User:Worm Insurrection/Non-binary gender

Terms, definitions, and identities[edit]

The term genderqueer originated in queer zines of the 1980s as a precursor to the term non-binary. It gained wider use in the 1990s among political activists, especially Riki Anne Wilchins. Wilchins used the term in a 1995 essay published in the first issue of In Your Face to describe anyone who is gender nonconforming, and identified as genderqueer in their 1997 autobiography. Wilchins was also one of the main contributors to the anthology Genderqueer: Voices Beyond the Sexual Binary published in 2002. The internet allowed the term genderqueer to spread even further than zines, and by the 2010s the term was introduced to the mainstream via celebrities who publicly identified under the genderqueer umbrella.

People who challenge binary social constructions of gender often self-identify as genderqueer.^{[page needed]} In addition to being an umbrella term for non-binary gender identities, genderqueer has been used as an adjective to refer to people who are perceived to transcend or diverge from traditional distinctions of gender, regardless of their gender identity. People may express gender non-normatively by not conforming into the binary gender categories of "man" and "woman".

The term genderqueer has also been applied by those describing what they see as gender ambiguity.^{[page needed]} Androgynous (also androgyne) is frequently used as a descriptive term for people in this category. This is because the term androgyny is closely associated with a blend of socially defined masculine and feminine traits.^{[page needed]} Not all genderqueer people identify as androgynous; some identify as a masculine woman or a feminine man, or combine genderqueer with another gender option. Some people use enby (from the letters NB) as a short form of non-binary. Being non-binary is not the same as being intersex, and most intersex people identify as either male or female.

Many references use the term transgender to include genderqueer/non-binary people. This use of the word as a broad term for various kinds of gender variation dates to at least 1992 and the publication of Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come. In 1994, non-binary author Kate Bornstein wrote, "All the categories of transgender find a common ground in that they each break one or more of the rules of gender: What we have in common is that we are gender outlaws, every one of us." The Human Rights Campaign Foundation and Gender Spectrum use the term gender-expansive to convey "a wider, more flexible range of gender identity and/or expression than typically associated with the binary gender system".

Agender people ("a-" meaning "without"), also called genderless, gender-free, non-gendered, or ungendered, are those who identify as having no gender or gender identity. This category includes a broad range of identities that do not conform to traditional gender norms, but scholar Finn Enke has said that people who identify with any of these positions may not necessarily self-identify as transgender. Agender people have no specific set of pronouns; singular they is typically used, but it is not the default. Neutrois and agender were two of 50 available custom genders added to Facebook in February 2014. Agender has also been a gender option on OkCupid since November 2014.

"Bigender" redirects here. For the sexual attraction to more than one gender, see Bisexual.

Bigender (also bi-gender or dual gender) people have two gender identities and behaviors. Identifying as bigender is typically understood to mean that one identifies as both male and female or moves between masculine gender expression and feminine gender expression, having two distinct gender identities simultaneously or fluctuating between them. This is different from identifying as genderfluid, as those who identify as genderfluid may not go back and forth between any fixed gender identities and may experience an entire range or spectrum of identities over time. The American Psychological Association calls bigender identity part of the umbrella of transgender identities. Some bigender people express two distinct personas, which may be feminine, masculine, agender, androgyne, or other gender identities; others find that they identify as two genders simultaneously. A 1999 survey conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public Health observed that, among the transgender community, 3% of those who were assigned male at birth and 8% of those assigned female at birth identified as either "a transvestite, cross-dresser, drag queen, or a bigendered person". A 2016 Harris poll conducted on behalf of GLAAD found that 1% of millennials identify as bigender. Trigender people shift among male, female, and third gender.

Demigender people identify partially or mostly with one gender and at the same time with another gender. There are several subcategories of the identity. A demi-boy or demi-man, for example, identifies at least partially with being a boy or a man (no matter the sex and gender they were assigned at birth) and partly with other genders or with no other gender (agender). A demiflux person feels that the stable part of their identity is non-binary.

Pangender (also polygender or omnigender) people have multiple gender identities. Some may identify as all genders simultaneously.

Genderfluid people often express a desire to remain flexible about their gender identity rather than committing to a single definition. They may fluctuate among differing gender expressions over their lifetime, or express multiple aspects of various gender markers at the same time. A genderfluid person may also identify as bigender, trigender, or pangender.

Transfeminine is a term for any person, binary or non-binary, who was assigned male at birth and has a predominantly feminine gender identity or presentation; transmasculine is the equivalent term for someone who was assigned female at birth and has a predominantly masculine gender identity or presentation.

In a 1990 Indigenous LGBT gathering in Winnipeg, the term two-spirit, which refers to third-gender or gender-variant people from Indigenous North American communities, was created "to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples".

Xenogender is an umbrella term for gender identities that are described with terms outside standard human understandings of gender. These gender identities are typically defined metaphorically in relation to animals, plants, things or sensory characteristics rather than male or female. This umbrella term originated on Tumblr as a part of the larger MOGAI community. It was first used in 2014 on the Tumblr MOGAI-Archive blog by a user with the handle Baaphomett.

References

Mogai Archive. (2014, August 25). Masterpost of genders coined by Baaphomett. Tumblr. https://purrloinsucks.tumblr.com/post/95720973644/masterpost-of-genders-coined-bybaaphomett