And today, a third of Gen-Z says that gender doesn’t define them as much as it used to. It’s not just some “trend” born out of the Tumblr generation: gender variant people have been ingrained in human history, dating back thousands of years in many cultures. Your audience of non-binary, intersex, genderqueer, and genderfluid individuals exist, they matter, and they also increasingly have buying power across the spectrum. But operating media in binaries is problematic both on a philosophical level and a business one. This has worked just fine in the past, because media was reacting to a culture of hetero and cis-normativity where you’re male or female, straight or gay, and those were the only options served to us. And occasionally marketers will ideate on how to reach the LGBTQIA community as a single collective audience. Brands usually brief us on wanting to reach one of two genders. Publishers’ media kits are divided up in men/women.
