Multi-award winning singer and songwriter Janelle Monáe has come out as nonbinary. The singer who had previously come out as pansexual in 2018 made the disclosure of their gender identity on Wednesday 20 April 2022 during the season premiere of Jada Smith’s Red Table Talk.
“I am nonbinary, so I just don’t see myself as a woman, solely. I feel like god is so much bigger than the ‘he’ or the ‘she.’ And if I am from God, I am everything. But I will always, always stand with women. I will always stand with Black women. But I just see everything that I am. Beyond the binary.”
Following the Red Table interview, a representative of Monáe said that the singer “continues to use she/her pronouns.” However, in another interview with the Los Angeles Times on Thursday 21 April 2022, Monáe identified themself as non-binary and added that their “pronouns are free-ass motherfucker — and they/them, her/she.”
For some fans, this information might not be shocking as earlier in 2020, Monáe had tweeted “#IAmNonbinary” but in subsequent interviews, said they had used the hashtag “to bring more awareness to the community.” The singer revealed to Jada and Willow that they didn’t have all the answers back in 2020 and did not feel ready to unveil themself to the world.
“I thought I needed to have all my answers correct before coming out as nonbinary, I don’t want to say the wrong thing, and also I hadn’t had the necessary conversations yet with my family. I didn’t want to work that out with the world.” They said.
In April 2022, Harper Voyager published Monáe’s first book, ‘The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories From Dirty Computer’, which “explores how different threads of liberation—queerness, race, gender plurality, and love—become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape … and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms.”
We can’t wait to see what else the multidisciplinary artist has in store for us.
