Genderqueer is an identity outside the female-male binary, with terms like postgender, bigender, androgyne, boyyke, gender fluid, and agender. Genderqueer individuals may use gender-neutral pronouns. The genderqueer community began in the 1990s, but intolerance still exists.
Genderqueer is an adjective that is used by some people who have gender identities that fall outside the female-male binary; the word is a portmanteau of “gender” and “queer,” a term some activists have attempted to reclaim. People who don’t identify with the gender binary may also refer to themselves as gender variant or gender nonconforming, and not all people use the term “genderqueer.”
As a general rule, if someone uses the term self-referential, it’s safe to assume it can be used to describe that person, but you may want to tread carefully on using “genderqueer” to describe someone you don’t know well, just in case that person you find this term offensive.
People have been exploring gender identity in various ways for a long time. While gender identity is related to physical biology, it’s also psychological, and some people have struggled with the male-female binary when it comes to gender. For one thing, physical gender appears to fall more along a continuum than a binary, with approximately 50% of the human population having intersex traits, and psychological gender is an extremely complex issue.
Someone who identifies as genderqueer rejects the binary concept of gender, and a number of terms can be used to further refine that person’s individual concept of gender, such as postgender, bigender, androgyne, boyyke, gender fluid, agender, and so on. Some genderqueer individuals are transsexuals who prefer the term “genderqueer” to describe their unique situations. In some cases, a genderqueer individual may have a physical appearance that appears to suggest a specific gender, but that individual does not identify with that gender; for example, the presence of breasts does not necessarily make someone a woman.
Many people in the genderqueer community try to use gender neutral pronouns, because they feel the existing system of genderqueer pronouns is too limiting. In some cases, genderqueers may simply use “it” as a gender-neutral pronoun, but this is rare, because “it” is deemed somewhat offensive. Numerous complex systems of gender neutral pronouns can be seen in use by the genderqueer community in an attempt to meet the challenge of accommodating unusual gender identities in the English language.
The rise of the genderqueer community really began in the 1990s, as people became more confident about asserting different gender identities, and a growing movement of non-heteronormative individuals and allies created an enabling environment to talk about gender identity and sexuality. . While the world may be more supportive of genderqueer identities than it once was, living as a genderqueer can still be dangerous, due to intolerance in some communities.
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