I'm writing about a historical event happening in real time and I have a scene describing six figures. Three being women, two being men, and one being nonbinary. They're all ancient vampires. "They all dropped their cloaks to the ground and huddled together. They stood there silent in fear; three seraphic women, two bloodied men, and a-" I can't seem to figure out a good way to say nonbinary. I obviously can't just say "a nonbinary person". That's not really fitting the mood. This is the first time I'm writing an NB character so I'm afraid I have no idea how to talk about them. **Information on the scene- They've all been gathered by their goddess to escape the hunting of the last vampires in the entire world. They're terrified and about to be turned to stone.** Any ideas would be merry.
The way this is written it implies a visual description—they dropped their cloaks and it becomes clear that three are women and two are men. But a person being non-binary wouldn't affect a visual description. If they're naked, they either look male or female, or they might be androgynous, so it's hard to tell unless you can see their naughty bits. Non-binary is more the way a person feels about their gender internally, it can't be seen. If you want something that can be seen, you could say they're hermaphroditic, possessing the sex organs of both genders, or maybe they have no sex organs at all. It feels strange to me to call them ancient vampires and then use such a modern term as non-binary. It kind of kills the feel of ancientness.
Well, I've learned through a lot of research that there have been NB people since the beginning of time but I haven't learned of a different thing to call them. However, I do feel like describing them as a woman or man in any sense would be disrespectful or even completely diminish the idea of them being nonbinary. I understand they should have one or another body part, though they are not naked. And there really isn't a need to keep the ancient feel as this book is in the modern time, just not this one scene.
Ok, I'm getting a better feel for what you're doing now, but what I said above still applies from a writing perspective—there's no way from seeing someone that you would know if they're non-binary. I'm not sure how you could get that idea across the way the scene is written currently, you'd have to go inside the character's heads or something. The problem is that you're using visuals to say 3 are women and 2 are men, and then in the same sentence you want to show something that's an internal state that can't be seen. It's like saying 3 of them are tall, 2 are short and 2 are Christian or something, see what I mean? If it's important in that scene that the reader knows the characters are non-binary, you're going to have to finagle it a bit. It can't be done all in that one sentence. In order to discover someone is non-binary you need to talk to them for a while, it isn't something you find out immediately. I keep trying to come up with ways to say it, but nothing works. I see why you came here with this problem.
I've been trying to write it out and it is seeming that way. I'm sure somewhere there is someone who knows how to write it out that way but I'm not the person. I just really don't want to invalidate the character before they're even really in the story. Like a bit of mystery to them. I suppose I do have to finagle it quite a bit. On the other hand that I do come off rather ridiculous in how I fix this, I do suppose I can always go back and change it.
"... one who was smooth and genderless." ??? I'd just throw it out there and let the reader use their imagination. Simply indicate the vampire was sexless and let the reader figure out how to deal with it.
Honestly you might be best served by not mentioning sex or gender at all, unless there is something about the non-binary character physically speaking that sets them apart from male presenting or female presenting (like in @Homer Potvin's example). One would assume that there are scenes and paragraphs that ensue that will give an indication as to how each character identifies - you don't have to fill in those blanks up front necessarily.
That's the problem with these movements that want to make changes to the language. It goes deeper than just language—we're hard-coded to see people as male or female, and biologically that's all there are. If non-binary people are going to be offended because people address them as he or she, then they're going to be offended most of the time—not many people are going to walk on those eggshells.
Well after some advice from a facebook group and here I have decided to rephrase my paragraph to only mention the genders when the few talk later on. I'll just describe them without gender until then that way I don't have to gender them all and have to deal with that issue. I'll be able to, later on, describe them better individually. Thank you.
You haven’t mentioned POV at all. Depending on the POV it could be very easy. Your job as a writer is to tell the truth, not to be politically correct. Steven King wrote that he got hate mail when one of his characters killed a family dog. He had to point out the character wasn’t real, the dog wasn’t real, and he doesn’t condone dog violence. Similarly, you should the audience the truth, not pleasantries, from the POV perspective. From the POV character, is the NB vampire feminine, masculine, or androgynous? Do they know the NB vampire is NB? Simply describe the vampire as they see and know. If they know the vampire is a Trans Female, and they are wholly respectful, it’s a she with no explanation. If they know the vampire is Trans Male, but they think trans is silly and biological sex matters, then also describe as she, perhaps with a snide observation. (You want to be careful if this is the case, because you want readers to feel that they are hearing your character, and not a ventriloquist dummy for the author) If your POV is omniscient, then no reason to be coy about it at all - MC
I agree with @montecarlo. The thing is, non-binary really describes someone's sexuality, rather than their physical appearance. From the perspective of the POV character, how do they appear? Assuming you're doing third person close or first person, the narrator doesn't know if the character is non-binary or not. Therefore, the narrator will refer to them (at this point) according to their physical appearance, be that male, female or androgynous. They'll only know the character is non-binary after some interaction with them. This is also where you need to be careful with pronouns. Because you have six characters in this scene, careless use of "they" can cause confusion to the reader. You'll have to take care to make it clear who "they" refers to, whether it is just the NB character or multiple characters. Personally, I would use the phrase "indeterminate sex" in your sentence above, but that's not a phrase everyone likes.
I thought of a strategy you could use. I'm approaching this as a writer trying to figure out how to express that some of the characters are non-binary, and I would use a visual strategy. It just requires a subtle shift of emphasis in your sentence above, from what people are to what they appear to be. Example: Three of them were obviously female, the bloody pair were clearly male, and the remaining pair were harder to place—ambiguous as to clothes, hairstyle and makeup. I understand not all non-binaries dress or wear their hair ambiguously, but it would be extremely helpful to use some sort of marker that's easier to describe than their inner identification. It's an outward expression of that inner state.
Okay, if you were seeing a non-binary person in front of you, in the real world, how would they look? Would you be able to tell? If so, how? I'd work with that angle. Describe what they look like, and let the reader figure it out. You can get around the label if you don't label the others either. Just describe what they look like and are acting like. Who, by the way, is doing this 'describing?' Is it another character? If so, do it through their eyes. What do they see ...and what do they assume? And why?
Non-binary is a gender category, not a sexuality. Sexuality is attraction. You are correct though that non-binary identity does not describe physical appearance (as such), and correct that you cannot tell just by looking at people.
