Pangender

Pangender

Pangender, or omnigender, is a gender identity in which a person either identifies as a countless number of separate identities that they are fluid between over time, or that they identify as one all encompassing identity. The genders that a pangender person has only includes genders within the person's own culture and life experience (e.g. their genders would not include Fa'afafine unless they are Samoan; their genders would not include bordergender unless they have Borderline Personality Disorder).

A pangender person's identity may or may not include genders not currently recognized or known and may or may not fluctuate in intensity or include differing intensities among the genders that the Pangender person encompasses. Thus a pangender person can also be genderfluid or genderflux. The combination of pangender and genderflux is called panflux.

Just like any other gender identity, pangender people can use any set of pronouns they choose or vary between pronouns depending on how they identify at the time.

An alternative term with a similar meaning is maxigender, since some people on Tumblr who don't identify as pangender argue that it is appropriative of culturally-specific and neurotype-specific genders. The reason for that, according to them, is that no one can identify as all genders, as this would include culturally-specific or neurotype-specific genders.

History

The use of "pangender" as a identity goes back at least to the 1990s, as stated in the preface to The Flock, a 1992 book by Lynn Wilson about dissociative identity disorder: "Some gender-nonconforming individuals call themselves androgynes, pan-gender, or non-binary."

Pangender was mentioned as one of many valid nonbinary identities in the 2013 text Sexuality and Gender for Mental Health Professionals: A Practical Guide.

In 2018, Washington state began to allow "X" gender markers on official documents, with the law stating that

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"X" means a gender that is not exclusively male or female, including, but not limited to, intersex, agender, amalgagender, androgynous, bigender, demigender, female-to-male, genderfluid, genderqueer, male-to-female, neutrois, nonbinary, pangender, third sex, transgender, transsexual, Two Spirit, and unspecified.

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Popular news site The Daily Dot published an article "What it means to be pangender" on June 16, 2020.

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Notable pangender people

See main article: Notable nonbinary people

There are many more notable people who have a gender identity outside of the binary. The following are only some of those notable people who specifically use the words "pangender", "maxigender", or "omnigender" for themselves.

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Pangender characters in fiction

See main article: Nonbinary gender in fiction

There are many more nonbinary characters in fiction who have a gender identity outside of the binary. The following are only some of those characters who are specifically called by the words "pangender", "maxigender", or "omnigender," either in their canon, or by their creators.

• In the sci-fi thriller novel Zero-G: Book 1 (by William Shatner and Jeff Rovin), Adsila Waters is described multiple times as "pan-gender" (used as both an adjective and a noun in the book). "He" and "she" pronouns are variously used for Adsila. Adsila is also able to shapeshift her sex characteristics to accompany gender switches.

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See also

• List of nonbinary identities