russian-speaking translating "non-binary" when expressing gender identity or talking about individuals and their gender identity?

*Нибинарое*? *Нинбинарые*? Something totally different?

Thanks in advance!


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## GCRaistlin

Небинарный/небинарная.


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## Awwal12

Most Russian qualitative adjectives are formed with -n- suffix, and the Russian counterpart of the adjective "non-binary" in the masculine singular form will be "небинарный". The gender identity (гендерная идентичность, fem. sg.) will be небинарная, etc.


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## macdevster

GCRaistlin said:


> Небинарный/небинарная.



Do you have a sense of how a non-binary person might use these in terms of gender agreement? I know some folks identify as a non-binary woman, for example, so небинарная женщина makes sense to me there. But if they don't identify as man or woman, just simply as "non-binary," is небинарое used? Or the plural небинарные?


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## Awwal12

macdevster said:


> But if they don't identify as man or woman, just simply as "non-binary," is небинарое used? Or the plural небинарные?


I don't think it can be substantivized. You would probably need to use "человек" (m. human/person; pl. "люди"), "личность" (f. personality, person), or something along those lines.


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## Ruukr

macdevster said:


> Hi all - How are Russian-speaking translating "non-binary" when expressing gender identity or talking about individuals and their gender identity?
> 
> *Нибинарое*? *Нинбинарые*? Something totally different?
> 
> Thanks in advance!


actually, just -bi ( би ). 
bi-lingua, bi-sexual, bi - that all.


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## Awwal12

Ruukr said:


> actually, just -bi ( би ).
> bi-lingua, bi-sexual, bi - that all.


Bi-what? How someone who consider themselves neither a man nor a woman is bi-something?


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## Ruukr

Awwal12 said:


> Bi-what? How someone who consider themselves neither a man nor a woman is bi-something?


ну да, говорят просто -bi.... (ты что bi ? или что-то в таком же смысле).


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## Şafak

Ruukr said:


> ну да, говорят просто -bi.... (ты что bi ? или что-то в таком же смысле).


Просто нет. Это неправильное использование языка.


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## Ruukr

Ну в Турции может и неправильное, а у нас правильное.


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## macdevster

Usually “bi” refers to being attracted to both sexes. Non-binary is more about gender identity, not feeling quite man nor woman.


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## Sola Avis

Y


macdevster said:


> Do you have a sense of how a non-binary person might use these in terms of gender agreement? I know some folks identify as a non-binary woman, for example, so небинарная женщина makes sense to me there. But if they don't identify as man or woman, just simply as "non-binary," is небинарое used? Or the plural небинарные?


небинарная личность или небинарная персона
Средний род и множественное число не используется, если речь идет об одном человеке


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## Şafak

Ruukr said:


> Ну в Турции может и неправильное, а у нас правильное.


Причем тут Турция? Вы неправы.


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## MIDAV

macdevster said:


> Do you have a sense of how a non-binary person might use these in terms of gender agreement? I know some folks identify as a non-binary woman, for example, so небинарная женщина makes sense to me there. But if they don't identify as man or woman, just simply as "non-binary," is небинарое used? Or the plural небинарные?


I can imagine they could use the English term in Russian, possibly transliterating it, as in _Я теперь нон-байнари_ for example. That's probably what I would do if I was one and if I had to insist on my being gender-free (or -neutral or whatever).

But then, you would be extremely limited in what you can say. I would almost certainly slip back into using male forms for past-tense verbs for example. So I would probably try to avoid the past tense altogether as using neutral verb forms is totally out of question. Then again, you have to somehow also avoid using adjectives and pronouns, which is a huge mess.


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## Sola Avis

Şafak said:


> Просто нет. Это неправильное использование языка.


В русском используют просто "би". Например: "Он - би" (значит "он бисексуал"). Это сокращение, по моему опыту, используется гораздо чаще, чем полная форма.


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## Şafak

Так вопрос не в этом. Мы говорим про небинарных людей, а не про бисексуалов. О чем речь? Я не понимаю.


