Jacob Tobia

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Jacob Tobia
Tobia at Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in 2019
Born August 7, 1991 (age 28)


Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.

Residence Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Citizenship American
Education Raleigh Charter High School
Alma mater Duke University
Occupation Writer, activist, producer
Known for LGBTQ rights advocacy
Website jacobtobia.com

Jacob Tobia (born August 7, 1991) is an American LGBT rights activist, writer, producer, television host and actor. In 2019, they published their memoir titled Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story. Tobia is also the voice of the character Double Trouble in DreamWorks' animated series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

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Early life and education[edit]

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Tobia's grandparents were Syrians who immigrated to the United States in the 1950s who spoke Arabic, which Tobia said was "the language that I do not speak but wish I could." Tobia was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina in a Methodist family and graduated in 2010 from Raleigh Charter High School, serving there as president of the Gay Straight Alliance and being active in student government. Tobia graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with a degree in Human Rights Advocacy. While a student at Duke, Tobia served as the vice president of equity and outreach for Duke Student Government, was co-president of Blue Devils United, and president of Duke Students for Gender Neutrality.

Career and activism[edit]

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Tobia is a Point Foundation Scholar, Harry S. Truman Scholar, and a recipient of the Campus Pride National Voice and Action Award. Their writing has been featured on MSNBC, MTV, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, Jezebel and other media outlets. They've also served on conference panels and spoken at Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, and various LGBTQ conferences across the United States. They worked for the United Nations Foundation, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice before starting a career in television.[non-primary source needed]

In September 2013, Tobia raised over $10,000 for the Ali Forney Center running across the Brooklyn Bridge in five-inch heels as part of their Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) commitment to action. They were recently honored again for their larger impact to LGBTQIA+ community by CGI U in 2018 at the University of Chicago.

Tobia was featured in MTV's The T Word, where they were interviewed by Laverne Cox. In 2015, Tobia was profiled in the GLAAD Award-nominated episode of True Life: I'm Genderqueer by MTV. In 2016 they were named in OUT Magazine's 100. Later in 2016, Tobia created, co-produced and hosted Queer 2.0, an original LGBTQ series on NBC News. Tobia book reading, Raleigh, North Carolina, March 2019 In 2017, Tobia moved from New York to Los Angeles to begin working on Season 4 of Jill Soloway's series Transparent. In June 2017, Tobia announced they would be releasing a memoir titled Sissy.

They provided the voice of Double Trouble in season 4 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

In 2018, Tobia became the face of the gender non-conforming makeup brand Fluide. The brand seeks to support all gender identities and support the LGBTQ+ community with their lip and nail colors named after queer spaces from around the world.

In 2019, Tobia was a guest on Trevor Noah's The Daily Show. They discuss Tobia's book Sissy which addresses the term "gender chill", gendered violence, and the playful nature of non binary genders.

Personal life[edit]

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Tobia uses singular they pronouns.

Bibliography[edit]

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  • Transgender Today: Jacob Tobia for The New York Times
  • I am neither Mr, Mrs nor Ms but Mx for The Guardian
  • Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Motto by Time
  • An Open Letter to North Carolina's Lawmakers from a Trans North Carolinian for Women's Health
  • Telling Trans Stories Beyond 'Born in the Wrong Body for BuzzFeed
  • I Have Long Nails Because I'm Proud Of What They Mean for BuzzFeed
  • The 1970s Feminist Who Warned Against Leaning In for BuzzFeed
  • An Affront against All Women for New America Weekly
  • Trans Fashion is Not (Necessarily) Trans Empowerment for Hooligan Magazine
  • How Student Activists at Duke Transformed a $6 Billion Endowment for The Nation
  • Where I Belong for Duke Magazine
  • LGBTQIA: A Beginner's Guide to the Great Alphabet Soup Of Queer Identity for Mic
  • To All the Married Gay Couples Out There: The Fight Doesn't End With DOMA's Ruling for Mic
  • Obama Morehouse Speech: Was the President Unintentionally Transphobic? for Mic
  • The Power of Trans Vulnerability for The Huffington Post
  • Five Dos and Five Don'ts for College Seniors (From a Point Scholar Who's Been There) for The Huffington Post
  • Dear Mr. President: Students Ask Obama to Protect LGBT Employees for The Huffington Post
  • Why You Should Be Optimistic After Amendment One: A North Carolinian's Perspective for The Huffington Post
  • Why I'm Genderqueer, Professional and Unafraid for The Huffington Post
  • The Orlando Shooting Was An Act Of Hate for MTV
  • How To Talk To Your Parents About Being Genderqueer for MTV
  • I'm Genderqueer — Please Stop Asking Me When I'm 'Really' Going To Transition for MTV
  • Jacob Tobia - Promoting a “Gender-Chill” Exploration of Identity with “Sissy” | The Daily Show with Trevor Noah


