Polygender

'Polygender' refers to people who identify with multiple specific genders at the same time — often more than two, in varying intensity and combinations. The term has circulated since the 2000s in non-binary online communities.

What does it mean?

The Greek prefix 'poly-' means 'many'. Someone who identifies as polygender may experience three, five or even more 'genders' at the same time, including traditional ones (man, woman) as well as newer or self-created labels. It differs from bigender (two genders) and trigender (three); it differs from pangender because polygender presupposes a specific number or defined set of genders, whereas pangender refers to 'all' genders.

Distinctions and overlap

In practice, polygender and pangender are often used interchangeably. Some polygender people explicitly specify which genders they experience 'at the same time' — for example, 'agender, demiboy and xenogender'. Such lists are particularly common in online subcultures surrounding Tumblr, TikTok and Discord.

Social and practical context

Polygender does not appear on official documents and plays hardly any role outside online communities. Recent research also shows that since 2023, fewer and fewer young people identify as non-binary or trans. Pronouns vary widely; some people change their pronouns according to the gender component they experience at a given moment.

Critical perspectives

The assumption that an individual can experience multiple genders 'at the same time' has no empirical or clinical basis. Critics point out that the proliferation of micro-labels in this area is primarily a sociological phenomenon: identity formation within specific online communities, rather than the discovery of existing categories. The overview of how many genders there are shows how far this expansion goes. The underlying assumption that every person has a gender identity is examined on genderideologie.nl. The experience is of course real to the person themselves; that does not make the label a separate category.