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## helen-jr

In russian LGBTQ+ community there are some words for non-binary person and all them taken from English language therefore mean the same as yours ones.
1. Небинарная личность / Небинарная персона = non-binary person (about gender only)
2. Квир-персона = queer person (about both gender and sexuality)
3. Гомосексуал = Homosexual (about sexuality only)
4. Гетеросексуал = Geterosexual (about sexulaity only)
5. Бисексуал / "би" (сленг) = Bisexual (about sexulaity only)


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## Tower of Babel

Is it absolutely inconceivable to use the neuter gender for a person in Russian?  There already exists a neuter word denoting a human being – дитя.

_Дитя счастлив*о*.  Дитя счастливо играл*о*._​
So perhaps it might become possible to say:

_Саша родил*о*сь в Самаре, окончил*о* университет, и переехал*о* в Москву._​
In English, some writers are starting to use "they" as a genderless pronoun for a non-binary person.  It is very confusing at first, but this is how languages gradually evolve.


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## Şafak

Tower of Babel said:


> _Саша родил*о*сь в Самаре, окончил*о* университет, и переехал*о* в Москву._


It sounds extremely pejorative as if Sasha were an abomination of sorts.

So yes, it’s inconceivable. 
By the way, you need to remove the comma after «университет».


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## Tower of Babel

Şafak said:


> By the way, you need to remove the comma after «университет».


Thanks for that correction.
In English, it is called the "Oxford comma" and can cause lively debate about its use.


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## helen-jr

Tower of Babel said:


> Is it absolutely inconceivable to use the neuter gender for a person in Russian?  There already exists a neuter word denoting a human being – дитя.
> 
> _Дитя счастлив*о*.  Дитя счастливо играл*о*._​
> So perhaps it might become possible to say:
> 
> _Саша родил*о*сь в Самаре, окончил*о* университет, и переехал*о* в Москву._​
> In English, some writers are starting to use "they" as a genderless pronoun for a non-binary person.  It is very confusing at first, but this is how languages gradually evolve.


We don't have suitable pronoun for non-binary person in Russian yet. Some of them are easy enough for using pronouns and endings of both genders. Some of them trying to avoid gender endings in speaking. You can do the same.
For example,
Родившись и отучившись в Самаре, Саша теперь живет в Москве.

Although it's may be too difficult sometimes.


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## Awwal12

helen-jr said:


> We don't have suitable pronoun for non-binary person in Russian yet.


But it's not about pronouns, it's about grammatical genders, which must agree with the biological gender of the referent as long as it's expressed by a personal name (for masculine nouns attributives take the masculine gender regardless of the referent's biological gender; predicates always conform to the biological gender).


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## helen-jr

Awwal12 said:


> But it's not about pronouns, it's about grammatical genders, which must agree with the biological gender of the referent as long as it's expressed by a personal name (for masculine nouns attributives take the masculine gender regardless of the referent's biological gender; predicates always conform to the biological gender). And there are only two biological genders (sexes).



This thread just about non-binary people who don't want to choose the only one of two genders. That's an exception to the usual rules and the language has not yet adjusted to new changes in social life. My answer was about it.


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## Tower of Babel

I suddenly realized that Russians might be more interested in what's happening with the French language than English, because French uses gender intensively, while English does not.

Below are a couple of items I found in Russian that might be of interest.  Of course, for those who understand French, you can find more information online in French.

Во французском словаре появилось новое местоимение (0:25)

Во французский словарь добавили гендерно-нейтральное местоимение​


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## nizzebro

Tower of Babel said:


> Во французском словаре появилось новое местоимение (0:25)​​Во французский словарь добавили гендерно-нейтральное местоимение​


Unfortunately I don't know French but I have read that adjectives have gender markers there, but no neuter form is used, right? What will they do with grammatical agreement then?
In Russian, verbs in the past tense use gender markers as well, so if you want a new pronoun, I guess the only way is to adopt the neuter gender, with changing of attitudes towards it - as now it is associated with just 'something'. In principle, it is possible.