Non-binary gender

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search "Enby" redirects here. For the village in Estonia also known as Enby, see Einbi.

"Non-binary" redirects here. For other uses, see Binary (disambiguation).

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Non-binary is a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine‍—‌identities that are outside the gender binary. Genderqueer is an earlier term with the same meaning, originating from queer zines of the 1980s. Non-binary identities can fall under the transgender umbrella, since many non-binary people identify with a gender that is different from their assigned sex.

Non-binary people may identify as having two or more genders (being bigender or trigender); having no gender (agender, nongendered, genderless, genderfree or neutrois); moving between genders or having a fluctuating gender identity (genderfluid); being third gender or other-gendered (a category that includes those who do not place a name to their gender).

Gender identity is separate from sexual or romantic orientation, and non-binary people have a variety of sexual orientations, just as cisgender people do.

A non-binary gender is not associated with a specific gender expression, such as androgyny. Non-binary people as a group have a wide variety of gender expressions, and some may reject gender "identities" altogether.

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Definitions and identity[edit]

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Jacob Tobia is a genderqueer writer and activist. In addition to being an umbrella term, genderqueer has been used as an adjective to refer to any people who transgress distinctions of gender, regardless of their self-defined gender identity, or who "queer" gender. Individuals may express gender non-normatively by not conforming into the binary gender categories of "man" and "woman". Genderqueer is often used to self-identify by people who challenge binary social constructions of gender.

The term has also been applied by those describing what they see as a gender ambiguity. Androgynous (also androgyne) is frequently used as a descriptive term for people in this category. This is because the term androgyny is closely associated with a blend of socially defined masculine and feminine traits. However, not all genderqueer people identify as androgynous. Some genderqueer people identify as a masculine woman or a feminine man or combine genderqueer with another gender option.

Many references use the term transgender to include genderqueer/non-binary people. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation and Gender Spectrum use the term gender-expansive to convey "a wider, more flexible range of gender identity and/or expression than typically associated with the binary gender system".

Genderfluid people often express a desire to remain flexible about their gender identity rather than committing to a single definition. They may fluctuate between differing gender expressions over their lifetime, or express multiple aspects of various gender markers at the same time. They may at times identify as bigender - shifting between masculine and feminine; or as trigender - shifting between these and a third gender.

Agender people ('a-' meaning "without"), also called genderless, genderfree, non-gendered, or ungendered, are those who identify as having no gender or being without a gender identity. Although this category includes a broad range of identities which do not conform to traditional gender norms, scholar Finn Enke states that people who identify with any of these positions may not necessarily self-identify as transgender. Agender people have no specific set of pronouns; singular they is typically used, but it is not the default. Neutrois and agender were two of 50 available custom genders on Facebook, which were added on 13 February 2014. Agender is also available as a gender option on OkCupid since 17 November 2014.

Demigender is a gender identity of a person identifying partially or mostly with one gender and at the same time with another gender. There are several subcategories of the identity. A demi-boy or demi-man, for example, identifies at least partially with being a boy or a man, no matter the sex and gender they were assigned at birth, while other parts of their identity might be assigned to other genders, genderfluid or no other gender (agender). A demiflux person feels that the stable part of their identity is non-binary.

History[edit]

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Some constructionist historians and anthropologists have argued that the binary system of gender identity can be traced to the 19th century when sexuality was first medicalized, though others challenge this. Some constructionists argue that people started to identify as gay when biological sciences grew in influence, churches became less powerful, and social and political structure began to change. George Chauncey, professor of history at Yale University, notes that during the early 20th-century gender roles rather than sexual partners were used to determine sexuality. For instance, "feminine" men who had sex with other men were labeled as "mollies" or "fairies", whereas masculine men who had sex with other men remained unlabeled. Historians like David Halperin argue that by the mid-20th century it became normative for laypeople in the U.S. to label individuals as either heterosexual or homosexual, while other historians like John Boswell argue that the concepts the words refer to have existed for centuries.

