Aporagender
'Aporagender' is a non-binary label for people who do experience a pronounced sense of gender, but describe that feeling as separate from man, woman or a mixture thereof. The Greek prefix 'apo-' means 'away from'. The term was coined in 2014 on Tumblr.
What is meant by it?
Aporagender lies structurally close to maverique: both labels seek to express a 'third gender plane' that cannot be placed via the man/woman spectrum. The difference from agender is that aporagender persons describe their experience precisely as 'present and strong' — not as absence.
Distinction and overlap
The boundary between aporagender, maverique, neutrois and agender is in practice thin. Which term someone chooses depends mainly on the community in which the term was picked up and on personal preference.
Social and practical context
Aporagender plays hardly any role outside Tumblr and similar online spaces. It does not appear on official documents.
Critical perspectives
As with maverique: the claim that there is a gender 'separate from the man/woman spectrum' is neither empirically nor clinically supported. The label is a social construction within a specific online community, not the discovery of an underlying category. That does nothing to take away from the experience of those who do recognise themselves in it.
See also
Sources
- Tumblr archive 'genderqueerid' (2014): early publication of the term 'aporagender'.
- Richards, C. et al. (2016). "Non-binary or genderqueer genders." International Review of Psychiatry, 28(1). DOI
- Vincent, B. (2020). Non-Binary Genders. Policy Press.