Girlflux is genderflux with the anchor named. Your gender is a girl's, or a woman's, and what moves is how much of it there is: fully female some weeks, faint others, down to nothing at all now and then. It is not a girl who becomes something else. It is a girl whose girlness has a dial.
Genderfae is genderfluidity with one wall. Your gender moves — girl one month, something neutral the next, nothing at all the week after — but the masculine end of the range simply is not there. Not resisted. Absent. The two share that closed door, which is why they get confused. The difference is what happens behind it: a girlflux person on a quiet week is less of a girl; a genderfae person on a different week is something other than a girl.
How to tell them apart
- On the weeks you are not fully a girl, ask what you are instead. If the answer is "still a girl, only fainter" — same station, lower volume — that is girlflux. If the answer is "something neutral", "something with no name", a gender that is not a girl in any amount, that is genderfae.
- Try the word "less". Girlflux can be told entirely in it: more of a girl, less of a girl, none. If your other weeks are not a smaller amount of girl but a different thing that happens to also not be a man, you are past flux and into fae.
- Notice what a dress does on a low week. Girlflux people say it feels like someone else's, because the girl is faint. Genderfae people say it feels like the wrong species, because today the girl is not who is home.
More likely Genderfae
- It is more likely genderfae if some of your weeks are neutral, or unnamed, or nothing — a different gender rather than a fainter girl — with man never once in the range.
- It is more likely genderfae if you tried "genderfluid" and it fitted until someone assumed your range included manhood, and you had no short way to say "not that one".
- It is more likely genderfae if the movement feels like the ground shifting between places rather than one place getting louder and quieter.
More likely Girlflux
- It is more likely girlflux if girl is the only gender that ever turns up, and on the quiet weeks she is simply harder to hear.
- It is more likely girlflux if some weeks woman is the whole truth and you would fight for it, and other weeks it is a word on your driving licence — but never a different word.
- It is more likely girlflux if demigirl fitted the middle stretch and neither the top nor the bottom, and no other gender ever arrived to explain the bottom.
When both words are honestly available
- Girlflux runs down to agender at the bottom, and genderfae passes through agender on some weeks. Where the ranges overlap, some people honestly cannot tell from inside whether a nothing week is a fainter girl or a different gender, and use both words.
- Both are small, recent, community-made words with no research behind them. Using one is not a contract; if the pattern turns out to be the other one, you swap and nobody is keeping a register.
What people get wrong
Genderfae is just girlflux with a prettier name.
They describe different movements. Girlflux is one gender changing intensity. Genderfae is fluidity across several genders with the masculine end closed. A genderfae person can spend a month in a gender that is not a girl at all; a girlflux person is a girl throughout, at full volume or barely.
If you are never a man, you must be girlflux.
No. Never being a man is a fact shared by demigirls, agender people, women and genderfae people, among others. Girlflux specifically says the gender is a girl's and only the amount moves. If which gender changes, look at fae or fluid, not flux.
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between genderfae and girlflux?
- Girlflux is a girl's gender at changing strength: full, half, faint, gone, back, always a girl when present. Genderfae is genderfluid with manhood ruled out: girl some weeks, neutral or unnamed or nothing other weeks. Flux changes how much; fae changes which. Both never include man, which is why they get muddled.
- Can you be genderfae and girlflux at once?
- People do use both, usually when girl is the base that gets louder and quieter and there are also weeks of something else that is neither a girl nor a man. Neither word forbids the other. If one of them describes your whole range on its own, it is the easier thing to say, and genderfae is the harder of the two to explain to a colleague.