Why Sam Smith Being Non-Binary is Such a Big Deal

At 10 years old I very vividly remember sitting in my bedroom crying because I had just come to the realisation that I didn’t like boys the way my friends did, I liked girls. Still crying, I opened up my first ever laptop and typed into Google ‘I’m a girl and I like girls’ and a glance at some forums told me I must be a lesbian, which made me cry even more. Though after some more Googling I found out that Ellen DeGeneres was a lesbain too, and that gave me a glimmer of hope. Ellen seemed to live a very normal life with her girlfriend Portia; she wasn’t openly ridiculed by the media or disowned by all her family and friends, in fact she seemed very happy and I thought maybe if Ellen can be happy dating women maybe one day I will be too.

Then when I was 13 years old and trying to explain to my mum that I liked girls and not boys, she asked me “So like Ellen DeGeneres?” And I said “Exactly like Ellen DeGeneres.” In that conversation Ellen was the only mainsteam example of a queer woman that both my mum and I knew; although my life was unlikely to look even vaguely similar to Ellen’s, she provided an example for my mum to understand what my life could look like if I settled down with a woman.

As a small anxious child Ellen DeGeneres gave me a way to understand my own sexuality and also explain it to others. I hope both Chaz Bono and Caitlyn Jenner (though not the best role model) also provided that function for trans kids; and I hope Sam Smith now provides that function for non-binary kids.

Sam Smith’s coming out is fantastic for so many reasons, for a long time non-binary and gender non-conforming identities have been looked down upon. The media seem to believe that identifying as anything other than male or female is something made up by edgy attention-seeking teens. So to have a successful adult celebrity – with a net worth of $25 million – identifying as non-binary is huge; it validates the non-binary and genderqueer identity in a way that reaches millions of people. Also as they’re a celebrity, Sam Smith’s coming out will reach lots of people that don’t even know about the concept of being non-binary, which works towards non-binary being a more widely accepted gender identity (yay!).

Sam has also asked that people use they/them pronouns for them, which will hopefully normalise and increase the amount of people using gender neutral pronouns – this is especially exciting for me because it means people will (hopefully) already be using they/them pronouns when I tell them my partner Arlo uses those pronouns too.

Sam’s coming out has been met with some backlash but it seems most people are supportive – even The Sun used Sam’s correct pronouns in an article about them. I am hugely grateful to Sam for coming out and being openly visible about their gender identity because it helps my partner Arlo and so many other genderqueer and non-binary people.

I hope that around the world non-binary people are coming out and being asked “Like Sam Smith?” and those people can say “Yeah, just like Sam Smith.”