N is for nonbinary, Meshell Ndegeocello, NativeOUT, Edward Ndopu, gender non-conforming, and Non-Alignment Movement!

nonbinary – “an umbrella term for all genders completely outside of the man/woman binary, or someone who simply identifies as outside of the gender binary.” –genderqueeries.tumblr.com

“Meshell Ndegeocello is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, bassist, and vocalist who was born in Germany. Her music incorporates a wide variety of influences, including funk, soul, jazz, hip hop, reggae and rock” – Wikipedia.com

Listen to her music here

“The musician Meshell Ndegeocello actually doesn’t have a coming out story: she has always been openly queer. But Meshell hasn’t always been happy with being famous for being queer. ‘I feel like my sexuality preceded my music for a long time,’ she told After Ellen. ‘It was used as a marketing tool in the beginning, pretty blatantly, and I didn’t really get it at the time. I was just out. I didn’t realize it was a selling point and it took a lot of years to get any sense of privacy back into my life, where people didn’t feel entitled to talk to me about who I was having sex with, as if it weren’t a personal question.’ Now she urges young gays to ‘be honest, but protect yourself and your family. It’s a better, safer, different moment, but it’s hard to get things back once you give away too much.’” –thefrisky.com

NativeOUT Two-Spirit Resource Center – “Here you can find resources to research Two Spirit people, both past and present.” –nativeout.com

“Edward Ndopu is a black (dis) abled queer femme Afro-politan living in Ottawa, Ontario. Named by the Mail and Guardian Newspaper as one of their Top 200 Young South Africans, he is a social critic, anti-oppression practitioner, consultant, writer and scholar.” –blackgirldangerous.org

You can read his article “Musings from a Queercrip Femme Man of Color” here

“gender non-conforming refers to people who do not follow other people’s ideas or stereotypes about how they should look or act based on the female or male sex they were assigned at birth.” –Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Non-Alignment Movement– is an organization of formerly colonized countries which, in Fidel Castro’s words, works to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics”. Recently, the organization has also moved towards becoming more inclusive and intersectional by recognizing the need for supporting feminist and queer politics.