Metagender

Metagender is a term that has been coined multiple times with varying definitions, including multiple nonbinary gender identities, spiritual identities, a combined gender identity and romantic and sexual orientation, a gender modality, a description for gender-nonconforming behavior, and a super-set for all gender possibilities. Different definitions have been used for LGBT self-identifiers, in feminist/queer theory and activism, and in academic settings, including as an academic and self-identified term for multiple third gender religious and spiritual identities.

History and Usage

Metagender existed as a technical term prior to its use by LGBT individuals, dating back at least to the 1980s, initially concerned with being outside or transcending binary gender, whether of imagery, perspectives, data, or people. Its use as a technical term with various definitions has persisted into 2020.

LGBT Definitions

1990s

Metagender's early usage by queer communities was recorded in queer and feminist publications, where its definition included post-gender concepts, gender variance, gender-bending, and being neither a man nor a woman.

In a 1994 letter to the San Francisco Bay Times, an intersex womyn used metagender as an umbrella descriptor for gender-variant and intersex.

In a 1998 BITCH essay titled "Metagender and the Slow Decline of the Either/Or," Lisa Voldeng and Laura Kloppenberg coined "metagenderism" to "encapsulat[e] all existing, evolving, and unborn gender models: It is the unlimited superset of all possible (non)genders and gender (non)identities, of individual and cultural existence free from binaristic cat­egorization and definition." This definition was in contrast with the contemporary "transgenderism" as defined by trans woman and cultural theorist Sandy Stone. Where transgender was a category to "include everyone not covered by our culture's narrow terms man and woman," metagenderism entailed "a comprehensive reenvisioning of gender," to serve as "container for all gender identities, encompassing the two-gender system to transgender and beyond."

In a 1999 interview, musician/poet/filmmaker Phoebe Legere said that she was "metagender, metasexual, not a man or a woman."

2000s

The term was coined again in 1997 by Rook Thomas Hine, an identity Hine characterized as being a "conscientious objector" in "in the war of the sexes." This concept of metagender was further developed by Phillip Andrew Bernhardt-House. E defined the term in a 2003 anthology as a spiritual identity that was a "wholly other' third/fourth/eighty-seventh" gender category that was not derived from any combination of woman, man, feminine, masculine, neuter, or androgyne. E describing being "a metagender" as similar to being a third gender with a spiritual component while being in a culture that lacked this concept. Metagender developed into a discrete identity as a spiritual functionary inside neopaganism, combining social gender and sexuality (latter being similar to pansexual), which it has remained since 2008 as described by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus By 2015, at least two persons wrote about their metagender role in neopagan communities .

In a 2004 zine, Katie Cercone listed metagender as a term for "gender-bending."

In a 2006 book on transgender journeys, metagender was defined as "individuals who do not identify as either male or female."

2010s

In 2012, metagender was defined in HaifischGeweint's Gender 101 as "a gender identity describing a person whose subjective experience of gender is not adequately described by any existing terminology (i.e., I never “met a” gender like you before)."

Metagender was proposed for three different meanings in 2014.

1. In June, "metagender" was suggested as an alternative word for pangender.
2. In August, "metagender" was coined by Tumblr users keyblademastercecilpalmer, agenderchrismclean, and lordmoriarty by submission to the MOGAI-Archive blog. The definition was: "To identify around or beyond a gender. Where your gender identity is almost that gender, but not quite, and also extends beyond that. Imagine that —- is you, and | is the gender identity (and identifying fully with a gender is —-|), then metagender is —- | —-" For example, meta-boy, meta-girl, meta-nonbinary, and so on.
3. In November, "metagender" was coined by Tumblr user arquus-malvaceae as "a tangential or tenuous connection to the concept of gender.  Existing in that sort of floaty space where there is no gender, but still connecting with another label.  Identifying with as opposed to identifying as. Can be narrowed down and specified as one sees fit.  Eg, Metawoman, Metaman, Metaqueer, etc."

Author Maxfield Sparrow, who has spoken about coming out as metagender in 1992, wrote about being metagender on various channels across the 2010s. In Sparrow's 2017 blog essay "What is Metagender," Sparrow described the difficulty of defining the identity, describing its similarity to gendervague. Sparrow expanded on their metagender identity in a 2018 anthology, writing that metagender "expresses feeling outside the entire paradigm of gender."

2020-present

In July 2020, metagender was coined again by Talea Boelsems, Tenacity Granger, and Evey Winters as a gender modality for persons who are not cisgender and do not identify as transgender, similar to isogender and absgender.

