A Handy Guide to Gender Identities

Hi there! I'm Danny, and I'm trans non-binary. This means I am not wholly male or female - the gender binaries. If I had to put a label on it, I'd call myself genderflux, but mostly I just use the term enby. The transgender umbrella encompasses many different genders and sexualities, and today, I'll be making a list of different genders, because I always love bringing recognition to the queer community. Many people think sex and gender are the same thing, and use them interchangeably despite them being very different. Sex refers to biological and physiological characteristics, such as chromosomes, genitalia, and hormones. Gender, on the other hand, is an identity, a personal sense of self. There are more than sixty recognized genders within the queer community, and three sexes: because, yes, intersex people exist.

Here's a tip: never assume a person's gender based on their presentation. Because gender identity and gender presentation aren't the same thing, a person may dress in a way that doesn't necessarily correspond to their gender identity. A transgender woman, for example, might present herself in a way that appears to be masculine, while still identifying as a woman. This is why I hate the assumption of sir or ma'am, and I, a person well-versed in the career of customer service, prefer to ignore gender altogether until it's brought to my attention.

A list of gender identities and terms:

AFAB: an acronym meaning assigned female at birth, determined by nothing more than genitalia and chromosomes

Agender: a non-binary identity in which a person does not relate to gender at all

AMAB: an acronym meaning assigned male at birth

Androgyne: a gender identity that is gender-neutral or has a combination of male and female features

Bigender: describes an individual who has two distinct genders, regardless of what these are or how often each is identified.

Body dysphoria: a term which refers to a specific type of gender dysphoria that presents itself as distress or discomfort with specific parts of the body

Boyflux: a gender identity in which a person can feel mostly or completely male, but experiences varying degrees of male identity. For example, one may feel 20% genderless, and 80% masculine.

Cisgender: a term referring to a person who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth

Cishet: a term referring to an individual who is both cisgender and heterosexual

Demiboy: a non-binary identity that refers to a person who identifies (mostly) with being masculine or a man, and partially identifies with being genderless

Demigirl: a non-binary identity that refers to a person who identifies (mostly) with being feminine or a woman, and partially identifies with being genderless

Feminine-of-center: a term that describes someone who identifies as feminine or femme. Some feminine-of-center individuals identify with woman, but others don't.

Femme: a gender identity describing someone with a gender that is or leans toward feminine. Some femmes identify as women, and others don't

Female-to-male (FTM): used to refer to transgender men or trans masc individuals

Gender apathetic: a term which describes an individual who doesn't identify strongly with either gender or labels, and display an attitude of apathy towards how they are perceived

Gender dysphoria: a medical term used to refer to the conflict between one's assigned gender and their gender identity. You do not have to have gender dysphoria in order to be transgender.

Gender non-conforming (GNC): a term used to describe people whose gender presentation is different from their assigned sex. It isn't a gender identity, and really has no correlation to gender at all

Genderfluid: a non-binary identity in which gender changes over a particular period of time. Genderfluid people may have moments of feeling feminine, masculine, or neither at all.

Genderflux: an umbrella term for a group of identities in which an individual's gender intensity varies over time. It can be seen as a subset of genderfluidity in which agender is the base. It differs from genderfluidity in that, while genderfluid involves an identity switching throughout periods of time, genderflux involves changes in gender intensity. Take me as an example. On a typical day, I feel 80% agender and 20% masculine, which would be called boyflux.

Genderfuck: this term involves the act of combating or dismantling the gender binary through a gender expression that challenges existing norms

Genderless: having no gender identity, a synonym of agender

Genderqueer: a non-binary gender identity which cannot be categorized as exclusively masculine or feminine. It can include a combination of man, woman, or non-binary genders

Gendervoid: an individual without a gender identity. Although similar to agender, gendervoid is usually associated with a feeling of loss

Graygender: a term which describes a person who's ambivalent toward gender and doesn't fully identify with either gender binary

Intergender: a non-binary identity that falls somewhere between male and female

Intersex: an umbrella term given to those whose sex characteristics cannot be characterized into the binary framework of male or female

Masculine-of-center: this term describes people who explain their identity as male or masculine. Some masculine-of-center people identify with man while others do not

Maverique: this non-binary identity encompasses the inner feeling of gender. It describes those whose experience gender that is independent of existing categories and binary

Neutrosis: coined by a neutrosis person in 1995, this term means having a gender identity which is neutral: not female, male, or any type of combination

Non-binary: Often shortened to enby, non-binary means is an umbrella term used to refer to those who do not identify as solely male or female. Though there are a plethora of identities under the non-binary umbrella, some enbies prefer to simply refer to themselves as non-binary

Pangender: a multigender in which an individual experiences all genders, all at the same time or in intervals. It refers to a vast and innumerable amount of genders which can expand infinitely, and like any other gender, can be explained or defined differently between people

Polygender: an identity in which a person expresses characteristics of multiple genders, deliberating refuting the concept of only two genders.

Queer: a reclaimed slur within the LGBTQIA+ community, queer is an umbrella term for those who are not cisgender or heterosexual

Transfeminine: a transfeminine person transitions in a female direction, but doesn't necessarily identify as female. A person may be transfemme non-binary, or transfemme binary

Transmasculine: a term for a trans individual who transitions in a masculine direction, but doesn't necessarily identify as male

Two-spirit: an umbrella term used by Native Americans to describe people who fulfill a third gender or a gender variant role within their community. The term may be used only by Native American, as it was specifically chosen to distinguish Natives from non-Natives

X gender: In Japan, x gender is a transgender identity that isn't female or male, equivalent to non-binary or genderqueer. One does not have to be Japanese to identify with the term x gender, however it is used as a translation to refer to those who do not identify with any specific gender

And there you have it!

I hope you learned something today, and maybe even found yourself somewhere along the way.