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## Şafak

Tower of Babel said:


> I suddenly realized that Russians might be more interested in what's happening with the French language than English, because French uses gender intensively, while English does not.
> 
> Below are a couple of items I found in Russian that might be of interest.  Of course, for those who understand French, you can find more information online in French.
> 
> Во французском словаре появилось новое местоимение (0:25)​​Во французский словарь добавили гендерно-нейтральное местоимение​


It's just silly and it won't work in Russian (and it won't work in French either). Even if some very peculiar individuals come up with bizarre pronouns like those in French, no one will use them because this is not how Russian works.


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## MIDAV

Well, since we're at it – I think if the feminists, instead of fighting a losing battle for feminitives, invested just half as much effort into killing all grammatical femininity, we would all be using one grammatical gender now. Kind of makes you feel sorry for all the wasted effort. Wish I was the chief feminist to finally propose a sound strategy


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## nizzebro

MIDAV said:


> Well, since we're at it – I think if the feminists, instead of fighting a losing battle for feminitives, invested just half as much effort into killing all grammatical femininity, we would all be using one grammatical gender now. Kind of makes you feel sorry for all the wasted effort. Wish I was the chief feminist to finally propose a sound strategy


Frankly, I don't think it would be better. As a Russian I'm often confused reading English sentences where they say something about a person like 'my friend bla bla bla' and then add 'she...'. As I tend to use introspection and always try to make it out about my reactions and reflections, at first, I thought that it is probably my machismo is the matter and I have a need in some prejudice about the gender. But nevertheless I think Russian gender agreement and words like 'подруга' (female friend) gives you more imaginary.  You do not have to wait for that 'she' - you can picture some part of the final image as soon as you hear 'подруга' or meet a gender marker. Maybe that is a source for someone's pre-judice and bias but still I think the more information you have at the initial stage the more powerful your language is. English is an analytic, modular language, so to speak, and such approach probably works better there, but, still there are limits. Unless you want to turn a person into an abstract black box completely.


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## Tower of Babel

Şafak said:


> It's just silly and it won't work in Russian (and it won't work in French either). Even if some very peculiar individuals come up with bizarre pronouns like those in French, no one will use them because this is not how Russian works.


Well, you may be right.  As the French Minister of Education said in the article, «инклюзивный язык — это не будущее французского языка».


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## Tower of Babel

nizzebro said:


> Unfortunately I don't know French but I have read that adjectives have gender markers there, but no neuter form is used, right? What will they do with grammatical agreement then?


Yes, French has masculine and feminine nouns but no neuter, and adjectives require gender agreement.  I think the new pronoun has come into use spontaneously, without a comprehensive plan for how to integrate it with different linguistic elements, so there's an immediate question of how to apply an adjective to something that does not have a traditional gender.  From what I've read, French language experts think the idea is a mess, and the Minister of Education is trying to stop it.

So maybe the idea will just be a quick fad that goes away after a few years.  But maybe not.  I really don't know.



nizzebro said:


> In Russian, verbs in the past tense use gender markers as well, so if you want a new pronoun, I guess the only way is to adopt the neuter gender, with changing of attitudes towards it - as now it is associated with just 'something'. In principle, it is possible.


Yes, this is what I was trying to suggest in post #18, where I noted that дитя is neuter.  Of course, since I'm not a native Russian speaker, I understand that I don't fully feel how strange or awful the neuter endings sound to Russians when applied to human beings.


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## nizzebro

Дитя is a rather specific word. It is basically about really little children, but, it is not a usual neutral word  for a 'child' and neither even for 'baby' - except phrases like 'он совсем как дитя'. Usually they say 'маленький ребёнок'. Anyway, I would say that дитя, in the same way as существо (being), творение (creature) etc is a being which does not express itself explicitly like we do: it cannot speak, walk, or has no name or its nature is indeterminate etc.

