Gender-variant identities worldwide

This article about gender-variant identities worldwide is about many cultures' and ethnic groups' traditional identities and roles that do not fit into the Western gender binary. Although it is challenging for Western writers to do so, it is important to talk about these identities without imposing modern Western ideas of gender on them, or otherwise misrepresenting them. The following article focuses on identities that are most analogous to gender outside of the Western binary. However, due to the problems of imposing outsider's views on these identities, this isn't clear in all cases. Some of the identities in the list below may be more analogous to binary transgender women and transgender men. This should not list identities that are known to be more analogous to cisgender identities that are simply gender nonconforming or non-heterosexual.

Generally, people who aren't members of the cultures and ethnic groups in question aren't entitled to call themselves by any of the following genders. That would be cultural appropriation, which means wrongfully taking parts of somebody else's culture to use for yourself. It is okay to learn about these cultures, but not to take what is not one's own. Outsiders would do well to learning about cultures that accept people who are outside the Western gender binary so that they can support those people on their own terms, and so that they are informed about political challenges that those people face today. Outsiders also benefit by learning about them in order to see that there have been hundreds of accepting cultures throughout history, that it has been done and that it has worked, and that these genders have always been real. This gives hope for other cultures to become accepting as well.

Third gender, or third sex, is not a satisfactory label for all the identities on this page, because it has meant many things. Third gender is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves, by their society, or by outsiders to their society, as not fitting into the Western ideas of binary gender and heterosexual roles. The phrase "third gender" has been used for a wide variety of meanings: intersex people whose bodies do not fit outdated Western medical concepts of binary sex, hundreds of indigenous societal roles as described (and often misrepresented) by Western anthropologists (including indigenous identities such as south Asian hijras, Hawaiian and Tahitian māhū, and Native American identities now called Two-Spirits), transgender people who are nonbinary, homosexual people (even those who are white and in Western societies), and women who were considered to be gender-nonconforming because they fought for women's rights. Some people self-identify as third gender, especially in communities of people of color in the United States. In the 2016 Nonbinary/Genderqueer Survey, 84 of the respondents (2.75%) called themselves third gender. In the 2019 Worldwide Gender Census, 244 of the respondents (2.17%) called themselves third gender.