Metagender: Difference between revisions

'''Metagender''' is a term that has been coined multiple times with varying definitions, including multiple [[nonbinary]] [[Gender identity|gender identities]], spiritual identities, a combined gender identity and [[Orientation|romantic and sexual orientation]], a [[Gender Modality|gender modality]], a description for [[Gender nonconformity|gender-nonconforming behavior]], and a super-set for all gender possibilities. Different definitions have been used for LGBTQ+ self-identifiers, in feminist/queer theory and activism, and in academic settings, including as an academic and self-identified term for multiple [[Third gender|third-gender]] religious and spiritual identities.  

Metagender existed as a technical term prior to its use by LGBTQIA2+ individuals, dating back at least to the 1980s, initially concerned with being outside or transcending binary gender, whether of imagery, perspectives, data, or people.<ref name=":5" /><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/murderdifference0000balm/page/110/mode/2up?q=%22meta+gender%22|title=Murder and difference: gender, genre, and scholarship on Sisera's death|last=Bal|first=Mieke|date=1992|publisher=Indiana University Press|year=|isbn=978-0-585-02512-4|location=Bloomington|pages=111-112|language=English|oclc=42854270|quote=Just as with disciplinary codes, notably the theological and liteary codes, the meta-gender code adopted by the interpreter in search of difference ought to be distinguished, first, from the personal gender code he or she has also adopted, most implicitly, by virtue of membership in a particular sexual group, and second, from the gender code he or she assumes the other has adopted...I will confront the possible contribution of a meta-gender code to the personal gender code, which, as we will see in the sample interpretations, remains implicit.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Costello|first=Bonnie|date=1989|title=Domestic Mysticism|url=http://archives.bu.edu/collections/partisan-review/search/detail?id=331558|journal=Partisan Review|volume=56|issue=4|pages=671|doi=|issn=0031-2525|quote=One challenge for contemporary women poets is to decide just how far they wish 'womanhood' to define the terms of their awareness. It is a good sign, I think, that 'the soul' has returned with a fresh, contemporary aura, not genderless, but metagendered. The metaphysical impulse arising in, altered and constrained by biology, runs through many of our best women-poets.|via=Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center}}</ref>

Metagender's early usage by queer communities was first 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.

==== 2000s====

# In August, "metagender" was coined by Tumblr users keyblademastercecilpalmer, agenderchrismclean, and lordmoriarty by submission to the MOGAI-Archive blog. 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.<ref name="metagender2014">http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91734862699/metagender {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.mogaipedia.org/wiki:metagender#toc0</ref>

==== 2020-present====

In July 2020, metagender was coined again by Talea Boelsems, Tenacity Granger, and Evey Winters as a [[Gender Modality|gender modality]] for someone "who is not entirely their assigned gender at birth but does not self identify as transgender," who was neither [[transgender]] nor [[cisgender]],<ref>https://soundsliketransedu.com/metagender/</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/groups/281615473111127/|title=Facebook Groups: Metagender and Questioning 🖤💚💛🤍💛💚🖤|last=|first=|date=|website=Facebook|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201228200140if_/https://www.facebook.com/groups/281615473111127/|archive-date=2020-12-28|dead-url=|access-date=2020-12-28}}</ref> similar to [[List of uncommon nonbinary identities#Isogender|isogender]] and [https://gender-resource.tumblr.com/post/624951702581362688/absgender-a-genderedness-that-is-between-beyond absgender].   