The term genderqueer came into use during the mid-1990s. Riki Anne Wilchins is often associated with the word genderqueer, especially because of her contributions to Genderqueer: Voices Beyond the Sexual Binary which was published in 2002. In 1995 she was also published in the newsletter In Your Face, where she used the term genderqueer. In the newsletter, the term appears to refer to people with complex or unnamed gender expressions, which does not match with the general definition used today. Wilchins stated she identifies as genderqueer in her 1997 autobiography.

Some genderqueer people are medically treated for gender dysphoria with surgery or hormones, as trans men and women are.

Gender neutrality[edit]

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Main article: Gender neutrality

Gender neutrality is the movement to end discrimination of gender altogether in society through means of gender-neutral language, the end of sex segregation, and other means.

Pronouns and titles[edit]

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Pronoun pin badges from a 2016 art and tech festival Some non-binary/genderqueer people prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns. Usage of singular 'they', 'their' and 'them' is the most common; and ze, sie, hir, co, and ey are used as well. Some others prefer the conventional gender-specific pronouns 'her' or 'him', prefer to be referred to alternately as 'he' and 'she', or prefer to use only their name and not use pronouns at all. Many prefer additional neutral language, such as the title 'Mx.' instead of Mr. or Ms.

In 2019, they as a non-binary pronoun was added to Merriam-Webster's dictionary.

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Main article: Legal recognition of non-binary gender

In today's society, many non-binary/genderqueer people still use the gender they were given at birth to conduct everyday business because many areas of life still conduct business with binary genders. Things are changing though as more businesses are becoming more accepting of non-binary genders. Multiple countries legally recognize non-binary or third gender classifications. Some non-western societies have long recognized transgender people as a third gender, though this may not (or may only recently) include formal legal recognition. In western societies, Australia may have been the first country to legally recognize third classifications, following recognition of Alex MacFarlane as having indeterminate sex, reported in 2003.

Discrimination[edit]

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Main article: Discrimination against non-binary gender persons

In the United States, the majority of respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey chose "A gender not listed here." The "not listed here" respondents were nine percentage-points (33 percent) more likely to report forgoing healthcare due to fear of discrimination than the general sample (36 percent compared to 27 percent). Ninety percent reported experiencing anti-trans bias at work, and 43 percent reported having attempted suicide.

Symbols and observances[edit]

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Main article: LGBT symbols Anjali Gopalan and Gopi Shankar Madurai inaugurating Asia's first Genderqueer Pride Parade at Madurai with a rainbow and genderqueer flag

Many flags have been used in non-binary and genderqueer communities to represent various identities. There are distinct non-binary and genderqueer pride flags. The genderqueer pride flag was designed in 2011 by Marilyn Roxie. Lavender represents androgyny or queerness, white represents agender identity, and green represents those whose identities which are defined outside the binary. The non-binary pride flag was created in 2014. Yellow represents people whose gender exists outside the binary, purple represents those who feel their gender is a mixture of – or between – male and female, black represents people who feel as if they have no gender, and white represents those who embrace many or all genders.

Genderfluid people, who also fall under the genderqueer umbrella, have their own flag as well. Pink represents femininity, white represents lack of gender, purple represents mixed gender or androgyny, black represents all other genders, and blue represents masculinity.

Agender people, who also sometimes identify as genderqueer, have their own flag. This flag uses black and white stripes to represent an absence of gender, and a green stripe to represent non-binary genders.

International Non-Binary People's Day is celebrated on 14 July.

Population figures[edit]

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A 2019 survey of the Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ population in the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario called Mapping the Void: Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ Experiences in Hamilton showed that 19% of the 906 respondents identified as non-binary.

A 2017 survey of Canadian LGBT+ people called LGBT+ Realities Survey found that 4% of the 1,897 respondents identified as non-binary transgender and 1% identified as non-binary outside of the transgender umbrella.

According to The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 35% of the nearly 28,000 transgender respondents to the anonymous online survey identified as non-binary.

A 2011 survey conducted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK found that 0.4% of the 10,039 respondents identified as non-binary.