Proxvir

Why proxvir is not demiboy

Demiboy describes a combination, a partial identification with male alongside something else, whether that something is agender or a different gender entirely. Proxvir is neither a combination nor a fraction. The Nonbinary Wiki states that proxvir people do not necessarily partly identify with any other gender, because proxvir is a gender in and of itself. Being a whole gender is what lets a proxvir person also use Third gender, which the same wiki notes some do.

The LGBTQIA+ Wiki reaches the point from the other direction. Proxvir is relative to male and separate from it, and it is not outside the gender spectrum. For some people it is strongly connected to or aligned with masculinity without being man aligned, which that wiki files as mingender but sometimes not miaspec. The difference the pair insists on is the difference between a fraction and a neighbour, and the one source on file that reads it otherwise, Dictionary.com, reads it as a partial version of something else.

Why proxvir is an adjective

Both wikis are strict about the grammar, and the rule is the same one juxera carries. A person is proxvir, in the way a person is male or female, rather than a proxvir. The example sentence is printed on both pages so that nobody has to guess.

Placing the word in the slot where male and female sit is the grammatical form of the claim the definition makes, since a noun would name membership of a class alongside other classes and the adjective names a quality of the person. Dictionary.com, which disagrees with the wikis about a good deal else, gives the pronunciation as proks-veer and treats the word the same way.

Where proxvir and juxera came from

Wulfgendur, a Tumblr user also known as Ren, who uses he/him and xe/xem pronouns, coined both in July 2014. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki cites two archived posts: the coining post, published under a heading offering some new gender terms, and a second carrying possible flags for the pair. Prox- is from the Latin adjective proximus, near, and -vir from vir, the masculine Latin noun for a man. Juxera was built the same way from the adverb juxta and the feminine era, a word for a lady, mistress or goddess, so the pair is symmetrical in its morphology as well as in its meaning.

The flags are symmetrical too, and the Nonbinary Wiki spells out the reading. Pink and blue at the ends of the shape stand for the girl and boy genders, the blue-grey, faded navy and light purple between them stand for the body of the gender spectrum, and green triangles mark where each gender falls along it, pointing toward blue on the proxvir flag and toward pink on the juxera one. An alternative in blues and greens circulates and nobody has identified its maker; the LGBTQIA+ Wiki records only that the edit was meant to be easier on the eyes. The Nonbinary Wiki counts four alternative proxvir flags in all.

How the proxvir pair was extended

Other people have since built on the pattern. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki records proxvirgirl, coined by an NBDB user called Arson on 2 October 2021 as a mirror of an existing term, juxeraboy. Proxvirgirl names a female or female-aligned gender that is a relative of both male and proxvir, and juxeraboy a male or male-aligned gender that is a relative of both female and juxera. Together, the wiki argues, the two form a separate binary plane off to the side of both the male and female pair and the juxera and proxvir one.

The wiki explains the four words through kinship instead of geometry, which is easier to follow. If proxvir is the brother or son gender of male, proxvirgirl is the sister or daughter of proxvir and male together; if juxera is the sister or daughter gender of female, juxeraboy is the brother or son of juxera and female. It adds that an assigned-male-at-birth juxeraboy is intramasculine and transfeminine at once, while an assigned-female-at-birth proxvirgirl is intrafeminine and transmasculine at once.

Whether either of the cross-aligned terms counts as male-aligned or female-aligned depends, on the wiki's own account, on which definition of gender alignment is being used. The coiner of juxeraboy is not named on any page in the record for this entry.

How the sources disagree about proxvir

On the date and on the definition. Both community wikis put the coinage in July 2014 and cite the archived post. Dictionary.com, in an entry dated 6 November 2018, says the gender was created by wulfgendur in 2016, glosses it as boyish but not boy and masculine but not male, and adds that it is closer to the more established demiboy. That last clause is the reading both wikis were written to rule out, and the entry carries a note saying it is an informal word summary rather than a formal definition.

The same entry disagrees on a second point. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki states flatly that proxvir is not outside the gender spectrum; Dictionary.com reports that there are differences within the community over whether proxvir lies inside or outside it, while saying the term seems to be considered a nonbinary gender. It also places the word in a wider setting: it notes that 2016 saw many people on Tumblr making gender identities for themselves and others, that a satire site published a long list of them that year with proxvir on it, and that talk about proxvir and juxera increased from late 2017.

One usage example survives in that entry, from October 2018, and it reads the pair as a pair: "There's also Juxera and Proxvir which mean the same thing but are slightly closer to female/male."

On who actually reaches for the word, the same entry is vaguer than the wikis and points in a third direction again. It says proxvir resonates most with people who do not consider themselves to align completely with maleness, which might mean holding some feminine aspects or being nonbinary while presenting in a way that reads as vaguely male, and that the word continues to live on Tumblr and on gender blogs. Neither wiki describes presentation at all.

How often proxvir has been written in

The Nonbinary Wiki reports 13 respondents, 0.1 per cent, in the 2019 Gender Census, and 22 respondents, 0.09 per cent, in 2020. Both percentages are of the Gender Census's own respondents in the year concerned, and the wiki gives no sample size for either. Its infobox puts the term's overall frequency below 0.1 per cent, and the page carries a banner saying that very few people are known to use the word.

Nothing else has counted it. No academic literature covers the term and no dictionary of record carries it, which leaves the whole quantitative record at two numbers reported at second hand.