Is an ipsogender person cisgender?

In ordinary usage they would be described that way, and some use the word for themselves. The term exists to mark what that description leaves out: the birth assignment was a decision made about an ambiguous body, sometimes surgically enforced and sometimes not disclosed for years, so the relation to it is not the same as a perisex person's.

Who coined ipsogender?

Cary Gabriel Costello, an intersex sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in a post on his blog Trans-Fusion dated 30 June 2015. He carried it into academic print the following year and was still using it in a 2023 handbook chapter.

What does ipso mean here?

The sources disagree. Gary Wood's 2018 textbook reports the gloss as in the same place, set against cis for on the same side and trans for across. The Trans Language Primer gives it as to substitute. No dictionary of record carries the word, so the question stays open.

Which term is the opposite of ipsogender?

Ultergender, which the Intersex Wiki's glossary lists directly alongside it: an intersex person whose gender differs from the one they were assigned at birth. The pair sits in the same relation to each other as cisgender and transgender do, and exists for the same reason, which is that a birth assignment made about an intersex body is a different kind of event.

Is ipsogender a gender identity?

It is a gender modality rather than a gender. The Intersex Wiki defines that as the relationship between a person's gender identity and the gender they were assigned at birth, and files cisgender, transgender, ipsogender and ultergender together as examples. The gender an ipsogender person holds is female or male; what the word describes is how they came to hold it.

Ipsogender: Meaning, Origin & Who Uses It

Ipsogender

Cisgender describes a person whose gender matches the sex recorded for them at birth, and the model behind the word assumes that the recording was a straightforward reading of the body. For Intersex people it frequently was not: a sex was chosen, sometimes surgically enforced, and sometimes not disclosed for years afterwards. Ipsogender names an intersex person who identifies with the binary sex they were medically or legally assigned at birth.

It is offered as available rather than as compulsory. The sources are consistent that somebody who fits the definition may still call themselves cisgender, and that many do.

Why cisgender does not fit

The objection the word encodes is not that cisgender is wrong about these people but that it is silent about them. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki puts it as a question of protection: a cis intersex person may take up the term to underline that cisness does not work the same way for them, because they are not shielded by cissexism in the way the word implies. The Trans Language Primer makes the same point from the other direction, noting that ipsogender people are not necessarily cis, having been born intersex and coerced into the binary.

The gap is a real one and the vocabulary shows it. Transgender and cisgender both describe a relation to a birth assignment that was read off a body, and the case where the assignment was a decision taken about an ambiguous body has no name in that pair.

Where the ipso- prefix comes from

The prefix is Latin and the sources gloss it two different ways. Gary Wood's The Psychology of Gender, published by Routledge in 2018, reports the gloss as in the same place, set against cis meaning on the same side and trans meaning across. The Trans Language Primer gives it instead as to substitute. The disagreement is small and unresolved in the material, and no dictionary of record carries the word to settle it.

Wiktionary holds citations rather than a definition. Its citations page for ipso-gender runs from 2016 to 2023, and every entry on it is either Costello or a writer citing Costello.

How Costello put the term into print

Ipsogender was coined on 30 June 2015 by Cary Gabriel Costello, an intersex sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in a post on the blog Trans-Fusion. It went into academic print the following year, in a chapter on intersex and trans communities in Transgender and Intersex: Theoretical, Practical, and Artistic Perspectives, edited by Stefan Horlacher, where the working sentence defines people who are not trans as cisgender if born binary-sex-typical and ipso-gender if born intersex. Wood's textbook picked it up in 2018, and Costello was still using it in a 2023 handbook chapter, which notes that ipsogender people often object to the infant genital surgeries performed on them despite identifying with the sex those surgeries assigned.

A flag followed. The DeviantArt user 1nklash posted one on 9 July 2016, inverting the colours of the intersex flag and setting the symbol for the Earth at its centre.

What gender modality means here

Ipsogender is not a gender. It is a gender modality, which the Intersex Wiki's glossary defines as the relationship between a person's gender identity and the gender assigned to them at birth, and which it illustrates with cisgender, transgender, ipsogender and ultergender. Ultergender is the opposite case, an intersex person whose gender differs from the assignment.

Filing it that way answers the question of why a term for people who are, in the ordinary phrase, cis belongs in a catalogue of gender terms at all. The word describes a relation rather than a gender, and it describes the one relation the standard pair was not built to hold.

Common questions

Questions about Ipsogender

Is an ipsogender person cisgender?: In ordinary usage they would be described that way, and some use the word for themselves. The term exists to mark what that description leaves out: the birth assignment was a decision made about an ambiguous body, sometimes surgically enforced and sometimes not disclosed for years, so the relation to it is not the same as a perisex person's.
Who coined ipsogender?: Cary Gabriel Costello, an intersex sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in a post on his blog Trans-Fusion dated 30 June 2015. He carried it into academic print the following year and was still using it in a 2023 handbook chapter.
What does ipso mean here?: The sources disagree. Gary Wood's 2018 textbook reports the gloss as in the same place, set against cis for on the same side and trans for across. The Trans Language Primer gives it as to substitute. No dictionary of record carries the word, so the question stays open.
Which term is the opposite of ipsogender?: Ultergender, which the Intersex Wiki's glossary lists directly alongside it: an intersex person whose gender differs from the one they were assigned at birth. The pair sits in the same relation to each other as cisgender and transgender do, and exists for the same reason, which is that a birth assignment made about an intersex body is a different kind of event.
Is ipsogender a gender identity?: It is a gender modality rather than a gender. The Intersex Wiki defines that as the relationship between a person's gender identity and the gender they were assigned at birth, and files cisgender, transgender, ipsogender and ultergender together as examples. The gender an ipsogender person holds is female or male; what the word describes is how they came to hold it.

Added 2026-08-28 · Revised 2026-08-28