Aporagender

This page is about a gender identity that is not widely used among gender-variant people. This does not mean that the identity is not valid, but that very few people are known to use this term. More information on uncommon identities...

Aporagender (from Greek apo, apor "separate" + "gender") is a nonbinary gender identity and umbrella term for "a gender separate from male, female, and anything in between while still having a very strong and specific gendered feeling" (that is, not an absence of gender).

Aporagender

History

The original moderator of the Aporagender blog on tumblr coined the word aporagender in 2014. The person who coined the word "aporagender" made it as an alternative to aliagender, due to concerns that aliagender might be "racist or appropriative."

An alternative aporagender flag, proposed to due to discontent with the original flag.

Hyaenahart designed the aporagender pride flag, which is shown at right. "Blue & Pink have been put on either end of the flag to show that you feel your gender is 'away' from these two colours, stereotyped as blue being masculine and pink being feminine. Purple to represent as feeling between male and female. Yellow to represent how the gender is nothing like being female, male or both, but is also placed close enough to blue, purple and pink to show that it’s still connected strongly to some sort of specific gender. Yellow also represents how it's a non-binary identity."

In 2018 an alternate aporagender flag was proposed due to discontent with the original flag. Proposed by Mod Lune of the blog wedontcareaboutyourbinary, this flag was not intended to be a replacement to the original but rather an alternative for people who were also discontent with the original or merely preferred the newer version. Lune felt the original flag focused too heavily on binary gender "between-ness" and was too close to the bigender flag. "Yellow and green are two colors that are equally strongly associated with non-binary identity that stands completely separate from a pink/blue female/male point of reference. Teal refers here to the validity of aporagender identities that may SEEM similar to maleness/masculinity or femaleness/femininity, but are distinctly their own separate gender feelings. I chose the black diagonal stripe in opposition to white, which frequently references lack, absence or void; here, I’m using black to signify the presence of a specific gender feeling. Its diagonal orientation refers to the existence of these genders on a plane completely distinct from the binary."

As an umbrella term

"Aporagender is under the nonbinary umbrella, but is a more specific label" than nonbinary. Aporagender is also an umbrella term for some (not all) nonbinary identities. As an umbrella term, aporagender includes some kind of nonbinary and genderqueer people, but "doesn’t include people who are agender, between male and female, or binary trans people." Therefore, aporagender is a more specific umbrella term than genderqueer, because when genderqueer is used as an umbrella term, it includes nonbinary people in general, including agender people and those whose gender is related to manhood and/or womanhood.. "Aporagender is pretty much everything that isn’t male, female, agender, or between male and female."

Difference from other genders

Aporagender isn't the same thing as androgyny, because androgyny can mean a mix of female and male, or in between female and male, whereas aporagender "is any nonbinary identification that isn’t male, female, or anything in between while still having a strong sense of gender."

Aporagender is different than agender or genderless, because these mean that a person has no inner sense of their gender, whereas aporagender people have a strong inner sense of their gender.

Some people who call their gender neutrois define neutrois as having no inner sense of their gender (genderless), whereas other neutrois people use it to mean having a gender that is not female, not male, not between, but neutral. In the former sense, aporagender isn't a synonym for neutrois, because aporagender people have an inner sense of their gender. In the latter sense, neutrois can fall under the aporagender umbrella, "but as not everyone uses the same definition [of neutrois], aporagender is still needed for some people."

In order to be aporagender, a person needs to have a feeling of having a gender, and that their "gender is completely and totally not male or female." Since some neutrois people use neutrois to mean that they have no inner sense of gender, aporagender is not a synonym of that, because aporagender people have a sense of gender. In that case, in its most specific sense, aporagender can include neutrois, if neutrois is used in its definition that means "not female, not male, not between female or male - specifically, a present neutral gender." That said, neutrois has many definitions, so aporagender only encompasses for one of these.

People who are aporagender may also feel that all genders are equally validating, so none of them and all of them fit well. However, they may still feel they identify under the nonbinary umbrella.

See also

• Androgyne
• Neutrois
• Maverique
• Aliagender

External links

• Aporagender on Gender Wiki