Outherine

What outherine adds to the familiar qualities

A fifth quality, and then an open list. The reasoning, reproduced almost word for word on both sources on file, is that four qualities are generally used to explain or define gender identities, expressions and connections: feminine, masculine, androgynous and neutral. Those four are subjective, the coiner allows, and they are still possible to picture. Genders unrelated to all four have entirely new qualities instead, and outherinity is the word for those qualities in general. The examples named are maverique, ilyagender and aporagender, and the DeviantArt version of the definition hedges the last of the three with a "possibly". The DeviantArt version also gives the class of genders a name the wiki does not use, calling them "atrinary anthrogenders", which is a label built from two further quality words and explained nowhere on file.

Two extensions come attached to the definition. A combination of the familiar four that the person experiences as something else entirely, more than the sum of its parts, can be described as outherine, and the LGBTQIA+ Wiki files that case as cattrine. So can an entirely independent gender that remains comparable to non-outherine genders, which the same wiki files as umbine. The third case named is a culture-specific gender, where the person judges that the four qualities do not apply to their identity or their experience or make sense of it.

Why outherinity is not a single quality

The definition refuses to settle on a number. Outherinity describes a fifth quality, a sixth, a seventh and an eighth alike: anything unrelated to masculinity, femininity, neutrality or androgyny. Since the genders it covers are vast and are experienced differently by each person holding them, no single content can be given for the quality itself.

Only the individual can say whether an identity or an expression is outherine, and both sources state that plainly. The consequence is that outherine can be defined only by exclusion plus a person's own judgement, which is why every definition of it on file is a list of what it is not followed by a sentence handing the decision back. The Queer Dictionary glossary adds one positive condition to the negative ones: an outherine gender is unrelated to masculinity, femininity, neutrality, androgyny and nullity while still having a distinct gendered feeling.

Who coined outherine and when

The two sources agree on the date and disagree on the name. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki credits the Tumblr user Oltiel with coining outherinity on 12 January 2019, and cites an archived copy of a post on a blog under that name. The Pride-Flags account on DeviantArt, publishing a flag for the term on 30 March 2021, credits Vitorrubiao and gives the same date. Neither source acknowledges the other's attribution, neither presents its own as contested, and the archived post is the only primary record either points to.

How the outherine flags have been redrawn

The flag arrived half a year after the word, made by the Tumblr user imoga-pride on 26 July 2019. An alternative by the wiki user honk4bees followed on 9 June 2021, using slightly modified versions of the original colours and set with thirteen stripes to match the other gender-quality flags. A further alternative on the same wiki is credited to ElderflowerJuice, and an otter version was made by the Tumblr user satyrradio on 13 May 2024.

The one piece of writing about outherine that is not a definition is an argument for a symbol. On 29 January 2024 the Tumblr user thee-radio-host-is-a-kookaburra proposed the tesseract, on the reasoning that a tesseract seen through a three-dimensional lens reads as a cube in the same way that outherinity seen through a binary lens reads as androgyny, and that looking through the right lens is what would let the shape be seen for what it is. That is a claim about being misread, it says nothing about what the quality consists of, and nothing else on file makes it.

How outherine works as a word

As a full paradigm, which is unusual for a term this small. Outherine is the adjective, standing where masculine and feminine stand. Outherinity, or outherity, is the noun, standing where masculinity and femininity do. Oumin is the word for a person, taking the place of man or woman, and its plural is oumen. Portuguese has forms for the first two slots and none recorded for the third.

Building the whole set is what marks outherine as a description of a quality rather than the name of an identity, and it separates the word from most of the Non-binary vocabulary around it. Portuguese is the only translation any source on file records.

Which umbrellas sit beside outherine

Outherine belongs to a row of quality words that a glossary of queer terminology sets out together, each covering a class of genders. Xenic covers genders connected to Xenogender terms, better described by concepts or objects than by ordinary gender vocabulary. Aporine covers genders unrelated to masculinity, femininity and androgyny. Agenrine covers genders on the agender spectrum, epicine covers genders neutral across masculine and feminine, and kenochoric covers genders centred on kenopsia, the atmosphere of an abandoned place.

The line separating outherine from the nearest of those is the coiner's own, and it is a hedge: outherine qualities are unrelated to the familiar four "yet not exactly xenine". That places xenic adjacent, and no source on file draws the boundary any more sharply than the quotation does. The same glossary carries transoutherine for a trans person whose identity or presentation is outherine, which is the route by which the word reaches the vocabulary of trans alignment terms.

Two community pages and a glossary line carry the word. No survey has counted it, no dictionary of record holds it, and no academic literature refers to it.