284
edits
Polygender: Difference between revisions
Gender census data doesn't seem to support claim this identity is common.
(Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.9.5) |
(Gender census data doesn't seem to support claim this identity is common.) |
||
| (12 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
| gallery_link = Pride Gallery/Polygender | | gallery_link = Pride Gallery/Polygender | ||
}} | }} | ||
'''Polygender''', '''poly-gender''', or '''polygendered''' (from Greek ''poly'' "many" + gender)<ref>"Poly-" ''Dictionary.com.'' https://www.dictionary.com/browse/poly- [https://web.archive.org/web/20230330215225/https://www.dictionary.com/browse/poly- Archived] on 17 July 2023</ref> is a [[nonbinary]] [[gender identity]] in which a person feels that they have more than one gender identity, or that they express "characteristics of multiple genders, deliberately refuting the concept of only two genders,"<ref name="FTM International">Gary Bowen. "A Dictionary of Words for Masculine Women." May 15, 1995. Retrieved November 5, 1996. https://web.archive.org/web/19961105010926/http://www.ftm-intl.org/Wrtngs/ftm-words.gary.html</ref> as it was described in 1995, so it was in use by at least that year, if not earlier.<ref name="FTM International" /> | '''Polygender''', '''poly-gender''', or '''polygendered''' (from Greek ''poly'' "many" + gender)<ref>"Poly-" ''Dictionary.com.'' https://www.dictionary.com/browse/poly- [https://web.archive.org/web/20230330215225/https://www.dictionary.com/browse/poly- Archived] on 17 July 2023</ref> is a [[nonbinary]] [[gender identity]] in which a person feels that they have more than one gender identity, or that they express "characteristics of multiple genders, deliberately refuting the concept of only two genders,"<ref name="FTM International">Gary Bowen. "A Dictionary of Words for Masculine Women." May 15, 1995. Retrieved November 5, 1996. https://web.archive.org/web/19961105010926/http://www.ftm-intl.org/Wrtngs/ftm-words.gary.html</ref> as it was described in 1995, so it was in use by at least that year, if not earlier.<ref name="FTM International" /> | ||
==History== | |||
In 1998, the word polygender was used in a transgender community on the Internet called [[Sphere]] as an umbrella term for trans people whose genders were outside the binary: | |||
<blockquote> | <blockquote> | ||
| Line 14: | Line 17: | ||
In this definition, polygender was an umbrella term that included a variety of kinds of people who identify outside the gender binary, even those who are genderless, who could be transitioning (or not) by a variety of different methods. During the 1990s, any genders outside the binary were not widely recognized. The same article also used the word "queergendered" interchangeably with "polygendered" as umbrella terms for people who identify outside the gender binary in any way, which seems to have been an early permutation of the now widely-known word "[[genderqueer]]." | In this definition, polygender was an umbrella term that included a variety of kinds of people who identify outside the gender binary, even those who are genderless, who could be transitioning (or not) by a variety of different methods. During the 1990s, any genders outside the binary were not widely recognized. The same article also used the word "queergendered" interchangeably with "polygendered" as umbrella terms for people who identify outside the gender binary in any way, which seems to have been an early permutation of the now widely-known word "[[genderqueer]]." | ||
In November 2002, [[Livejournal]] users just_plain_zac and sometimes_nate created a community called polygender-ppl, describing its purpose as follows:<ref name=":0">https://polygender-ppl.livejournal.com/profile/</ref><blockquote>This community is open to any and all bi-gendered, polygendered, genderqueer, third-gendered, and transgender (FTM, MTF, etc.) people, and SOFFA. We, just_plain_zac and sometimes_nate, the co-moderators, started this community as a safe space for support, networking, and, of course, friendship among those of us who identify as more than one gender.</blockquote>The community linked to an offsite Polygender/Genderqueer FAQ (now a [https://web.archive.org/web/20030826044900/http://www.devrandom.net/~aidan/polygenderfaq.html broken link]; inaccessible by Wayback Machine), as well as another defunct site (formerly hosted at genderqueers.com; accessible [https://web.archive.org/web/20020223172902/http://www.genderqueers.com/ via Wayback Machine]). | |||
As of 2025, the Livejournal community had 115 members; the last post was in 2011.<ref name=":0" /> | |||
An analysis of journal entries and comments from the genderqueer Livejournal community, conducted by linguists Lal Zimman and Will Hayworth, found that "polygender" was the least common term for a person outside the binary in the dataset (which included content from 2001-2008). The term only appeared in the first few years of data.<ref name=":1">Zimman, Lal, and Hayworth, Will. "How we got here: Short-scale change in identity labels for trans, cis, and non-binary people in the 2000s". 2020. Proc Ling Soc Amer 5(1). 499–513. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4728</nowiki></ref> The researchers observed a similar pattern for uses of "polygender" in their dataset from the ftm Livejournal community (which had many members whose genders fell outside the binary).<ref name=":1" /> | |||
== Demographics == | == Demographics == | ||