Overview
What genderless means.
Genderless means what it says. No gender. Not a neutral one, not a faint one, not one that comes and goes. The word is the ordinary English adjective, and that is most of why people choose it: agender needs explaining and genderless does not.
The record on the LGBTQIA+ Wiki treats the two as usually interchangeable, and adds that some prefer genderless because it shows more clearly that one does not have a gender. It also notes a second use: genderless as an umbrella over agender, gendervoid and similar words. Both uses are current. Nobody is going to rule on it.
What it is not: a mood, a politics or a style. A person who thinks gender is nonsense and would rather it went away can be entirely a woman. Genderless is a report about what is there when you look inward — nothing — not a view about what should be there for anyone else.
No gender at all — the plain-English word for agender.
Genderless in one line
Origin
Where the word comes from
Genderless is the ordinary English adjective — 'without gender' — and has no single coiner; dictionaries trace general use of the word back well before the modern LGBTQIA+ vocabulary existed. Its use as a specific gender identity, alongside or as an alternative to agender, developed later, growing out of the same 2010s online nonbinary communities that produced agender, gendervoid and related terms, with no individual credited as coiner of that identity sense.
The LGBTQIA+ Wiki treats genderless and agender as usually interchangeable, noting that some people prefer 'genderless' specifically because it states the absence of gender more plainly, and records a separate, later use of genderless as an umbrella term covering agender, gendervoid and similar identities.
Signs people describe
Common experiences
None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.
Someone asks how you feel about being a woman, or a man, and you realise the question assumes a thing you do not have.
Agender always needed a follow-up sentence.
Genderless ended the conversation, which is what you wanted.
Sir and madam are wrong in exactly the same way, and neither wrongness stings.
You read descriptions of dysphoria and found nothing to hang them on.
The body is fine. It is the label that does not attach.
You spent years assuming everybody was performing and was privately as blank as you. Learning otherwise was a genuine shock.
The gender box on a form is the one you leave until last.
You do not feel you lost something.
There was never a something.
Pronouns
Pronouns
They/them is the most common, because it says nothing. Plenty keep he or she out of habit, safety or family peace. Some use it/its by choice, which is theirs to pick and never yours to apply. Some want the name and nothing else. None of this is more genderless than the rest.
Consider another path
This might not be your word if…
- 1Something faint is there. If you would say "barely, but yes", that is demigender or greygender. Genderless is not a small amount. It is none.
- 2The blank arrived when everything else went flat, and food and friends went flat with it. Give it time before naming it. A gender that has gone quiet often comes back.
- 3You hate the rules bolted to your gender, and would still be a woman or a man with the rules removed. That is a person who hates the rules, and it is a different page.
- 4You do not care what you are. Not caring is gender apathy, which is about caring. Genderless is about having.
Close by
Related identities
Agender
A near-synonym, and the record says so. The difference is register: agender is the community's word, genderless the plain one. Many people use both and mean the same thing.
ReadNeutrois
A neutral gender, and for many people a wish for a neutral body. Genderless makes no claim about the body at all — it describes what is inside, and stops there.
ReadGendervoid
An absence with an ache: a gap where something should be. Genderless usually has no ache. The question simply does not apply.
ReadNull Gender
Another near-synonym, leaning on void and nothingness rather than plain absence. Pick by which word sounds like the inside of your head.
ReadGender neutral
Often a word about presentation, language or a stance rather than an identity. Genderless is an identity claim: not neutral, none.
ReadQuestions people ask
Frequently asked questions
Is genderless the same as agender?+
Usually, yes. The wiki treats them as interchangeable and notes that some prefer genderless because it states the absence more clearly. A few use genderless as a wider umbrella covering agender, gendervoid and similar words. In practice the choice is about which word gets you understood in the room you are standing in.
Is there a genderless flag?+
Yes, more than one. The wiki records a flag designed in 2021 with feedback from the genderless community: black and white stripes for the spectrum of genderlessness — void for some, no room for gender for others — purple for those partly male, female or both, green for those partly a gender that is neither, and yellow for the community. It also records an older flag posted on DeviantArt in 2016. The usual symbols are a circle with an X or a line through it, the second of which is shared with agender.
Am I trans if I'm genderless?+
You can be, if the word is useful to you. Trans as an umbrella covers people whose gender is not the one assigned at birth, and none is not what anyone was assigned. Some genderless people use trans, some use non-binary only, some use neither. No medical step is required to count and none is expected.
The flag
Several competing designs — psyfirecracker's 2016 flag (oldest, gender.fandom.com) vs feltedflyingfox's 2021 flag (lgbtqia.wiki's main image, exact date only in an unfetchable Twitter archive) vs masumi0wolfy's.
Sources
- Genderless — LGBTQIA+ Wiki Definition, the relationship to agender, the umbrella use, and the 2016 and 2021 flags and symbols.
Still figuring things out?
Twenty questions, four minutes, and a few words worth trying on.