===In Academia, Anthropology, and Gender Analysis===

Metagender(ed) (sometimes meta-gender(ed) or metagenderism) has been used to describe "the academic engagement with or the theorizing of gender,"<ref>{{Cite book|title=Africa after gender?|publisher=Indiana University Press|date=2007|location=Bloomington, IN|isbn=978-0-253-34816-6|editor-first=Catherine M.|editor-last=Cole|editor-first2=Takyiwaa|editor-last2=Manuh|editor-first3=Stephan|editor-last3=Miescher|last=|first=|year=|pages=287, 289}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/mediawiki/oclc/1137077647|title=Queering knowledge: analytics, devices and investments after Marilyn Strathern|last=Boyce|first=Paul|last2=Gonzalez-Polledo|first2=E. J|last3=Posocco|first3=Silvia|date=2020|publisher=|year=|isbn=978-1-138-23098-9|location=|pages=Note 20|language=English|oclc=1137077647}} Note 20.</ref> religious identities that transcend gender,<ref>Scherer, Burkhard. (2006). ‘Gender Transformed and Meta-gendered Enlightenment: Reading Buddhist Narratives as Paradigms of Inclusiveness’ ''Revista de Estudos da Religião'' – REVER 6(3), pp. 65-76.</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442664579|title=Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England|last=Szarmach|first=Paul|date=2019|isbn=978-1-4426-6457-9|oclc=1091659301}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The third gender and Ælfric's Lives of saints|last=McDaniel|first=Rhonda L.|date=2018|publisher=Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University|isbn=978-1-58044-309-8|series=Richard Rawlinson Center series|location=Kalamazoo}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=al-Khawaldeh|first=Samira|date=2015-05-06|title=“The One Raised in Ornament?” Gendering Issues in the Qurʾan|url=https://brill.com/view/journals/haww/13/1/article-p1_1.xml|journal=Hawwa|volume=13|issue=1|pages=1–24|doi=10.1163/15692086-12341271|issn=1569-2078}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=5213031|title=Gender, sex, and sexualities: psychological perspectives|last=Dess|first=Nancy Kimberly|last2=Marecek|first2=Jeanne|last3=Bell|first3=Leslie C|date=2018|isbn=978-0-19-065855-7|language=English|oclc=1018308022}}</ref> systems of gender,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/mediawiki/oclc/953860344|title=Negotiating Boundaries? Identities, Sexualities, Diversities|last=Beckett|first=Clare|last2=Heathcote|first2=Owen|last3=Macey|first3=Marie|date=2009|isbn=978-1-4438-1092-0|language=English|oclc=953860344}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0144-1/2|title=Queering Paradigms II|publisher=Peter Lang|isbn=978-3-0343-0295-1}}</ref> sets of gender,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Chen|first=Boyu|last2=Jin|first2=Hao|last3=Yang|first3=Zhiwen|last4=Qu|first4=Yingying|last5=Weng|first5=Heng|last6=Hao|first6=Tianyong|date=2019-04-09|title=An approach for transgender population information extraction and summarization from clinical trial text|url=https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-019-0768-1|journal=BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making|volume=19|issue=2|pages=62|doi=10.1186/s12911-019-0768-1|issn=1472-6947|pmc=PMC6454593|pmid=30961595}}</ref> being beyond binary gender categories,<ref name=":4" /><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/jamesjoyceproble0000vale/page/136/mode/2up?q=metagender|title=James Joyce and the problem of justice: negotiating sexual and colonial difference|last=Valente|first=Joseph|date=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=|isbn=978-0-521-47369-9|location=Cambridge [England] ; New York|pages=}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=1987|title=Annales D'archéologie Égéenne de L'Université de Liège|url=https://books.google.de/books?id=f1fFPmPBAYcC|journal=Aegaeum|volume=30|pages=231|quote=We can see...what does help us to approach the door that opens onto Minoan realities is to study the meta-gender of the aniconic. We discern a cluster of symbols that were definitely greater than just female or male.|via=}}</ref> applying regardless of gender or to all genders equally,<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9781351984041|title=Shakespeare and Feminist Criticism (1991): an Annotated Bibliography and Commentary|last=Kolin|first=Philip C|date=2017|isbn=978-1-351-98403-4|language=English|oclc=1052448663}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=Edinburgh&isbn=9781137054425|title=Doing feminist research in political and social science|last=Ackerly|first=Brooke A|last2=True|first2=Jacqui|date=2010|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-1-137-05442-5|location=Basingstoke; New York|language=English|oclc=1203336058}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> and otherwise being about gender.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Devlin-Glass|first=Frances|date=1998|title='Teasing the audience with the play': feminism and Shakespeare at the Melbourne Theatre Company, 1984-93|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2870817|journal=Australasian Drama Studies|volume=|issue=33|pages=21-39|doi=|issn=0810-4123|via=https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=200000904;res=IELAPA}}</ref><ref name=":0" />

Bugis Society recognizes four genders, plus a fifth gender, [[Gender-variant identities worldwide#Bissu|bissu]], which is seen to combine and transcend the four others. "''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."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://learn.akkadium.com/beyond-binary-five-genders-of-the-bugis/|title=Beyond Binary: Five genders of the Bugis|last=Mark Anderson|date=2016-08-15|website=Akkadium College|language=en-US|access-date=2020-12-28}}</ref>

"Applying the concept of a third gender is rare in Aegean scholarship... Cadogan observes that the genderless aspects of Minoan culture... are understudied. He believes that the term 'meta-gender' better conveys something above and beyond binary categories."<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118294291.ch24|title=A Companion to Gender Prehistory|last=Hitchcock|first=Louise|last2=Nikolaidou|first2=Marianna|date=2012|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd|isbn=978-1-118-29429-1|pages=502–525|language=en|doi=10.1002/9781118294291.ch24}}</ref>