Omnigender
Experiencing all genders, or nearly all: a close relative of pangender, with no settled definition.
Omnigender describes someone who experiences all genders, or very nearly all of them. Wiktionary defines it as identifying with all genders. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki places it under the multigender umbrella, for people who have more than one gender.
It is very close to pangender, and the two are often treated as one word. A Cleveland Clinic glossary gives pangender as a synonym of omnigender and polygender. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki says omnigender is sometimes used interchangeably with pangender and sometimes distinguished from it, and that there is no consistent definition.
Where people do draw a line, they draw it in different places. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki records senses such as experiencing almost every gender but not quite, and experiencing all genders as building blocks of one whole gender. It also records a distinction, which it says is not commonly used, in which pangender people tend to be indifferent to what their gender is called and omnigender people care about it.
As a personal identity it goes back at least to the 1990s. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki traces the earliest use it knows of to 1996, when omnigendered appeared in a glossary on the FTM International website, defined as having all genders and showing cultural characteristics of all gender roles.
The word has a second use, as a social idea. In 2001 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott published Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach, which argued that it is more just for society to accept the full range of gender identities and sexual orientations than to hold to a binary. In that sense omnigender describes a model of society rather than a person. The book won a Lambda Literary Award in 2002.
As with pangender, all genders is usually understood as all the genders within a person's own culture and experience; the LGBTQIA+ Wiki says this of omnigender directly. That limit matters because some genders, such as Two-Spirit, are specific to particular Indigenous cultures. With definitions this unsettled, the description an omnigender person gives of themselves is the one to go by.
Omnigender is not the same as omnisexual
The shared prefix suggests a link to omnisexual, but the two words answer different questions. Omnisexual is about who someone is attracted to. Omnigender is about the person's own gender.
Neither implies the other. An omnigender person can have any orientation, and an omnisexual person can be any gender.
Saying it well
Say this
- I am omnigender.
- Omnigender, which for me is close to pangender.
- All the genders I know of, at once.
- Omnigender, and they/them for now.
Not this
- So you are just confused
- Nobody can be every gender
- Omnigender, so you must be omnisexual
- Claiming genders that belong to other cultures
Questions people actually ask
What does omnigender mean?
Experiencing all genders, or nearly all of them. Definitions vary, and it is often used as a synonym of pangender.
What is the difference between omnigender and pangender?
Often none: the two are used interchangeably. Some people distinguish them, for example by saying omnigender people care more about how their gender is categorised, but there is no consistent definition.
Is omnigender the same as omnisexual?
No. Omnigender describes a person's own gender; omnisexual describes who someone is attracted to.
Where does the word omnigender come from?
The earliest recorded use of omnigendered as an identity dates from a 1996 glossary on the FTM International website. Separately, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott's 2001 book Omnigender used the word for a society that accepts all genders.