genre-gender, what is it?
Hi! If you’re new to gender science and philosophy there’s this short video that might serve as a good introduction for you:
The video ends with the question: “should the category of boys and girls even exist” which is a great segway into what this post is all about — gender categories.
The reason the video suggests we question the validity of our existing gender social constructs is that the evidence shows that anatomy or dna have no correlation to brain structure or personality and thus gender. In other words almost everything we were taught about gender was a lie. Similarly almost everything we were taught about sexuality is a lie but I’ve covered that in another article here and here.
Back to the topic though: “genre-gender” is a name I came up with to refer to the concept of gender being treated more like the categorizing systems we use for music or art rather than a binary or multiplicity of fixed choices. A free association model like genres aligns well with the findings that gender is unique and so can only truly be self-reported by those who experience the uniqueness of it.
Quite simply a person could keep their current gender identity but distance their perception of it from things like biology, “gender roles” and aesthetics allowing others of any combination of those to also freely choose whichever gender “genre” they identify with. A “no wrong answer” type of model.
To speak of it on a bit more technical terms you could say genre-gender is an umbrella term for the gender identities that exist without any reference to biology or binaries or versions of existing gender identities with the biological associations removed.
The ability to self-report your gender, or to be able to choose which gender identities apply to you is called free association. In other words a person may choose to associate with that gender freely. This removes the ability for gatekeeping by giving those who would do it no legitimate argument against a person’s gender identity choices.
Why use genre-gender and not transgender?
All genre-genders are trans genders, the cisgender ideology is not based on free association and does imply a biological correlation with gender, and so it is impossible to be both cisgender and genre-gender. The difference is that transgender identities often still come bundled with conditions and coercions that bring biology and gate-keeping into gender identification, this produces dysphoria in some people who do not want their gender to be associated with biology at all.
For example, the identity “trans woman” has a history, community and culture of specifically liberation and affirmation of women assigned male after birth. There is a specific kind of discrimination and oppression directed at that group of people (called transmysigony) and they have fought under the banner of “trans women” for decades. It’s possible for someone who was not assigned male after birth to identify as trans and a woman, but they shouldn’t identify as “trans woman” out of respect for those who are victims of transmysigony.
While that label works well for many women who are trans, the exclusion of people assigned female after birth is not something all trans women (specifically those assigned male after birth) are comfortable with. Some of them want to share a gender identity with others who identify as non-cis and woman and genre-gender provides an alternative for them so that there is no friction between them and those who prefer the traditional labels.
Some people who identify as genre-gender may still identify as transgender, they are not mutually exclusive, and in different contexts may engender one or the other. For example I may identify as a genre-woman on social media but as a trans woman when protesting for trans liberation.
Why this word specifically?
The name genre-gender is derived from two sources, the first being the etymological root of gender and the second being a reference to how people conceptualize genres of media etc.
As it turns out the word gender actually has roots in the words genre and genus, and held the meaning of type / kind / sort among other similar definitions. In other words it wasn’t inherently a descriptor of femininity or masculinity but became such in its evolution into modern day “gender”. Part of transgender liberation is the goal of breaking that modern definition down and replacing it with one that caters for those who are both, neither, or partially feminine/masculine (and by extension inclusion of all genders). Genre-gender aims to strengthen this struggle by re-associating the word genre with gender, we want people to think genre when they think gender.
While transgender is helpful in describing the dissatisfaction with a person’s assigned gender / sex, genre-gender is helpful for those who don’t want to define themselves by that assignation at all. It is the negation of assigning genders altogether not just the negation of “getting it wrong”.
When people hear the word transgender or trans they often associate it with the word transition, leading to a lot of the misconceptions surrounding transgender people being those who want / have had a transition of gender / sex but many transgender people have not had nor want a transition, they consider their gender to have been the same all along, or they are comfortable with their bodies. While the struggle to break those associations and replace them with the true definition of “on the other side of [cisgender]” it is a very difficult task, and is made even more difficult when people who are definitely not cisgender get told they can’t identify as transgender based on their biology. As such genre-gender seeks to avoid the connotations or assumptions regarding a transition entirely, and to embrace an affinity based free association connotation of gender.
The second source other than etymological roots is a reference to how we categorize art, media and various other socially significant spectra of variety. Using music for example, an artist is free to label their music as any genre they like, including combinations of multiple other genres, sub-genres, or completely new genres altogether. Listeners may not agree with the labels but they don’t get to force the artist to change the label the artist thinks is correct.
