Janelle Monáe Publicly Comes Out as Nonbinary

Our nonbinary family is just a little bit bigger after musician and actor Janelle Monáe confirmed she is nonbinary in a recent interview with Red Table Talk, a talk show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith; her daughter, Willow Smith; and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris. Monáe uses she/they pronouns.

“I’m nonbinary, so I just don’t see myself as a woman, solely,” Monáe says during Wednesday’s episode. “I feel all of my energy. I feel like God is so much bigger than the ‘he’ or the ‘she.’ If I am from God, I am everything. I am everything, but I will always, always stand with women. I will always stand with Black women. But I just see everything beyond the binary.”

During the episode, co-host Willow Smith asks Monáe about speaking their truth, and she replies, “Somebody said, ‘If you don’t work out the things that you need to work out first before you share with the world, then you’ll be working it out with the world.’ That’s what I didn’t want to do. So I thought I needed to have all my answers correct, I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

They note their family who is very religious, as one factor that made them feel hesitant.

“But I was ready. I was like, you know what, if they don’t love me, don’t call me asking me for no money. You will not get my LGBTQIA+ money.”

Pinket-Smith chimes in, saying that moving past fear means people must understand, when they are their authentic selves they could lose people, but they’ll also find their real community.

Monáe replies in agreement, “There are going to be recurring characters. There are going to be folks that won’t make it back for the second act, and we have to just be fine with letting go. You go to different levels in your life. Everybody can’t come.”

The Grammy-nominated artist previously came out as pansexual in a 2018 Rolling Stone cover story, saying at the time they originally identified as bisexual but “later read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with, too.’ I’m open to learning more about who I am.”

During the Wednesday episode, Monáe adds that she sees the energy of people over their gender or sex.

“I feel like that opens you up to fall in love with whoever, with any beautiful spirit.

While this week is the first time they’ve used the word “nonbinary” to describe their gender, this isn’t the first time Monáe has shared about being a gender-nonconforming person. She first tweeted a Steven Universe meme back in 2020 that reads, “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I’m an experience.”

“And I said, ‘Fuck yes! That’s me,'” Monáe told Variety in 2020, in reference to sharing the meme. “You know, in the same way when Prince said, ‘I’m not a woman/ I’m not a man/ I’m something that you’ll never understand’ in ‘I Would Die 4 U’—That resonated with me. I feel my feminine; I feel my masculine; I feel energy that I can’t really explain.”

They continue, “I’m exploring, you know? I’m so open to what the universe is teaching me, and teaching all of us, about gender. I definitely don’t live my life in a binary way.”

Congratulations to Monáe on this new chapter of their gender journey!

Photo courtesy of Kim Erlandsen on Flickr