Let's imagine we came across a phrase in a book where there is an unusual proper name, which ends with  'и' or 'у' - which is not associated with a particular gender in Russian, and, that name is accompanied by a verb or an adjective of the neuter gender like 'Гуи заговорило' ('Gui started speaking') - I wouldn't need any context to say that it is some fairy tale creature or an alien. Still, if the phrase was 'Мапу было одето в джинсы', ('Mapu was wearing jeans') that would be too much - because it presupposes that Мапу is human-like, but then it should be of either masculine or feminine gender. Any more or less 'socialized' being should have m/f gender - be it Winnie the Pooh, Чебурашка (which is itself a weird being of an unclear type and, besides that, baby-like - but still male) or even little ghosts from Japanese tales.


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## Tower of Babel

@nizzebro Thank you for your excellent explanation.  Now I understand the issue for the Russian language much better.

Well, any change in any language sounds very strange at first.  In English, I have recently read articles that are something like this (simplified):

_"Sam is an author.  They live in London.  Their latest book is a big success.  Here is our recent interview with them."_​
And my reaction as I'm reading is, "Wait, who is 'they'???  Oh yes, Sam is 'they' because Sam is non-binary, so 'they' is a *singular* pronoun here."  It's a lot of mental work!

So maybe someday Russians may accept "Саша небинарно.  Саша заговорило.  Саша было одето в джинсы."  Or maybe not!

By the way, I don't have any personal position on this issue of new pronouns.  I'm not trying to say that any language should or shouldn't try to use them.  I'm just interested as a question about linguistic possibilities (for English and French, too!).


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## Maroseika

Tower of Babel said:


> So maybe someday Russians may accept "Саша небинарно.  Саша заговорило.  Саша было одето в джинсы."  Or maybe not!


It's highly unlikely, for sounding pejorative in Russian, as if the person is inanimate. Probably, quite the same as in English, or otherwise why "it" is not used instead of "they" for such people?
Let alone unstressed neuter ending is pronounced exactly like the feminine one.


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## nizzebro

Tower of Babel said:


> "Саша небинарно.


By the way, this particular phrase itself is an issue. We start with Саша as a topic, and only then we define him or her or whoever as non-binary. But once Саша has been already introduced somehow, which gender has been used for them before? Not always it is possible to define them right after 'это Саша'; their being non-binary could be unknown during some time.

Frankly I do not understand why it is inappropriate for a non-binary person to just use formally a particular gender form - masculine or feminine. Actually masculine and feminine is not about sexual characteristics or even social roles and behaviour, but about the model of awareness you own, so to speak, about your approach to the surrounding reality.


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## nizzebro

From time to time, on the streets of the big city where I live in (St Petersburg), I see a person which gender (or sex) I cannot visually detect. If I had to address such person directly, that would not be a problem since we have a polite form of 'you' which agrees with plural. But suppose I had to talk to someone else and point out that person - would be a little trouble then. I could use 'человек' (a man/a person) but only until I need to be more precise and refer to some other traits of them, like age  - which is a trap: to tell something about their age requires a noun which implies their gender explicitly, so that 'человек' turns into a male in such case. I would probably call them 'that guy-or-girl', and still I think it is my own choice. To choose between male and female is to make a single step, but I don't know what is the _visual _difference between e.g. queer and non-binary and others. As for elder people, I never have seen a person yet who would be an issue in that sense.

It is probably useful for a language to have some gender-less tricks for such cases. But the matter is not gender but the whole paradigm. Russian is a phrase-oriented language in that sense that each verbal phrase gives you a pretty decent live image which you can visualize without the further context. At first we discard gender, then we discard conjugation, then verbal aspects (seems impossible but some symptoms are already present in e.g. news headings), adopt the telegraph-like word order, and, finally our mentality changes and we become subjects of the empire where they use to speak and think in English (but, second-class ones, of course). No thanks.


