Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, Vol 13(1), Mar 2026, 54-70; doi:10.1037/sgd0000709
Nonbinary individuals express their identity through the use of altered or entirely new linguistic forms. Along with appearance or voice, it can affect how they are perceived by others. Previous studies have either omitted consideration of nonbinary populations entirely or examined elements such as the nonbinary language in isolation from other characteristics that affect perception. The aim of the current study was to investigate the perception of nonbinary people depending on the combination of their appearance, timbre of voice, and linguistic forms they used. An online experiment (N = 242) was conducted using nonbinary past tense verbs in the Polish language. Polish in its normative shape contains many gender markers. Results showed that masculine-sounding nonbinary people were perceived more negatively and were less accepted than binary people. The effect did not occur for feminine-sounding nonbinary people. Our research offers a more holistic understanding of how language discrimination intersects with the external characteristics of nonbinary people. We suggest that support programs could be targeted first to those who are most vulnerable to inferior treatment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)