NICOLE SUAREZ: Surprise from singer Demi Lovato for announcing that the she identifies as a non-binary person, that is, someone who does not conform to the traditional molds of being masculine or feminine.
DEMI LOVATO: I identify as non-binary. With that said, I'll officially be changing my pronouns to them. I feel that this best represents the fluidity I'm feeling in my gender expression, and allows me to feel most authentic and truer to the person I both know I am and still am discovering.
SUAREZ: Just as Demi Lovato, many, many people also assert to be non-binary. But what does it mean to belong to this group that doesn't feel like a man or a woman?
PAOLA RAMOS: Well, it means that it is a person who does not identify itself exclusively as a woman or as a man. It is a person who has an assumed gender identity. A person like Demi Lovato does not identify as her or him, but as “elle”. There is a study that found that half of generation Z, i.e. young people under the age of 24, believe that traditional gender roles are outdated. Remember that one in four gen-z's are Latino. And there's another study that finds millennial Latinos to be the group within that age category that has the most tendencies to identify as an LBGT community. That is, freedom of expression is part of their culture.
So as a Latino community, it's time to break our own stereotypes of what it means to be a man, to be a woman, just to be a free person in this country.
. melanie.hunter
. Craig Millward
. Craig Millward
