Part 1: My View on Gender (Updated)
Over a year ago I made a post describing my view on gender. I didn't particularly like the way I visualized it, but I couldn't think of anything better. Well, now I've thought of something better. Admittedly, it's more complicated than the version I presented before, but I feel like this version more actually describes gendered expirences.
This view of gender takes the form of a triangluar pyramid. The top face has three points, each point representing masculinity, feminine, and neutrality/epicenity. In this case, neutrality is defined as a gender which is not related to masculinity, and feminity in any way, but is still strongly gendered in a way that still typically falls into the understanding human genders. They are genders that would be classified as abinary.
You can fall somewhere in between two of these points, such as with androgyne, neutromme, and neutremme. You can also fall somewhere inbetween all three of these points, and have a gender that has elements of masculinity, femininity, and neutrality. (Not sure what this gender is called.)
You can also move closer to the fourth, downard facing point of the pyramid, which shows how intensely you feel your gender. If you're on the top face you're completely gendered, but you can also move down to paragender (almost, but not completely gender), demigender (around half way gendered), and libragender (mostly genderless, but slightly a given gender). All three gender faces meet at a slight point, where there is no gender at all (agender).
(Note: I didn't label para-, demi-, and libra- forms of neutromme, neutremme, and androgyne. These genders still exist, I just did it for the sake of space. Also note that the androgyne face of the pyramid in not seen at this angle.)
Most people's gender can be described as a point somewhere within this pyramid. (Admittedly, I'm not sure how cooridenates would work in a non-cubical space. But that's for the math nerds to work out.) Genderfluid people have a point what moves around within the pyramid. Genderflux people have a point that moves, but only on the axis that is farther and close to agender. Multigender people have mulitple points within the pyramid.
If we zoom out slightly, we'll see that the potential "gender space" extends out infinitely from the pyramid, which is where outherine genders like atrinary genders and xenogenders are found.
Part 2: Non-Outherinity
So in researching genders, I'm come across some genders that claim to be "not masc, fem, neutral, or outherine".
Now, don't get me wrong, I fully support people describing their gender as whatever they want. But, that being said I feel like people saying their gender is not outherine don't fully understand what outherinity is. Outherinity is not a specific label- it does not describe a specific trait or set of traits like masculine, feminine, or neutral do. Outherine describes all traits that don't fall into the categories of masc, fem, or neutral. Basically, imagine it like this:
All things in the universe can be placed into four categories:
- Books
- Spoons
- Frogs
- Everything else
This statement is complete true. If something doesn't fall within the category of "book", "spoon", or "frog" (or potentially some combination of them), then it would fall into the "everything else" category. This fourth category doesn't say anything specific about that object. It only tells you that it isn't a book, spoon, or frog. If we apply this to gender we could say:
All genders can be placed into four categories:
- Masculine
- Feminine
- Neutral
- Outherine
In this case outherine is the "everything else" cateogory. Describing a gender as outherine says nothing about the actually gender itself. It only means that the gender does not fall into any of the other categories. There is no such thing as "typically outherine traits" like there are for the other categories. Outherine is not a category, it's a cateogry for things that lack a category. If you say that your gender is not outherine, then that means, by definition, it must be masculine, feminine, neutral, or some combination of them.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, in which case someone correct me, but this is why I think that people who say their gender is "not outherine" don't actually understand what outherine means. They simply saw a new label and went "no". Once again, I support people's right to describe their gender however they want, which is why I've made a new term to try and end all this.
Part 3: Coining a New Term
The term I'm coining is ineffaline. It's based on the word ineffable. The adverb form is ineffity. An ineffaline gender is a gender that defies all forms of classification. Any label or attempt to classify the gender with human language will be rejected. An ineffaline gender will say "no, I'm not masc, fem, or neutral" and "no, I'm not atriary either" and "no I'm not xenic or outherine" and it will continue like this. An ineffaline gender in not masculine, feminine, neutral, outhernine, xenic, or anything related to any of them. It is also not related to any terms that may be coined in the future. For as long as people come up with new terms an ineffaline gender will reject those terms. It is not neccessarily because the person who possesses the gender is questioning or doesn't understand their gender. An ineffaline person can be strongly gendered, and fully confident in their gender, but all labels that exist don't seem to fit.
Basically, ineffaline is the "everything else" category. If you are not ineffaline, that means, by definition, you must identify with an existing gender term.
Admittedly, due to the definition of ineffaline, and ineffaline person is probably going to reject the label of ineffaline on principle, so I don't know how usful with term actually is. But this is my attempt to help people to claim their gender in not outherine.