Gender identity

Aliagender

Not a mix of the two. Not the absence of one. A specific other thing — and "other" is the most accurate word you have for it.

Xenogender
Category
Xenogender
Pronouns
They/Them, It/Its
Read
6 min

Overview

What aliagender means.

Aliagender means other-gender. Alius is Latin for other. That is the entire word, and the plainness of it is the point.

It is not a blend of man and woman. It is not the absence of gender. Something is there. It is specific, it has a shape, it just isn't anywhere on the chart you were handed.

The word came from a Tumblr blog called askanonbinary, coined by a mod called Beck around 2013 or 2014, answering someone who kept running out of language. It was built for people who would have said "third gender" but didn't want to borrow a word belonging to a people they aren't from. You'll also see it spelled aliusgender.

That origin started an argument that has never fully closed. Some people said it was a whitewashed "third gender" anyway. Others, including Black nonbinary people in that same argument, pointed out that "third gender" is itself a label outsiders imposed on other cultures, and that picking your own word for yourself isn't the same act. Aporagender was coined partly out of that fight. Both words are still in use.

Be warned: this is a small word. There is no dictionary entry, no long history, no elders, no shelf of writing about what an aliagender life looks like. What follows describes the experience the word points at — not a documented culture. If a line doesn't fit, that isn't a test you failed.

A gender that is 'other'—specifically exists outside traditional concepts and is not defined by them.

Aliagender in one line

Origin

Where the word comes from

Aliagender (also spelled aliusgender) comes from the Latin "alius," meaning "other." It describes a specific, strongly felt gender that is neither a blend of man and woman nor an absence of gender, but a distinct third thing.

The term was coined by a Tumblr user named Beck, who described aliagender as "a gender experience which is 'other,' i.e. not a socially recognized gender, or a mix of socially recognized genders, but instead its own separate, unique gender." It circulated through the same Tumblr nonbinary-identity-coining scene that produced many other early-2010s microlabels.

Coined by
Beck (Tumblr)
Where
Tumblr

Signs people describe

Common experiences

None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.

01

"Other" on a form doesn't feel like the leftovers box.

It feels like the only accurate option anyone has ever offered you.

02

Asked whether you lean masculine or feminine, the honest answer is that the question measures the wrong thing — like being asked whether your height is loud or quiet.

03

You tried agender and it didn't hold, because something is clearly there. It just isn't either of theirs.

04

"In between" felt wrong for a reason you couldn't name at first: in between implies the two ends are relevant to you. They aren't.

05

You scrolled long lists of gender words hunting for the precise one, and eventually stopped, because the precise one was already "other".

06

People hear "other" and assume undecided, in transit, a placeholder.

You aren't working towards anything. You arrived.

07

You can talk for twenty minutes and the person still asks, "so which one is it closer to."

08

Being called sir and being called madam are both wrong, and neither is more wrong. That symmetry is oddly rare.

09

The best gender day you can remember was a stranger genuinely unable to file you — and instead of panic, something quiet settled.

10

You have no metaphor for it.

No animal, no colour, no season fits. It is simply its own thing, and that has always been the frustrating part.

Day to day

What it looks like on a normal Tuesday

Gender is not the first thing in the morning. It rarely is. It arrives when someone else brings it into the room.

The person at the counter puts the tray down and says "there you go, ladies." No rage. Just a small mis-filing, like being handed someone else's coat — you take it, you say thanks, you move on.

The HR portal has two options in the dropdown. You pick one. It takes half a second and costs something you can't point at.

By six a delivery driver calls you sir. By ten past, a neighbour calls you love. Both equally wrong, and on a good day slightly funny.

In the evening a friend says "you're basically just nonbinary though, right." You say yes. Tonight you don't have the energy for the smaller word, and that's a fair trade you'll make a hundred more times.

Most days nothing happens at all. No ceremony, no crisis, no moment of recognition. The absence of drama isn't evidence you made it up.

Across the parts of a life

Open the area you came here for.

Straight answers

What people get wrong

"Other" means you haven't worked it out yet.

It isn't a waiting room. For a lot of people it's the answer they landed on after years of trying the other boxes. Undecided has a restless feeling. This doesn't.

It's just nonbinary with a fancier name.

Nonbinary is the umbrella — not a man, not a woman. Aliagender is a narrower claim underneath it: not a mix, not an absence, a distinct thing. You are both at once. The wide word is for the world, the narrow one for detail.

If you can't describe it, it isn't real.

Not being able to explain your gender is not the same as not having one. Ask anyone to define "woman" without circling back to "woman" and watch how fast it goes wrong.

It's a made-up Tumblr word.

It is a word coined on Tumblr, around 2013, by a named person answering a real question. Every gender word was made up somewhere by someone. "Woman" was picked too. It's just older, so nobody remembers the picking.

It's stealing third gender from other cultures.

