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 and [[Gender-variant identities worldwide|cultural]] 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 [[LGBT]] self-identifiers, in [[Feminism|feminist]]/[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory queer theory] and activism, and in academic settings.  

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.<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> Its use as a technical term with various definitions has [[Metagender#As a Technical and Academic Term|persisted into 2020]].

====1990s====

{{Quote|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"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bamuses.wordpress.com/2020/12/12/somewhere-in-between/|title=Somewhere In Between|last=B.Alvinia|date=2020-12-12|website=b.AM Muses|language=en|access-date=2021-01-01}}</ref>}}

In the 2019 Worldwide Gender Census, one respondent called themselves metagender.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gendercensus.com/results/2019-worldwide-summary/|title=Gender Census 2019: Worldwide Summary|date=2020-11-11|website=Gender Census|language=en-GB|access-date=2020-12-24}}</ref> In the 2020 Worldwide Gender Census, four respondents called themselves metagender.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gendercensus.com/results/2020-worldwide-summary/|title=Gender Census 2020: Worldwide Summary|date=2020-11-11|website=Gender Census|language=en-GB|access-date=2020-12-24}} "metagender: 2; metagender!: 1; meta-girl: 1"</ref> 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.<ref name=":2" />

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 and spiritual states that transcend gender,<ref name=":7">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 name=":8">{{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 name=":9">{{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 name=":10">{{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 name=":18">{{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 or outside binary gender categories,<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><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|year=|location=|quote=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><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=}} "Since to be human is to be sexed, there can be no metagender position in discourse, no superintending perspective on the question of gender and its associated baggage."</ref><ref>Kazanjian, David (2011). "[https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/discourse/vol33/iss3/4/ Re-flexion: Genocide in Ruins]," ''Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture'': 33(3), Article 4. "She is doubly excluded by Creon, then: a resident alien who must reside amongst the dead, a meta-gendered subject denied both the male polis and the female oikos."</ref><ref>Goodman, Z. J. (1997). [https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/20041/thesis_hum_1997_goodman_zilla_jane.pdf?sequence=1 Representations of the other in modern Hebrew literature](PhD). University of Cape Town.</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" /><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hussein Ali|first=Zahra A.|date=2018-09-01|title=George Meredith,          John S. Mill, and          Liberalized Womanhood|url=https://www.utexaspressjournals.org/doi/10.7560/TSLL60303|journal=Texas Studies in Literature and Language|volume=60|issue=3|pages=316–345|doi=10.7560/TSLL60303|issn=0040-4691|quote=...a triadic logos that interrelates "[b]lood and brain and spirit, three," which if "parted," "[s]ome one sailing will be wrecked!" ("Woods" 352, 355, 356). (8) This logos is meta-gender, and it can accommodate a broad spectrum of socioeconomic positions, from the liberal to the conservative.|via=}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Morozova|first=Iryna I.|date=2016|title=A woman in the victorian female discourse.|url=https://lingvj.oa.edu.ua/articles/2016/n61/84.pdf|journal=Наукові записки Національного університету Острозька академія. Серія: Філологічна|volume=61|issue=|pages=218-220.|doi=|issn=|quote=The Victorian woman’s discourse is dominated by the situational and contextual factors; on the other hand, the factor of gender is of relative importance. This testifies preeminence of the metagender (common to the society / mankind on the whole) in the stereotypic communication of the Victorian woman.|via=}}</ref> 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" />   

{{Quote|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.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=How not to be a hot mess: a semi-Buddhist guide for surviving modern life|url=https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=BFBB0679-884D-4AB3-9A4B-8E9F89EA5615|date=2020|isbn=978-0-8348-4269-4|oclc=1151626639|language=English|first=Craig|last=Hase|first2=Devon|last2=Hase}} Retrieved at https://archive.org/details/how-not-to-be-a-hot-mess/page/n51/mode/2up?q=%22meta-gendered%22</ref>|Craig & Devon Hase|2020||||lang1=|col2=}}{{Quote|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.’<ref name=":18" />|An approach for transgender population information extraction and summarization from clinical trial text|2019}}

More relevant to nonbinary history is metagender's use in describing [[gender variance in spirituality]]. 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.   

Metagender was used to describe the transcendent gender of virgin saints in scholarly reconstructions by 2003.<ref>McDaniel, Rhonda L. (2003). ''[https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1252 Male and Female He Created Them: Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and Patristic Theories of Gender]'' (Ph.D). Western Michigan University. 1252.  </ref> 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.<ref name=":9" /> Through virginity and devotion to scripture, any sex could transcend earthly pleasures to become the heavenly metagender.<ref name=":9" /> Some Christians in the present day also use metagender to describe this state of transcending human gender to achieve a Godlike gender.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://lainaorlando.com/a-course-in-love/|title=A Course in Love|last=Orl|first=Laina|last2=o|date=2018-03-16|website=Laina Orlando|language=en-US|access-date=2021-01-01}}</ref>

===Miscellaneous===

MÉTA GENDER is the name of a French Butoh-Queer performance deconstructing gender, body, music, and performance, first performed in the 2010s.<ref>2000 [http://iconoklastes.com/index.php?/danse/meta-gender-par-dolores-k/ MÉTA GENDER]. ''Iconoklastes''</ref>

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.