Metagender

Metagender is a term that has been coined multiple times with varying definitions, including multiple nonbinary gender identities, spiritual and cultural identities, a combined gender identity and romantic and sexual orientation, a gender modality, a synonym for 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.

Usage through history

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 the 2020s.

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 magazine 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 coined in contrast with the contemporary "transgenderism" as defined by trans woman and cultural theorist Sandy Stone. Whereas 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 printed in the magazine Femme Fatales, musician/poet/filmmaker Phoebe Legere said "I am metagender, metasexual, not a man or a woman."

2000s

The term was coined again by 1997 by Rook Hine, an identity Hine characterized as being a "conscientious objector" 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 described 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.

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)."

In 2014, Metagender was proposed for four different meanings on Tumblr.

1. In February, "meta-gender" was suggested by Tumblr user unquietpirate as the label for one's relationship to one's assigned gender at birth, similar to gender modality, to contrast with "experiential gender." Unquietpirate listed cisgender, transgender, and genderqueer as examples of meta-gender, last also being an "experiential gender."
2. In June, metagender was suggested by Tumblr user collectivetey as an alternative word for pangender.
3. In July, metagender was coined by Tumblr users autisticlapis-blog, agenderchrismclean, and lordmoriarty. 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. The "—" is also written as "—-".
4. 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."

At Pantheacon 2015, a neopagan convention, at least two persons spoke about their metagender identity at a roundtable discussion on gender diversity as derived from the spiritual definition by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus. After the convention, Priestx Jaina Bee wrote:

«	Metagender opens up uninhibited freedom to be myself; a one-size-fits-me label that is no particular gender but neither is it agender. It is a slippery, slithery gender that evades every attempt to define it; a trickster gender. (Every person in this conformist culture who does not identify with their assigned gender is forced in some way to become a trickster, even if they would not be otherwise. Metagender is trickster to the core.) Ask nine metagender people what metagender means and you'll get twelve answers.	»
— Jaina Bee, March 15, 2015

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."

In interviews for a 2018 thesis, an anonymous interviewee described metagender as an identity "beyond gender."

2020-present

A pride flag for the "neither cis nor trans" definition of metagender. The flag consists of seven horizontal stripes which are black, green, yellow, white, yellow, green, and black.

In July 2020, metagender was coined again by Evey Winters, Tenacity and others as a gender modality for persons who are not cisgender and do not identify as transgender, similar to isogender and absgender. Of the new term, one nonbinary person said:

«	Not all nonbinary people identify as trans, for various reasons. Because of this, a new term has also been coined to cover nonbinary people: metagender. I do acknowledge that I am technically transgender, but I also feel like the label doesn’t quite fit me. There’s still a lot of binary expectations with being transgender and I don’t see that experience as my own. At the same time, I wholly believe that nonbinary people should be accepted by the transgender community.	»
— B.Alvinia, "Somewhere In Between"

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.

Bugis society of Indonesia

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 for genders that transcend gender roles and a description of transcending gendered power relations to reach higher powers.

Theology, anthropology, and spirituality

Metagender is used to describe gender variance in spirituality, anthropology, and religion. Multiple religious or spiritual concepts and identities have been called 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.

Meta-gender as a transcendent ideal appears in scholarship of Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and other religious and spiritual traditions.

In anthropology, metagender has been applied to modern societies such as the Bugis as well as 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."

Christianity

Metagender was used to describe the transcendent gender of virgin saints in scholarly reconstructions by 2003. Theorized in the writings of the Latin Doctors in the fourth and fifth centuries, the metagendered virum perfectum, belonging to the Body of Christ, encompassed and transcended masculine and feminine genders to become an angelic, otherworldly metagender. Through virginity and devotion to scripture, any sex could transcend earthly pleasures to become the heavenly metagender. Some Christians in the present day also use metagender to describe this state of transcending human gender to achieve a Godlike gender.

Gender-variant figures in spirituality and religion

In addition to human spiritual identities, 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 deity.

Academic and technical usage

Metagender(ed) (sometimes meta-gender(ed) or metagenderism) has been used to describe "the academic engagement with or the theorizing of gender," religious identities and spiritual states that transcend gender, systems of gender, sets of gender, being beyond or outside binary gender categories, applying regardless of gender or to all genders equally, gender studies about gender studies, 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.	»
— Craig & Devon Hase, 2020

«	All the mapped gender types with valid annotations are split into a list of meta gender types, i.e., ‘Biological Male’, ‘Biological Female’, ‘Transgender Male’ and ‘Transgender Female.’	»
— An approach for transgender population information extraction and summarization from clinical trial text, 2019

«	I use the term metagender to indicate that all of the above work together. In order to conform successfully to the patriarchal requirements of the metagender binary the four genders must be congruent…all their gender building blocks incontestably in one metagender box…Some people do, however, reject the patriarchal binary and experiment with alternative metagenders.”	»
— Negotiating Boundaries? Identities, Sexualities, Diversities, 2009

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.

MÉTA GENDER is the name of a French Butoh-Queer performance deconstructing gender, body, music, and performance, first performed in the 2010s.

Metagender's relationship with Transgender

Metagender's relationship with transgender has taken multiple forms over the decades. Both terms have gained less expansive definitions and more specific connotations, with some definitions overlapping and some contrasting to the point of mutual exclusion. Metagender's use in academia and as a technical term has diverged from LGBT uses, sometimes concerned with abstractions of gender independent of gender identity and thus gender modalities, including transgender.

Metagender has:

• Contained transgender
• Been contained by transgender
• Overlapped with transgender
• Been mutually exclusive with transgender
• Been tangentially related to transgender
• Been unrelated to transgender

Transgender once included gender non-conforming people who would now be considered cisgender, with metagender being alternatively a description for 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 about transgender's inclusiveness that specifically contrasted with an expansive definition of metagender emerged as early as 1994. Metagender was described as a more expansive approach to gender outside strict cis binaries than transgender without being mutually exclusive, used to highlight the limitations of a dichotomy to contain all gender experiences.

Metagender developed several niche definitions that some metagender people put under an expansive transgressively-gendered transgender umbrella that included gender non-conforming people. Despite the work of Leslie Feinberg in the 1990s to coin transgender as a wide and inclusive umbrella term covering all forms of transgressive gender, transgender became more associated with transsexualism, gender dysphoria, and binary gender, while cisgender gender non-conforming people were no longer defined as transgender. Transmedicalists resisted the inclusion of nonbinary people as transgender or under a broader trans umbrella. Some terms were coined by people outside the gender binary out of frustration with the transgender umbrella. (See "Is Genderqueer Transgender?") As with others of genderqueer or nonbinary gender, some people of metagender gender identity described themselves as technically transgender without identifying as transgender themselves or vice versa. 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 to other definitions of transgender and metagender, but as with early definitions of metagender highlights the weakness of a dichotomy to contain all experiences of (non)gender.

Some metagender people consider themselves to fall under the transgender umbrella and some do not. While the trans umbrella is broadly seen to include all non-cisgender individuals, the advice of public health, gender diverse advocates, and gender diverse people themselves is to always use the descriptive term(s) preferred by the individual.