Xenogender

'Xenogender' (from the Greek 'xenos', meaning strange) is an umbrella term for gender identities that, according to the person who experiences them, cannot be explained through human male/female categories, but instead through non-human metaphors: animals, plants, colours, sounds, abstract forms or even fictional objects. The term originated on Tumblr in 2014 and has circulated ever since in highly specific online subcultures.

What does it mean?

Examples of xenogenders include 'catgender' (a gender feeling expressed through cats), 'starlightgender' (through starlight) and 'voidgender' (through emptiness). The person in question maintains that their own sense of gender is best described through such a metaphor. Some associate it with the neurodivergence spectrum: for people with autism, the label could be a way of expressing inner experience through images. That autism is strongly overrepresented among gender-diverse children is shown by a 2026 cohort study.

Distinction and overlap

Xenogender formally falls under non-binary, but is its most exotic branch. The distance from classic terms such as transgender or agender is considerable, and most non-binary people do not identify with xenogenders.

Social and practical context

Xenogender plays no role outside highly specific online groups. It does not appear on official documents, nor in medical literature. Pronouns ('neopronouns' such as 'bun/bunself' or 'fae/faeself') are often just as idiosyncratic as the label itself. More about pronouns can be found under gender-neutral language.

Critical perspectives

Xenogender is the area of identity discourse where the difference between 'experience' and 'category' is most sharply visible. Critics — including many transgender people themselves — point out that labels of this kind undermine the broader cause of gender variation by completely detaching identity from any shared human experience. Those who recognise the label from an autistic context often describe something real (an unusual way of understanding themselves), but it is questionable whether 'gender' is the right language for it. The overview of how many genders there are places xenogenders among the other labels; genderid.nl discusses them as the ultimate consequence of an unbounded concept.