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## Tower of Babel

Maroseika said:


> It's highly unlikely, for sounding pejorative in Russian, as if the person is inanimate. Probably, quite the same as in English, or otherwise why "it" is not used instead of "they" for such people?
> Let alone unstressed neuter ending is pronounced exactly like the feminine one.


Okay, you have convinced me that the use of neuter words to describe a person in Russian must be completely unacceptable to native speakers.  I agree that "it" would sound terrible for an English speaker.  You have taught me a good lesson.  Спасибо.



Tower of Babel said:


> So maybe someday Russians may accept "Саша небинарно. Саша заговорило. Саша было одето в джинсы." Or maybe not!


I apologize that I wrote this phrase: "Or maybe not!"  It probably sounded like I was trying to be humorous or sarcastic, but I was not.  I meant it seriously – if Russians do not want such changes to their language, then of course that is their right.


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## Tower of Babel

nizzebro said:


> Frankly I do not understand why it is inappropriate for a non-binary person to just use formally a particular gender form - masculine or feminine.


Perhaps that would be the best way to look at the situation, but it does seem illogical to say "Саша небинарен" or "Саша небинарна", because then it sounds like you are simultaneously saying that Sasha is non-binary, but also male or female because of the ending on the adjective.


nizzebro said:


> Russian is a phrase-oriented language in that sense that each verbal phrase gives you a pretty decent live image which you can visualize without the further context. At first we discard gender, then we discard conjugation, then verbal aspects (seems impossible but some symptoms are already present in e.g. news headings), adopt the telegraph-like word order, and, finally our mentality changes and we become subjects of the empire where they use to speak and think in English (but, second-class ones, of course). No thanks.


Yes!  I think that Russian is very beautiful (and великий и могучий).  And as a highly inflected, synthetic language, I think Russian is very interesting to compare to English, which is an analytic language.  I really like Russian.  That's why I have tried very hard to improve my knowledge about it.

Please remember what I wrote earlier:


Tower of Babel said:


> By the way, I don't have any personal position on this issue of new pronouns. I'm not trying to say that any language should or shouldn't try to use them. I'm just interested as a question about linguistic possibilities (for English and French, too!).


I am not trying to persuade anybody to use new pronouns.  Actually, I have doubts about how this whole issue will proceed in the English language as well!


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## nizzebro

Tower of Babel said:


> Perhaps that would be the best way to look at the situation, but it does seem illogical to say "Саша небинарен" or "Саша небинарна", because then it sounds like you are simultaneously saying that Sasha is non-binary, but also male or female because of the ending on the adjective.


I see, but I wrote after that masculine and feminine are not just sexual characteristics but more general categories. I doubt that being non-binary means right in the middle in between. But, of course, it would work only if it is not humiliating for a non-binary person to formally associate themselves with one of these two classical genders - taking in account that is not about a sexual role, but rather of masculinity or femininity in general as their possible main character traits. If they think they are absolutely not this and not that - well, it is not about gender then - at least not grammatical gender - as you see that the neuter is not even 'the middle' - it is rather 'not a complete human or animal'. Sad but true.

In Russian, fox is feminine and in tales she is always female, such, you know, personality which is tricky, smooth but ruthless - a typical lady. If I were non-binary and had such traits, I would choose the feminine gender definitely.


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## Tower of Babel

nizzebro said:


> I see, but I wrote after that masculine and feminine are not just sexual characteristics but more general categories.


Yes, you're quite right @nizzebro.  I agree with you (you embarrass me because your English is better than mine!)



nizzebro said:


> as you see that the neuter is not even 'the middle' - it is rather 'not a complete human or animal'. Sad but true.


Ahhh!!!!  This is a great revelation to me!!  I had not thought of it this way.  NOW I see why neuter is such an unpleasant category from that viewpoint.  Thank you, that is a very important insight!!


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## nizzebro

That is of course only mental association; the society could overcome it and use 'Саша сделал*о*'.
But there is another issue: in speech, unstressed 'o' sounds the same as 'а'. Unstressed adjective endings as well sound identical if not emphasized intentionally, and the majority of such endings are unstressed.


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