Agender vs Nonbinary and the Pairs People Mix Up
Collection · 8 entries
Eight terms and four arguments, each of which is somebody typing one word against another into a search box. Agender against Neutrois is the difference between having no gender and having a neutral one, and it turns on the body: neutrois often carries a wish to neutralise gendered features and agender makes no claim about them at all. Genderfluid against Genderflux is the difference between which gender and how much of it, and almost every glossary blurs the two into movement in general.
The other two pairs are wider. Non-binary against genderqueer is a difference of register, since the definitions are nearly identical: one is neutral enough for a health form and the other keeps the political charge of a reclaimed slur, and both survive on that difference. Intersex against transgender is a category error, one describing sex characteristics and the other the relation between identity and birth assignment, and it is the most consequential confusion on this site. The set is ordered by how easily each pair is untangled, easiest first. It leaves out the confusions that are only a question of scope, such as whether a non-binary person is also transgender, because those are disagreements rather than mistakes and the entries argue them individually.
Hand-set, never alphabetical
The set, in order
8 entries
- AgenderAbsence of gender. The first half of the pair the sources most often collapse.
- NeutroisA neutral gender, frequently with a relationship to the body that agender does not claim.
- GenderfluidChanges which gender. Confused with flux in almost every published glossary.
- GenderfluxChanges how strongly. The distinction is an axis, not a degree.
- Non-binaryThe neutral umbrella, and the one an institution can use without implying a politics.
- GenderqueerThe same definition with the charge left in. Kept deliberately rather than left behind.
- IntersexA fact about bodies. Listed here because pairing it with transgender is the worst confusion on the subject.
- TransgenderAbout the relation to a birth assignment, which is a different axis from sex characteristics entirely.
Keep going
The other collections
- Categories That Resist TranslationSeven gender categories routinely handed over as the local word for transgender, and the specific reason each one of those renderings fails.
- The Vocabulary of the 1990sSeven words first attested between 1992 and 1996, made in zines and newsletters before the general internet, carrying most of the framework still in use.
- The Numbers That Get MisquotedSix figures quoted constantly without the sentence that makes them mean anything, including one that fell sixfold because a checkbox was removed.
- Where the Law Drew a LineSix gender categories with a date, a jurisdiction and a document behind them, running from a criminal tribe in 1871 to a third gender in 2014.