Socially people do agree on certain characteristics that are common in a musical genre, for example it would be safe to assume that rock music will have the guitar instrument in it. However you couldn’t categorically say “all rock music has guitars” because something might end up sounding like rock but that sound would have been created without using a guitar. Additionally sub-genres or even new genres get recognized by the music community as more music of a particular style is being created and people want to be able to refer to all the music with that style.
So for example lets say a number of artists creating music that falls under the synthwave genre start to make synthwave songs with a more sinister or eerie sound, at first people would simply refer to it as “dark sounding synthwave”, but this is a mouthful and as popularity increases it gets abbreviated as simply darkwave and becomes a new sub-genre. But it’s still synthwave.
This mechanism for identifying archetypes in music would be perfect to use for communicating gender archetypes. In fact to some degree we already do this, think of femininity having sub-genders of femme, futch, butch etc. each with specific cultural significance but still under the umbrella of femininity.
We already have everything we need to communicate our genders in a freely associated way, what we’re missing in society is an understanding of gender that would enable people to conceptualize gender in this way. Regardless of how popular the term genre-gender becomes, each person who uses it is contributing towards the shift from a biological conceptualization of gender towards a free association conceptualization of gender. The name itself implies the kind of gender model we should be working towards, something that doesn’t happen with the word transgender.
Genres are an intuitive and natural way of categorizing things by free association.
Genre-gender and non-binary
The idea of an umbrella term for all gender identities that aren’t binary isn’t new, the term “nonbinary” is often used as just such an umbrella term. There has been a lot of good work put in to popularizing and educating people about the term “nonbinary” and genre-gender doesn’t intend to erase or replace that work or term. Nonbinary as a communicative tool is very useful, and some people may feel like it is sufficient with no need for something like genre-gender.
That work needs to continue and things like normalizing the singular “they” pronoun, a usage that has been around since the 1300s and is still used today by all english speakers but for some reason is resisted by transphobes who want to hold onto a binary of pronouns to suit their ideas of gender being binary. “Nonbinary” people have achieved some success here with social networks for example adding the option to not identify as binary and then referencing those people using singular “they”.
There are some circumstances where it’s better to use nonbinary than genre-gender, for example if you are aware that someone’s gender is not binary but they have not informed or communicated to you that they identify as genre-gender, it is safer to refer to them as nonbinary which communicates what they’re not, than it is to refer to them as genre-gender which would communicate something they are instead — something that shouldn’t be assumed to be true.
Nonbinary is also a useful communication tool for genderqueer people to use when wanting to imply that they are not fully aligned with either masculinity or femininity. But nonbinary is also used to explain and define identities that are completely seperate from masculinity and feminity, for example Aporagender.
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 (unlike Androgyne) while still having a very strong and specific gendered feeling”
So there’s no doubt that the term “nonbinary” is important and will continue to hold relevance, but even so there is still some motivation for people to identify as genre-gender instead of or in addition to nonbinary and these terms are complimentary as together they describe of a genre-gender identifying person both what they’re not and what they are instead.
The intention of identifying as genre-gender is to add to the efforts of nonbinary activists an additional tool in giving people some indication of a new model for gender, one that is completely nonbinary in nature, based on free association. Some people will not let go of their incorrect understandings of gender, even when shown the facts, because they have no way of imagining gender without a binary — and that’s where the term genre-gender can help more than the term nonbinary would alone.
Genre-gender and transhumanism
For those new to the term, here’s the first paragraph from wikipedia:
Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.
While genre-gender isn’t necessarily transhumanist — it has a lot of value in society regardless of technological level and would even have been the best model for gender in prehistoric times, the fact that it is compatible with a transhumanist future is a plus considering the cisgender binary and even the current transgender language do not.
When we talk of a transhumanist society and gender we’re voyaging into a world where today's physical limitations do not apply any longer. Gender confirmation surgery would be trivially safe and available allowing everyone to have a body that doesn’t give them dysphoria. It makes no sense using gender language that implies or is framed in reference to a person’s biology when they might have many changes in biology throughout their lives.
We’re also talking of a world where we may potentially exist in virtual and/or augmented realities more so than our current physical reality. In a mostly VR/AR society a person’s biology is even less relevant and so we will need to have a gender model that can cater for the free association that will come with the freedom to customize your body or appearance at will.
