Neutrois names a particular gender: a setting of zero, not male and not female and not both at once, closer to a blank than a mix. It's an old word by internet standards, coined in the mid-1990s, and it usually describes a gender people hold, sometimes alongside wanting a body that reads as neutral too.
Transneutral is broader. It covers any trans person whose gender is neutral, abinary or unaligned, and it also gets used to describe a transition — medical or social steps that head towards neutral rather than towards masculine or feminine — separately from whatever gender the person actually holds. So a neutrois person who is transitioning is transneutral in both senses; someone could also be transneutral in the transition sense while calling their gender something other than neutrois.
How to tell them apart
- If someone says "I'm neutrois", they're naming their gender directly. If someone says "I'm transneutral", check whether they mean their gender or their transition — the word does double duty.
- Neutrois carries more history and a specific feel: a deliberate blank, often tied to wanting a body without gendered markers. Transneutral is more of a category label, useful for sorting rather than for describing the texture of the gender itself.
- Ask whether the person is also describing hormones or surgery aimed at neither masculinising nor feminising. That's the transition sense of transneutral, and neutrois doesn't automatically imply it.
More likely Transneutral
- You want a word that names the direction of a transition — steps that aren't masculinising or feminising — without necessarily naming a fixed gender underneath.
- You're trans and your gender is unaligned or abinary, but neutrois specifically doesn't feel like an exact fit.
- You want the MtN/FtN shorthand that comes with transneutral to describe where you started and where you're headed.
More likely Neutrois
- "Zero" or "blank" describes your gender better than "a mix" or "both" would.
- You want a word with real depth of lived writing behind it — Neutrois Nonsense and similar blogs — rather than a newer or more general term.
- You're less interested in the transition itself and more interested in naming the gender you hold, regardless of what steps you have or haven't taken.
When both words are honestly available
- Both point away from masculine and feminine altogether, rather than combining them — that's what separates them from androgyne or bigender.
- Someone can honestly use both words at once: neutrois as the gender, transneutral as the umbrella category that gender sits inside, given they're also trans.
What people get wrong
Transneutral always means someone's gender is neutrois.
Not necessarily. Transneutral can describe a transition's direction on its own, while the person's gender goes by a different name entirely.
Neutrois is just a synonym for agender.
They overlap and neutrois is often filed under agender, but neutrois specifically implies a neutral gender — a zero point — rather than simply the absence of one, and often carries a wish for a neutral-presenting body.
Questions people ask
- Is every neutrois person transneutral?
- Only if they're also trans and identify that way — neutrois names the gender, transneutral adds the trans framing and sometimes describes the transition itself. Plenty of neutrois people use both words; some use only neutrois.
- Does transneutral mean you're not on hormones or haven't had surgery?
- No. It describes the direction, not the amount. Someone can be fully transitioned towards a neutral presentation and still be transneutral, just as someone can use the word with no medical steps taken at all.