It was coined for the opposite reason — so English speakers stopped reaching for Two-Spirit or hijra. Some still argue it's a whitewash, and that argument is a decade old and genuinely unresolved. What is not in dispute: culturally specific genders are not open to outsiders, and this word is not a workaround for that.

You must want hormones, surgery or a new name.

The word describes what your gender is, not what you do about it. Plenty of people who use it changed nothing at all and told nobody.

Take care

On the hard days

The hardest part is usually not the gender. It's the size of the word.

Nobody has heard of it. There's no dictionary entry to point at, barely a wiki. You'll explain it and watch someone quietly decide you invented yourself on the internet. Sometimes they'll say so out loud.

Words like this one are the current joke of choice online, including from trans people who should know better. If you've seen a screenshot of your word being mocked by strangers, that lands far harder than it has any right to.

The 2am version goes: what if I made this up. The honest answer is that you didn't make the feeling up. You picked a word for it, and every gender word was picked by somebody at some point.

The other bad night is the unspecifiability. Everyone wants a comparison and you don't have one, and after the fifth failed explanation you start to wonder whether there's anything there to explain. There is. Being unable to describe your gender is not the same as not having one.

What helps, concretely: one person who uses the word without needing a lecture first. Writing down the times it was obviously right, because on the bad nights you won't be able to remember any. And lowering the bar from "everyone understands" to "nobody has to".

If it stops fitting, put it down. Words are tools, not vows.

Pronouns

Pronouns

The word says nothing about your pronouns. People who use it use they/them, he, she, it/its, neopronouns like xe or ey, two sets at once, or the pronouns they were raised with because changing them was never the point.

Some are out about the gender and not the pronouns. Plenty are the other way round. If you're testing options, say them out loud to yourself first, before you ask anyone else to.

All pronoun sets →

Consider another path

This might not be your word if…

  • 1You feel like a mix, or like you sit somewhere on the line between man and woman. That line is precisely the thing this word is not on. Androgyne or genderqueer will describe you better.
  • 2You reach inside and find nothing gender-shaped to point at. That's closer to agender or neutrois.
  • 3It moves. Man some weeks, not the next, nothing the week after. That's genderfluid, and it needs a different page.
  • 4You can say exactly what it is — a specific concept, creature, colour, sound. Then you want that word, not the word for unspecified other.
  • 5You're a binary trans man or woman, and "other" was simply the easier thing to say out loud first. A lot of people stop here on the way to a plainer answer. Nothing is wrong with either destination — but if "man" or "woman" would be true and only frightening, this word will start feeling like a coat that doesn't fit.
  • 6What you actually reject is the roles — the clothes, the chores, the assumptions, the way you get treated. Hating how women are handled is not the same as not being one. Many women loathe every rule of it and are women.
  • 7You're drawn mainly to the word itself, or the flag, or having a term nobody else in your group has. That wears off in about a year, and then you're holding a word that describes nothing.
  • 8You have a word from your own people that already names this. That word is yours, it is older, and it is more precise than this one.
  • 9You're not sure. That isn't a disqualification — but nothing is signed tonight, and you can put this down and pick it up again in a year.

Questions people ask

Frequently asked questions

Is aliagender just nonbinary with extra steps?+

Nonbinary is the umbrella: not a man, not a woman. Aliagender is one specific thing underneath it — not a mix of the two, not an absence, but a distinct other gender. You are both words at once, always. Most people use nonbinary in public and aliagender only when the detail actually matters.

Is aliagender a xenogender?+

It gets filed there, and plenty of people disagree with that filing. Xenogenders usually describe a gender by reaching for something outside gender entirely — a colour, a creature, a texture. Aliagender reaches for nothing. It also predates the popular use of the term, coming from the askanonbinary Tumblr blog around 2013 to 2014, coined by a mod called Beck. Nobody has settled it, and you don't have to.

Isn't "other gender" just taking third gender from other cultures?+

That argument is a decade old and hasn't ended. The word was made for the opposite reason: so English speakers who'd have said "third gender" would stop borrowing terms like Two-Spirit or hijra, which belong to specific peoples. Some argued it was a whitewash regardless, and aporagender was coined partly out of that fight. Others, including Black nonbinary people in the same debate, pointed out that "third gender" was itself a label outsiders imposed on other cultures, and choosing your own word for yourself is a different act. Both words remain in use.

Do I have to change my name, pronouns or body?+

No. The word describes what your gender is, not what you do about it. Plenty of people who use it kept their name, their pronouns, their body and their wardrobe, and told nobody at all. Others changed everything. Neither version is more real, and what you can afford and what's safe where you live will decide more of this than any feeling.

The flag

Nine stripes, a gradient running green through purple to orange, made by the Tumblr blog pride-color-schemes on 10 July 2016. Green and orange were chosen for the simple reason that they aren't pink and blue. A simplified version with fewer stripes and softer colours also circulates, for people who find the gradient hard on the eyes.

Sources

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