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Polygender

'Polygender' refers to people who identify with several specific genders at once — often more than two, in varying intensity and composition. The term has been circulating in non-binary online communities since the 2000s.

What is meant by it?

The Greek prefix 'poly-' means 'many'. Someone who calls themselves polygender would experience three, five or more 'genders' at once, including classic ones (man, woman) as well as newer or self-coined labels. It differs from bigender (two genders) and trigender (three); it differs from pangender in that polygender assumes a specific number or a delineated set of genders, while pangender refers to 'all'.

Distinction and overlap

In practice polygender and pangender are often used interchangeably. Some polygender persons specify explicitly which genders they experience 'at the same time' — for example 'agender, demiboy and xenogender'. Such enumerations occur mainly in online subcultures around Tumblr, TikTok and Discord.

Social and practical context

Polygender does not appear on official documents and plays hardly any role outside online communities. Pronouns vary widely; some switch pronoun with the gender component experienced at the moment.

Critical perspectives

The assumption that an individual can experience multiple genders 'at the same time' is neither empirically nor clinically supported. Critics point out that the proliferation of micro-labels in this area is mainly a sociological phenomenon: identity formation within specific online communities, not the discovery of pre-existing categories. For the person themselves the experience is of course real; that does not make the label a separate category.