If we need to move to a free association model at some point in the future anyway, and if such a model frees us from coercion and conditions being applied to gender, it’s only reasonable to begin adopting such a model now, at least, for those who wish to.
Once society has moved beyond the gender binary / cisgender model of gender words like trans and cis won’t have any relevance, nobody will be assigned a gender / sex or coerced into performing any gender in a specific way. However the word genre in reference will still hold meaning as it describes the type of free association gender model that will be in use. Although when all genders are conceptualized as genres it will be redundant and likely fall away, but it is still another positive point that it will be doing so due to redundancy and not irrelevancy.
How to use genre-gender textually yourself
As genre-gender is intended to be based on free association there is absolutely nothing stopping you from identifying as genre-gender.
However to avoid reproducing the confusion that is present in current gender terminology it would be best if certain implications accompanied this gender identity.
Such as:
- all genre-gender people are transgender
- you cannot identify as binary and genre-gender (binaries are not free association models)
- you cannot prevent anyone else from identifying as a certain genre-gender regardless of their biology.
Practically speaking the intention is to include the word genre in a person’s gender identity in order to (by implication) educate people on the genre model of gender. However that is completely optional, a person can identify internally and conceptualize their gender as being genre-gender without including the word genre in their gender identity too.
However should you wish to include it, do so in any way you choose, some options are…
genre-[gender archetype] like…
— genre-woman, genre-man, genre-demigirl, genre-agender
[gender adjective] genre-[gender archetype] like…
— nonbinary genre-woman, genderfluid genre-neutrois
[abbreviation]-genre / genre-[abbreviation] like…
— pan-genre or genre-queer
The flexibility and compatibility with existing gender identities / adjectives allows people to keep the same identity words they are familiar / comfortable with and simply replacing trans with genre, and as all genre-genders are inherently transgender this adds more information without removing any of the previous information being conveyed.
The symbology of genre-gender
Similar to how the textual use of genre-gender aims to be compatible with the existing transgender words, the symbology for genre-gender aims to be compatible with the existing transgender symbology.
The symbol for genre-gender is a circle with many smaller circles within it of various sizes. the inner circles are each colored using colors from existing gender identity flags but the inner circles could alternatively be all white or transparent.
The three largest circles hold the colors from the transgender flag to communicate the inherently transgender nature of genre-gender. The smaller circles hold colors from other flags such as two versions of the nonbinary flag and the pangender flag. The center of the symbol has the green color present in the agender flag as including agender people in the genre-gender umbrella is core to the term.
This arrangement of circles is in fact a low level of detail fractal. Fractals are patterns that get repeated the more you “zoom” in, this particular fractal is called an Apollonian gasket and was chosen because a circle is easy to integrate into existing symbology as well as the appealing aesthetic and similarity between genres / sub-genres to the circle / sub-circles.
For clarity and simplicity the lower level of detail was chosen for the genre-gender symbology shown here but people are free to create their own versions at whichever level of detail they want. The infinite nature of fractals also plays well with the infinite possible genders that are possible allowing this symbology to imply inclusivity.
It is also compatible with the gender symbols that are widely known thanks to the circle shape.
The symbol can also be included in the existing gender flags by being placed ontop of them, allowing people to specify that they identify as genre-gender in addition to whichever gender identity the flag would otherwise be representing.
Worth noting as well that genre-gender is compatible with a transhumanist society where biology based models of gender are not (because in a transhumanist society you might change your body from day to day but your personality would be consistent and thus so would your gender — though things like genderfluidity would also come into play there.
Although not everyone is going to want to start identifying in a transhumanism compatible way today, there’s undoubtedly some value in portraying gender this way in futuristic fiction, so if you’re an author writing a sci-fi space opera you’re probably going to want a free association model of gender in your society unless it’s going to be super dystopian. However personally I am going to begin identifying as such right now so that I can conceptualize and communicate my gender in a way completely free from biology and coercion.
FAQ
As people ask questions about this term / identity the below section will be updated to clarify things.
Why should someone, for example a woman, identify as genre-woman instead of simply woman?
There are many reasons to use genre-gender terminology listed above, but none of them imply a “should”, you should identify however you like.
Is genre-gender related to gender nihilism or postgenderism?
No, while genre-gender shares their criticisms of the current gender model in society it assumes that gender will remain relevant to society even after the current model has been eliminated. Genre-gender seeks to replace the existing model with one based on free association not to simply do away with gender entirely.
