Xenogenders & Neurogenders · 4 entries
Xenogenders & Neurogenders
The genders described through a frame borrowed from outside gender. Xenogender is the umbrella and its own sources give the reason plainly: a binary society supplies roles and vocabulary for men and women and very little for anybody else, so some people describe their gender by reaching for animals, nature, concepts, aesthetics or sensations instead. Staticgender is the concrete case, a gender described as the noise on an untuned screen, fuzzy and complicated and hard to resolve.
Neurogender and Autigender borrow from a different place, the person's own neurology, and autigender names a gender whose experience is inseparable from being autistic. Every entry here carries the same distinction, because it is the one the mockery of this group depends on collapsing: the borrowed image describes a relationship with gender rather than asserting that somebody literally is an animal or a colour or a noise. This is also the shelf where the disagreement runs hardest, and it runs inside the communities concerned as much as outside them, with one prominent autistic writer arguing plainly that neurodivergence is not a gender. The entries report both directions and settle neither.
Emblem of the category
In this category
All 4 xenogenders & neurogenders
4 entries
- AutigenderA gender inseparable from being autistic, naming a relationship with gender rather than a gender made of autism. Coined on Tumblr in August 2014.
- NeurogenderThe umbrella for genders describable only in the context of being neurodivergent. Coined on Tumblr in 2014; an unrelated sense dates to 1997.
- StaticgenderA xenogender described as television static: fuzzy, complicated, incomprehensible. The coiner is unknown and the earliest dated record is a flag from July 2016.
- XenogenderAn umbrella for genders described through animals, colours, textures or concepts instead of male and female. Coined on Tumblr by Baaphomett in 2014.
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 xenogenders & neurogenders
What is a xenogender?
A gender described using a frame from outside the vocabulary of gender, drawing on animals, plants, concepts, aesthetics or sensory experiences. The description is a metaphor for a relationship with gender rather than a claim to be the thing named, and every entry on this page makes that distinction explicitly.
Why describe a gender as an animal or a colour?
Because the available words ran out. The sources give the same reason each time: a binary society has developed rich vocabulary for men and women and very little for people outside that, so some people borrow descriptive material from wherever it is available rather than accept a word that does not fit.
Is autigender saying autism is a gender?
No, and the distinction is made carefully in the sources. Autigender describes a gender whose experience cannot be separated from being autistic, which is a claim about how the two interact rather than a claim that one is the other. Some autistic writers reject even that framing, and the entry reports the objection.
How many people use these terms?
Very few by any measure on record. Community surveys put xenogender at well under one per cent of gender-diverse respondents and staticgender at a handful of individual answers. The counts are small and the entries state them as counts rather than dressing them up as shares.
Are these terms taken seriously anywhere?
They are documented in community wikis, discussed in academic writing on autism and gender, and attacked in opinion journalism. The catalogue records what each kind of source says without adjudicating between them, which is the same treatment every other term here gets.