Gender Census and Other Data

In the 2019 Worldwide Gender Census, one respondent called themselves metagender. In the 2020 Worldwide Gender Census, four respondents called themselves metagender. As of December 28, 2020, the "Metagender and Questioning" facebook group, founded after the gender modality coining, had 506 members, with an unknown number of members being metagender themselves.

As a Technical and Academic Term

Metagender(ed) (sometimes meta-gender(ed) or metagenderism) has been used to describe "the academic engagement with or the theorizing of gender," religious identities that transcend gender, systems of gender, sets of gender, being beyond binary gender categories, applying regardless of gender or to all genders equally, and otherwise being about gender.

Examples:

"These dynamics are meta-gendered, in that they impact men and women and those who don’t identify in the binary, without particular discrimination, putting all of us at risk for weirdly pervasive and unexamined suffering."

As a Label for Spiritual Identity in Theology and Anthropology

More relevant to nonbinary history is the academic naming of religious or spiritual concepts and identities as metagender. In anthropology, spiritual third gender identities have been labeled metagender. In theology of multiple religions, spiritual identities—some divine and others obtainable by religious adherents—have been labeled meta-gender.

For 600 years into the present day, Bugis Society recognizes four genders, plus a fifth gender, bissu. Bissu, seen as a gender which combines and transcends other genders, has been labeled a "meta-gender" identity by anthropologists since 2001. "Bissu embody elements of all genders within them, and thereby occupy a space outside or above any single gender identity. They are essentially beyond gender — ‘meta-gender’ or ‘gender-transcendent’ as they are sometimes described." This usage of meta-gender was later adopted in Bahasa Indonesia (the official language of Indonesia) as a loanword for describing the bissu, serving as a category word for genders that transcend gender roles and gendered power relations to reach higher powers.

Metagender as a third gender also applies in pre-history. In Aegean scholarship of the genderless aspects of Minoan culture, applying meta-gender as a third gender concept "better conveys something above and beyond binary categories" than "genderless."

Meta-gender as a transcendent ideal appears in scholarship of early medieval Daoism, Buddhism, and the lives of medieval Catholic Saints.

In addition to human spiritual idenities, divine beings have been called meta-gendered–in the sense of transcending human gender categories–in religious scholarship and education of multiple religions. Examples include angels in Islam, the Christian God, and other spiritualities One neopagan deity–Paneros of the Tetrad++–was "birthed" specifically as a metagendered diety.

Miscellaneous

In 2010, "MetaGender" was used as an informal community-specific term to refer to the metafilter website's open text field for gender. In 2017, pronouns were added as an open field, and in 2020 the gender field was deleted, citing the jokey nature of old answers that had aged badly.

Relationship with Transgender

Metagender's relationship with transgender has changed over the decades as both terms became more refined in LGBT usage. Both terms have developed less expansive forms since their inception and different connotations. Both terms have served as umbrellas for the other and in different contrasts to one another depending on definition.

Transgender once included gender non-conforming people who would now be considered cisgender, with metagender being alternatively a set containing gender behavior and sexes outside binarism and heteronormativity or a super-set containing all means of conceptualizing gender or lack thereof, including transgender definitions. Complaints arose about transgender's inclusiveness while retaining metagender's expansiveness as early as 1994. Metagender was described as a more expansive approach to gender outside strict cis binaries than transgender without being mutually exclusive, meant to show the limitations of a dichotomy to contain all gender experiences.

Transgender became the preferred term over transsexual, the latter referring to binary trans persons who had undergone or sought medical transition. In subsuming transsexual identities, conflicts over who transgender should include arose as it became more associated with binary trans individuals and binary gender roles, with transmedicalists resisting the inclusion of nonbinary people even if they sought medical transition. As transgender became more associated with transitioning away from a gender, cisgender gender non-conforming people were defined as outside the transgender umbrella. Nonbinary people are considered under the trans umbrella into the present day, but not all nonbinary people consider themselves trans.

Metagender developed several niche definitions that some metagender people put under the expansive "transgressively-gendered" transgender umbrella as well as a more restricted trans-umbrella. As a gender identity, some metagender people described themselves as technically transgender without identifying as transgender themselves–even if they received medical transition–because they were not changing their gender. Others saw their gender identity as complementary to transgender definitions.

Metagender's re-coining as a gender modality that by definition is for people who are neither cis nor trans (or are not cisgender but do not consider themselves trans) is a stricter contrast than other definitions, but as with early definitions of metagender highlights the weakness of a dichotomy to contain all experiences of (non)gender.