Partner Search and Dating for Non-Binary Individuals at Consonance (Gleichklang)
For 20 years, Consonance has been actively supporting the partner search, friendship search, and relationship search of our non-binary members.
What Does Non-Binary Mean?
In various cultures, as far back as we can historically trace, there have been terms for people who fall outside the binary gender roles of man and woman. On this instructive map, you can click on corresponding regions and read about the terms or distinctions used there.
In the English language – unlike in German – there is not just one term for “gender,” but two:
- Sex = biologically determined sex characteristics
- Gender = the roles assigned to a person, which that person may or may not adopt
Behind these historical-cultural and linguistic differentiations lies the cross-cultural observation that it is an oversimplification to categorize all people into a purely binary system.
Fundamentally, the variability of social and psychological experiences is particularly high, but even in the purely biological, genetic, and anatomical realm, it is not possible to place all people into a strictly binary framework. This is illustrated, for example, in this article at Spektrum.de.
In the psychological realm, the situation becomes significantly more complex:
- Historically, so-called masculinity and femininity scales have shown significant overlap. On average, men or women tend to have higher scores on one scale or the other. However, there is also a large number of men who score high on femininity scales, and women who score high on masculinity scales.
Although from birth onward, gender roles are typically instilled to a great extent through upbringing (gender-specific clothing, gender-specific toys, etc.), there have always been – and continue to be – people designated as boys by their environment who experience themselves as girls to varying degrees, and vice versa.
While some people identify very strongly or consistently with their gender as a man or woman, there are others who do not experience gender as being that significant or even meaningful to them. Such people will typically orient their behavior less or not at all toward gender roles – or they may fluctuate between different gender roles depending on the situation and time.
It is therefore an age-old observation that it is not always possible to infer a person’s experience and typical behaviors from biological, anatomical characteristics. In recent times, people who do not experience themselves as described by the binary terms “woman” or “man” are referred to as non-binary.
A comprehensive overview of topics related to queer, gender, and sexual orientations can be found in the article “Queer Partner Search.”
Dating for Non-Binary Individuals
The pursuit of sexual and romantic fulfillment is shared by the vast majority of people. However, there are also people who do not desire sexual interaction (asexual) or romantic relationships (aromantic).
Non-binary individuals often face greater difficulties in their search for a partner:
- Non-binary people are more frequently rejected, and sometimes even insulted and subjected to verbal abuse.
- Many dating platforms and dating apps do not provide for specialized non-binary matchmaking.
At Consonance, we support the partner search of non-binary individuals by recording their gender as non-binary and enabling members to search specifically for non-binary people in their partner search.
People who are sexually and/or romantically interested in non-binary individuals are referred to as skoliosexual, ceterosexual, or enbysexual. At Consonance, we facilitate such skoliosexual dating by matching searches for non-binary individuals with the query of one’s own gender.
Of course, those searching for a partner with us can also look for two (bisexual), multiple (multisexual), or all genders (pansexual or omnisexual).
The Spectrum of Non-Binarity
Assigning people to categories is always a simplification. It is therefore helpful to think in terms of a spectrum. Various further differentiations of non-binarity can be distinguished:
- Intersex individuals are born with sex characteristics that cannot be clearly identified as male or female.
- Demiboys or Demigirls experience themselves as male or female, but not as pronouncedly and generally as men or women within the binary spectrum.
- Transgender, transsexual, or trans-identifying individuals experience themselves as belonging to a gender different from the one typically assigned based on their birth anatomy.
- Agender individuals or Neutrois experience themselves as gender-neutral. However, some of them may show a slight identification as male (libramasculine) or as female (librafeminine).
- Genderfluid individuals experience themselves as sometimes more or less closely aligned with one or more genders. With genderflux, the perception fluctuates within the range of one gender in terms of intensity. With fluidflux, those affected experience themselves as standing between two genders, with fluctuations in one direction or the other.
While this differentiation may seem complicated and is sometimes rejected by people who experience things differently, the occurrence in experience is, in fact, a psychological reality. We do justice to this reality at Consonance by making every effort to support members with all genders and legitimate sexual orientations in their search for a partner.
In doing so, we also advise our members within the non-binary spectrum to use free self-description to describe their own experiences and thereby make themselves understandable to other individuals seeking a partner.
With the help of our matchmaking service, which is committed to diversity and inclusion, we can enable people of all genders, including non-binary individuals, to conduct an effective partner search.
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