Agender
Agender means having no gender. The prefix is the Greek privative a-, as in amoral and atypical, and the claim it makes is absence rather than difference: not a gender that is hard to describe, but the absence of one to describe.
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That distinction carries most of the weight in the entry. A term like Genderqueer answers the question of what somebody's gender is with an unusual answer. Agender declines the question, and people who use it often report that the question itself does not connect to anything.
What agender covers
The sources separate several positions that all end up under the word, and the distinctions are made by the people using it rather than imposed on them.
- Having no gender. The plain reading, and the most common.
- Being neutrally gendered, which Neutrois names more precisely and which some experience as a positive neutral rather than an absence.
- Finding the concept inapplicable, where the objection is not to having a gender but to the framework. Quoigender is the term for that, from the French quoi.
- Gendervoid, an absence experienced as a felt lack rather than a neutral blank.
Someone whose gender fluctuates down to nothing may pass through agender without being agender, which is where the overlap with Genderflux sits.
Where the word is dated from
The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use as A-gender, in The Independent in 1996, which puts it earlier than most of the vocabulary in this catalogue and gives it something almost nothing here has: a dictionary of record with a date and a publication attached.
Merriam-Webster carries it too. Between the two, agender is among the best-attested terms outside the binary.
How Oregon recognised agender
In 2017 an Oregon resident became the first person in the United States legally recognised as agender, distinct from the non-binary and X markers introduced elsewhere. It is a single case rather than a general provision, and it remains the clearest example of a gender defined by absence being recognised in law.
What is recorded
The Gender Census put agender at 24.3 per cent of gender-diverse respondents in 2025 and the Trevor Project found 15 per cent among non-binary youth in 2021. Both are community samples rather than population figures.
Told apart
Often confused with Agender
- NeutroisClose and not identical. Neutrois is a neutral or null gender, often with a wish to neutralise gendered features; agender is the absence of gender rather than a neutral one.
- GenderfluxA flux can bottom out at agender without the person being agender. One is a range, the other is the settled answer.
- Non-binaryAgender sits under the umbrella rather than being a synonym for it. Having no gender is a specific answer; non-binary is the category it belongs to.
Common questions
Questions about Agender
- What does agender mean?
- Having no gender. The a- prefix is the Greek privative, as in amoral or atypical, and the claim is absence rather than an unusual answer. Many agender people describe the question of their own gender as not connecting to anything, which is different from finding it hard to put into words.
- Is agender the same as non-binary?
- Agender sits under the non-binary umbrella rather than being another name for it. Non-binary is the category, covering everything not exclusively male or female, and agender is one specific position inside it. Saying agender answers the question with more precision than saying non-binary does, in the way that saying oak is more precise than saying tree, and neither of the two is wrong.
- What is the difference between agender and neutrois?
- Neutrois describes a neutral or null gender, often accompanied by a wish to neutralise gendered physical features. Agender is the absence of gender rather than a neutral one. The two overlap heavily and many people use both.
- When was agender first used?
- The Oxford English Dictionary dates it to 1996, spelled A-gender, in an article in The Independent. That makes it older and far better attested than most of the vocabulary in this catalogue.
- Has agender ever been recognised legally?
- Once, in a single case. In 2017 an Oregon resident became the first person in the United States legally recognised as agender, separately from the non-binary and X markers other jurisdictions have introduced.
Added 2026-08-28 · Revised 2026-08-28
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- NeutroisA neutral gender coined by one named person in 1995, and the clearest proof on this whole site that changing a checkbox changes the answer sixfold.
- GenderfluxIntensity rather than direction, and a 1994 newsletter attestation that makes the word two decades older than the coinage most sources give it.
- Non-binaryAn umbrella term and an identity at the very same time, and the reason its two headline figures are not remotely comparable with one another.
- AbinaryA cover term for genders unrelated to maleness or femaleness and nowhere between them, first recorded in a 2016 Tumblr post that was coining a different word.