Bella Ramsey is a non-binary person: what it means and what other interpreters are

“Happy Trans Visibility Day to this little person! I didn’t know the term non-binary in this photo. But he knew what it meant. inherently. Because I always was and always will be.. Much love to all my trans and gender non-binary friends”. With these words, accompanied by a photo from when I was a child, Bella Ramsey, star of ‘The Last of Us’, made her gender identity public on Twitter, which She had already commented in an interview, but now in a clearer and more visible way. Like her, other popular faces from cinema and television have made their non-binary identity visible. We explain what it means.

The first thing we have to be clear about is what gender is. We can start with the third meaning of the RAE: “Group to which human beings of each sex belong, understood from a sociocultural point of view instead of exclusively biological”. That is, gender is not about what genitalia and chromosomes we have, but about a social construct by which we identify (or “read”) people as male or female when we interact with them (without needing to see their genitalia). That identification is something we do in every interaction, unconsciously. Gender identity is, therefore, how we perceive ourselves regarding gender and gender expression, how we manifest it. Having said that, who do not identify with these two categories (man/woman), or at least not completely or not always.

“I guess my gender has always been very fluid. If someone calls me ‘she,’ I wouldn’t give it much thought, but if they call me ‘he,’ I would find it a bit exciting,” she explained in an interview with The New York Times, ” Above all, I’m a person. Being gendered isn’t something I particularly like, but pronouns are something I don’t care too much about.” In that interview Bella Ramsey used the pronoun “she”, but when FOTOGRAMAS interviewed her via Zoom at the beginning of the season, she marked “they / them” (equivalent to “elle” in Spanish) in her video call window. So, in Bella’s case, although we wouldn’t be misgendering (that is, assigning an incorrect gender) if we talk about “she”, we must take into account that she is not considered a woman but a non-binary person. “This bothers me more than the pronouns, being called ‘young woman’ or ‘powerful young woman’, ‘miss’… because I’m just not that”, he explained to GQ. In addition, she clarifies that she has no problem playing characters that are more feminine than her or wearing dresses, like in ‘Catherine’s Book’ or ‘Becoming Elizabeth’, because that’s what acting is all about.

Thus, being non-binary (or non-binary, as other people prefer to say it to eliminate the gender conjugation that exists in Spanish and not in English) is a matter of gender identity and embraces a broad spectrum of people who do not identify with either of the two binary categories, or they collect attributes of each one, or that fluctuate according to the moment. And what relationship does she have with trans (since Bella made her post on Trans Visibility Day)? The term “trans” is understood today as something much broader than in the past; It does not only refer to transsexual people (understood as those who make a physical transition from a gender assigned at birth to theirs) or transgender, but it is a concept that can encompass all those gender identities that do not conform to cisnormativity (cisgender are people whose gender identity and sex assigned at birth correspond). Similarly, “queer” is also used as an umbrella term to encompass different dissident identities and is therefore sometimes used as the equivalent of LGTBQ+.

It should also be made clear that when it comes to gender expression, there is no rule about what non-binary people look like. Although many express their identity by combining elements traditionally associated with the masculine or feminine, it does not have to be that way. For example, Demi Lovato is a non-binary person, regardless of the fact that, a priori, we could read her as a cis woman. It is neither a fashion nor an urban tribe.

Other non-binary people in Hollywood

Like Bella Ramsey, Emma D’Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra Targaryen in ‘Housing the Dragon’, is non-binary. On the subject, she explained on the Golden Globes carpet: “When I was starting out, I felt that I had to pretend and present myself as a woman in order to be successful in this industry.. But clearly it wasn’t holding up, so I stopped pretending; The weird thing is that it’s been at this point that I’ve been nominated for Best Actress for the Golden Globes, which is beautifully ironic. For me, the most important thing is that it implies that the space for trans people and gender non-conforming people is getting bigger, so I feel privileged.” In line with this, D’Arcy has been one of the voices who has fueled the debate about whether acting awards should eliminate their separate categories by genre, as has Emma Corrin (‘The Crown’).

Like them, other acting personalities who consider themselves non-binary are Olly Alexander (‘It’s a Sin’), Cara Delevingne (‘Carnival Row’), Rose McGowan (‘Charmed’), Ezra Miller (‘The Flash’), Janelle Monáe (‘Stabs in the Back: The Glass Onion Mystery’) or Jinkx Monsoon, who has made history on Broadway playing Mama Morton in ‘Chicago’, after her glorious stint in ‘Drag Race’. Emma Corrin, who recently appeared in ‘Deadpool 3’, told Vanity Fair: “There aren’t many non-binary roles out there. My experience in this world has been female until recently and I still love all those parts of me. It’s funny. I don’t get offered male roles, but I still want them. I guess it’s also about how the industry sees you and I think hopefully that is changing… I would love to play non-binary roles, new roles or male roles. Anything, as long as it’s good.”