Let’s Talk About Xenogenders

Let’s talk about xenogenders

Definition: A nonbinary gender identity that cannot be contained by human understandings of gender; more concerned with crafting other methods of gender categorization and hierarchy such as those relating to animals, plants, or other creatures/things. It’s mainly an umbrella term for genders with themes such as nouns, archetypes, synesthetic experiences, neurodivergences.

Are xenogenders serious? Usually, yes. (But at the same time… What if they aren’t? To be fair, being trans/nonbinary doesn’t always have to be this imagined experience of constant suffering. We’re allowed to describe our lived experience of gender in flowery ways, too!)

Do xenogenders hurt real trans people? No, but if you’re asking this question, I want to ask one in return - What are you defining as a “real” trans person?Is someone only really trans/nonbinary if they can pass? Or have dysphoria? Or get surgery? Or are accepted by cis people? It’s important to understand that what one might think of when they think “real trans person” might be rooted in excluding a majority of the trans population.

But MOGAI genders/xenogenders/neolabels are why people don’t take us seriously! Trying to blame other people who’re trying to find terms to describe their gender/orientation/etc is a slippery slope, and trying to guilt people back into the closet to appease cishet people is never going to work. We do not exist to be palatable to them. This line of thinking is extremely dangerous, and it’s been applied to every other identity. As a community, we need to stand together against transphobia and it’s actual cause: Transphobes.

While xenogenders can be hard to understand at first, these terms are coined because someone out there was genuinely struggling to find a label that felt fitting, and found that their actual life experience couldn’t be described accurately by more common descriptors like “male,” “female,” “neutral,” and that describing their experience by relating it to something else truly helped them! Sometimes this will be things that seem “silly,” like media, aesthetics, and other unique things.

You may not understand how something can be a gender, and that’s okay! Sometimes we won’t be able to completely understand an experience because it’s one we will never have, and that doesn’t mean that the experience is invalid. It’s just how being a human works!