Expansive gender vocabulary: words for someone both a woman and a man?

February 12, 2024 10:33 PM

I have -- by gradually creating space for my persistent inner self to comfortably unfold -- slowly (glacially? as in, with the implacable and powerful inertia of a moving glacier) realized, then accepted, then started to embrace the fact that I'm bigender. I'm happy with being referred to as a woman, and also happy being called a man. But... what other words are out there that encompass both genders at the same time?

Particularly interested in bigender nouns (some single-gendered and agender examples: "man", "woman", "person"), but also bigender modifiers/titles ("Brother", "Sister", "Sibling", "Mx.", "Mr.", "Ms."), and probably other words categories I haven't thought of here.

Nouns feel the hardest to me. The only noun example I can think of off the top of my head is "androgyne", but feels a little too fancy for my taste. I'm curious if there are other options?

A little more info: "non-binary" hasn't really resonated with me -- perhaps because I've conflated it in my head a bit with agender, even though intellectually I think those are distinct (but possibly overlapping) concepts: binary vs. non-binary, agender vs. genderful. But honestly I think I do feel more "extra-binary" than non-binary. (I also feel genderful for sure, instead of agender.) Example: most of the time, I prefer titles and pronouns that are gendered as opposed to the equivalent gender-neutral options. (Although there are exceptions -- Mx. is a pretty dang cool title!)

I'm also 100% interested in examples of gender concepts/vocabulary from sci-fi or fantasy literature. An example (and some fun digression): I loved the many different ichidi [rough translation: non-binary] genders in The Unbalancing by R. B. Lemberg. Some folks would pass through multiple ichidi genders in their lifetime. Each gender was represented by an animal token and had a phrase distilling it:
1. ichar (deer) "I leap sideways—to signal that one was neither a man or a woman, but traveling sideways on one’s own path.”
2. arír (fish): “I frolic in a stream. A variation of joyful flowing, of falling in love, of art and imagination”
3. agár (snake): “I am all the serpents. All genders—at once or in turn—in one semitransparent form.”
4. rugár (bear): “I am both bears—at once both father and mother, protective and caring and steady in their fierceness.”
5. zúr (turtle): “When others rush to divide and declare, I carry my world. The turtle was a world in which the distinctions between women, ichidi, and men did not make sense, and that in itself, I now clearly saw, was an ichidi variation.”

(The funny thing is that while feeling bigender might suggest rugár, I don't currently identify with that ichidi variation; it feels way too solid and sturdy for where I'm at! If I had to pick, it would probably be arír, maybe moving towards zúr, in a few more years...)

N.B.: I'm a white USian from a (not well-charted) European background. Thus, I don't want to use any terms for myself that feel culturally appropriative. However -- please still feel free to share words and terminology from a variety of cultures, even if they might not work for me specifically, because I'm definitely super curious to expand my explore and learn new ways to talk about the beautiful infinite varieties of gender out there <3

posted by cnidaria to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

You might want to try asking in r/NonBinary also - despite the name, people there have a plethora of identities and often discuss these types of things.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:45 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh, also, I still find genderqueer a more comfortable umbrella into which I fit than non-binary, perhaps because normative culture as a whole now has its (sometimes mis) conceptions of non-binary to negotiate with whereas genderqueer still feels like "ours". You might find reading or searching for history of people using that term opens up more options also.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:48 PM on February 12 [9 favorites]

Best answer: I don't have an answer outside of fiction. Translation State has a cute subplot about a princex in disguise.

But I like way you have broken down this conceptual space and I had to draw it out:

Binary

+--------+--------+
|  Male  | Female |
+--------+--------+


Non-binary

 |----------------|

Male           Female


Extra-binary

Masc
^
|
|   Male        Genderful
|
|
|  Agender        Female
|
+-----------------------> Femme

posted by Phssthpok at 11:07 PM on February 12 [14 favorites]

Multigender?
posted by Threeve at 12:13 AM on February 13

FWIW, my understanding of 'androgyne' is more 'neither' than 'both'. That's a dated understanding, but like lookoutbelow alluded to, there's been this focus on 'non-binary' that has both paradoxically made it broader category and served to reinforce the binary, and, at the same time, shoved things like 'bigender' and 'androgyne' (and even 'genderqueer') out of use, so I doubt the meaning has moved much since LiveJournal days.
posted by hoyland at 1:03 AM on February 13 [2 favorites]

A friend who identifies with both genders refers to themself as "fluid"
posted by emd3737 at 1:32 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The big thing that no one's mentioned is the one big thing that your Ask steers away from: third-gender communities and Indigenous gender formations.

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/two-spirits_map-html/

https://nhm.org/stories/beyond-gender-indigenous-perspectives-muxe

https://sinchi-foundation.com/before-the-binary/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:30 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I think you'd enjoy The Left Hand of Darkness. I won't try to explain it all but basically everyone in that world has the capacity to be what we would call a man or a woman, and they also spend a lot time being not really either one. They have words for the states and how they move between them etc.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:45 AM on February 13 [4 favorites]

You might enjoy reading Octavia Butler's trilogy Lilith's Brood, also known as Xenogenesis. It won't necessarily give you useful terminology for everyday use (you're definitely not an ooloi, which is an alien third sex in the novels), but it might feel good to think with.
posted by dizziest at 7:29 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

"Genderfluid" is another term to look into.
posted by panic at 9:03 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Another angle: you didn't mention the word hermaphrodite. Animals have all kinds of different takes on sex, and many have the state of being sort of both male and female as the default. One of the best known are slugs and snails that make sperm and eggs at the same time, and when they mate, they both inseminate the other and then lay eggs. There's also sequential hermaphrodites, like clownfish. They are born nominally male but over time, the biggest ones will become female. Lots of other interesting cases too, if you poke around the Wikipedia article.

The other side of the term is mythological. Hermaphroditus was the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, and you may enjoy reading more material about him/her.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:04 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

You might be interested in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. The protagonist changes genders back and forth over centuries.
posted by rabbitbookworm at 3:19 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ok one more: in botanical nomenclature, a flower that has both male and female structures is called 'perfect'.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:34 PM on February 13 [10 favorites]

(Hermaphrodite is traditionally understood to mean "intersex" when used to describe humans. Broader interpretations/inspirations are fine, but be careful about using the term to describe yourself if intersex isn't what you mean)
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:51 AM on February 16 [2 favorites]

Pangender is another word to mean all the genders. (And it's interesting your idea of non-binary, my first impression was that it meant bi-gender, because that's what the first non-binary person I met was.) If you're on discord, people at transpeak are usually happy to talk and brainstorm more ideas.
posted by blueberry monster at 5:25 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]