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Xenogender

A gender described through something other than manhood or womanhood.


A xenogender is one that can't usefully be explained in terms of male and female, so it's described through something else entirely — a colour, a texture, a creature, a season, a sensation.

This gets mocked online more than almost any other identity term, which says more about the mockers than the people using it. The underlying move is ordinary: when the available vocabulary doesn't reach, people reach for metaphor. Poets have always done it.

Xenogenders are especially common among neurodivergent people, who often describe experiencing gender the way they experience colour or sound — as something sensory rather than social.

You don't have to fully understand someone's gender to use their name and their pronouns correctly. That's the only part that's asked of anyone.

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