Beyond the Binary: A History of Gender and Sexual Fluidity (virtual)

Many people are confused by the seeming influx of new terms to describe gender and sexuality that have emerged in the last decade: nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer, pansexual, polysexual, and so on. But fluid conceptions of gender and sexuality (those that fall outside the binary concepts of male/female or heterosexual/homosexual) have been around for a long time. And for as long as they have been around, they have complicated attempts to organize human sexuality and gender into clear boxes. Join us for a look at the history of nonbinary gender and sexual identities across cultures and the often-fraught attempts to organize and understand these identities, from the nadleehi of the Navajo Nation to modern celebrities such as Janelle Monae and Jonathan Van Ness.

David Boyles (pronouns: he/they) teaches writing and rhetoric at Arizona State University, where they also developed the Discovery Seminar course, “Speaking OUT: LGBTQ+ Youth in Pop Culture and Politics.” They are co-founder and president of Drag Story Hour Arizona and were honored for their contributions to the Phoenix LGBTQ+ community with the 2022 Phoenix Pride John Bircumshaw Community Spirit Award. They are also the author of the recently published Young Adult novel Life is a Banquet.

This program series is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.