Partial & Demigenders · 5 entries
Partial & Demigenders
Degree of connection rather than which gender. The sources for this group say partial but not complete, and weak, indeterminate, ambivalent, and that phrasing is the filing rule: Demiboy is partly a boy, Demigirl is partly a girl, and Demigender is the umbrella over both. The contrast that keeps the shelf honest is with Juxera, which claims a whole gender that merely sits near female. Partial and adjacent are different claims, and the terms here make the first one.
The prefix has the best-attested origin story in the catalogue and it comes from outside gender entirely. On 12 August 2010 a user called Bad Patient posted on AVEN, an asexuality forum, about applying demi- to gender on the model of demiromantic. A vocabulary of gender grew out of a vocabulary of attraction, dated to the day, on a board that still exists. Graygender belongs here for a related but distinct reason: it names a weak or ambivalent connection to gender as such, expression included, rather than a partial connection to one particular gender. That difference is small on the page and large in use, which is why both terms survive.
Emblem of the category
In this category
All 5 partial & demigenders
5 entries
- DemiboyPartly male and partly something else, from a half-serious 2010 asexuality forum post, with a printed record that does not begin until 2015.
- DemigenderThe umbrella over demiboy, demigirl and their relatives, coined on an asexuality forum in August 2010 and written into Washington state law in 2018.
- DemigirlPartly a girl and partly something else, recorded on an asexuality forum in December 2010, with a definition that broadened between 2011 and 2014.
- GraygenderA weak or ambivalent connection to gender and its expression, coined by the Tumblr user invernom in March 2014 on the model of graysexuality.
- Non-binary manA paired label for people who hold a binary gender and a non-binary one at once, measured by the Gender Census but never dated to a first use.
Keep going
The other categories
- Gender Around the WorldThe largest group in the catalogue, and the one most readers arrive at by searching for a third gender.
- Trans & Binary IdentitiesMan, woman, trans and cis: every term for the relation between a person and the sex recorded for them at birth.
- Distinct Nonbinary GendersThe microlabels here share one insistence, and their sources make it in almost the same words every time: this is not a partial gender, not a blend, and not a point between two poles.
- Fluid & Changing GendersGenders that move.
Common questions
Questions about partial & demigenders
What does the demi prefix mean?
Half, from French, and it was borrowed into gender vocabulary from demiromantic rather than invented for it. The borrowing is dated precisely: a post on the asexuality forum AVEN on 12 August 2010, which makes this one of the few clusters in the catalogue with a coinage traceable to a single day.
Is a demigirl half a woman?
Not in the arithmetic sense, and the sources resist that reading. The claim is a partial connection to being a girl, with the rest being another gender or none at all, rather than a fifty per cent measurement of womanhood. The word describes the strength of a connection, not a proportion of a person.
How is graygender different from demigender?
Demigender is a partial connection to a particular gender, so a demiboy is partly a boy. Graygender is a weak or ambivalent connection to gender in general, including gender expression, and names no specific gender at all. One is a fraction of something; the other is faintness across the board.
Can a demiboy also be a man?
Many describe themselves both ways, and the terms are not exclusive. Demiboy states that the connection to being a boy or a man is partial rather than complete, which leaves room for a person to use the fuller word in contexts where the distinction does not matter to them.