Genderqueer

File:Genderqueer pride flag.png

The Genderqueer flag. The lavender stripe, mixing blue and pink (traditional male and female colors, also present on the trans flag) is meant to represent those under the GQ umbrella who feel they are both male and female in identity as well as “queerness.” Lavender has long been associated with homosexuality and bisexuality. Dark chartreuse green, the inverse of the lavender color, is meant to represent GQ individuals who feel they are neither male nor female in identity. The white stripe is meant to represent GQ individuals falling completely outside of the gender binary.Template:Citation needed

Template:Transgender sidebar Genderqueer (GQ; alternatively non-binary) is a catch-all category for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and cisnormativity. People who identify as genderqueer may think of themselves as one or more of the following:

• having an overlap of, or blurred lines between, gender identity and sexual and romantic orientation.
• two or more genders (bigender, trigender, pangender);
• without a gender (nongendered, genderless, agender);
• moving between genders or with a fluctuating gender identity (Template:No redirect);
• third gender or other-gendered; includes those who do not place a name to their gender;

Some genderqueer people also desire physical modification or hormones to suit their preferred expression. Many genderqueer people see gender and sex as separable aspects of a person and sometimes identify as a male woman, a female man, or a male/female/intersex genderqueer person. Gender identity is defined as one's internal sense of being a woman, man, both, or neither, while sexual identity refers to an individual's enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction to others. As such, genderqueer people may have a variety of sexual orientations, as with transgender and cisgender people.

In addition to being an umbrella term, genderqueer has been used as an adjective to refer to any people who transgress distinctions of gender, regardless of their self-defined gender identity, i.e. those who "queer" gender, expressing it non-normatively. Androgynous is frequently used as a descriptive term for people in this category, though genderqueer people may express a combination of masculinity and femininity, or neither, in their gender expression and not all identify as androgynous. However, the term has been applied by those describing what they see as a gender ambiguity.

The genderqueer identity has been described as falling under the "transgender umbrella". However, not all genderqueer people identify themselves as part of the transgender community.

Gender terms

Some genderqueer people prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns such as one, ze, sie, hir, co, ey or singular "they", "their" and "them", while others prefer the conventional binary pronouns "her" or "him". Some genderqueer people prefer to be referred to alternately as he and she (and/or gender neutral pronouns), and some prefer to use only their name and not use pronouns at all.

Many genderqueer people prefer additional neutral language, such as the title "Mx" instead of Mr or Ms.

In July 2012, Gopi Shankar, a gender activist and a student at The American College in Madurai coined the regional terms for genderqueer people in Tamil during Asia's first genderqueer Pride Parade. After English, Tamil is the only language that has been given names for all the genders identified so far.

Gender neutrality

Template:Main Gender neutrality is the movement to end discrimination of gender altogether in society through means of gender-neutral language, the end of sex segregation and other means.

Out genderqueer people

• Chris Pureka, an American folk music singer-songwriter, came out publicly as genderqueer in a 2005 interview with Off Our Backs.
• Rae Spoon, a Canadian singer-songwriter, identified as a trans man for many years before adopting a gender-neutral identity in 2012.Template:Citation needed
• Jiz Lee, a pornographic actor, claimed in a personal blog post to have become more candid about being genderqueer at about age 29.
• Andrej Pejić, an Australian fashion model, does not use the term genderqueer, but publicly claims to identify as neither male nor female.
• Kate Bornstein, an American gender theorist, transsexual person, and author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (a book about being dissatisfied with binary models of gender) identifies as neither male nor female.
• Gopi Shankar (Gender activist) and a student of The American College in Madurai .He penned the world first book on Gender-Variants in Tamil and he is the founder of Srishti Madurai genderqueer group.

Discrimination and legal status

Template:Main In an analysis of respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey who chose "A gender not listed here", the majority of whom are genderqueer, it was found that Q3GNLH (Question 3 Gender Not Listed Here) respondents were 9% more likely to forgo healthcare due to fear of discrimination than the general sample (36% compared to 27%). 76% reported being unemployed, 90% had experienced anti-trans bias at work, and 43% had attempted suicide.

In May 2013, Australia became the first country in the world to recognize genderqueer identity. People who do not identify as male or female achieved formal legal recognition in Australia for the first time, after the NSW Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that everyone must be listed as a man or a woman with the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages. It has potential implications for many others, including babies who are born with ambiguous genitalia and people who do not identify as male or female despite having physical characteristics of a man or a woman. "This is the first decision that recognizes that 'sex' is not binary - it is not only 'male' or 'female'."

External links

• Androgyne Online, non-binary gender variants/variance
• Genderfork, photos and anonymous thoughts from genderqueer people
• T-Vox, support and information for genderqueer, intersex, transgender, and transsexual persons
• United Genders of the Universe a genderqueer organization
• What Is Gender?, "a support forum for transgendered, non_binary, and significant others"
• gender trender, a trans* positive space to explore and celebrate sex-gender diversity

Further reading

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