Overview
What girlflux means.
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. The record describes fluctuating between feeling strongly feminine and weakly feminine, and the range can run from fully female all the way down to no gender at all. Same station, different volume.
The stops along the way have names if you want them: paragirl for mostly a girl, demigirl for partly, librafeminine for slightly, agender at the bottom. Some people slide between them; some jump. None of that is required reading. What is required is the anchor. Girlflux is not a girl who becomes something else. It is a girl whose girlness has a dial.
The record credits the word to Tumblr user kitsuneshay in August 2015 and lists femaleflux and womanflux as alternatives. Boyflux is the masculine equivalent and enbyflux the non-binary one. There is no research behind any of them. What it is not: it is not girlfluid, which moves between genders; it is not demigirl, which sits still at partial; and it is not a woman whose dysphoria has loud weeks. If the woman is constant and only the discomfort moves, that is a different and very common thing.
One female gender at a changing volume: fully a girl, faintly a girl, sometimes none at all.
Girlflux in one line
Origin
Where the word comes from
Girlflux was coined by the Tumblr user kitsuneshay on 19 August 2015, according to the LGBTQIA+ Wiki, as a female-anchored counterpart to genderflux — a term that already existed to describe a gender whose intensity fluctuates without the gender itself changing.
It arrived alongside boyflux and enbyflux as parallel anchored versions, and near a set of narrower 'stop' words — paragirl, demigirl, librafeminine — that some girlflux people use to mark points along their range from fully female down to agender.
- Coined by
- Tumblr user kitsuneshay
- First recorded
- 2015
- Where
- Tumblr
Signs people describe
Common experiences
None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.
Some weeks woman is the whole truth and you would fight for it.
Other weeks it is a word on your driving licence.
You own dresses you love and cannot always wear.
Not because they don't fit, but because on a low week they feel like someone else's.
Being called a girl lands as warmth on a full week and as nothing much on a faint one, and nobody did anything differently.
You have wondered whether you are agender, for about ten days, until it climbed back.
You keep a note, a calendar mark or a habit tracker that is not really about mood.
You have put off something permanent because you did not trust which week was asking for it.
The word demigirl fit, for the middle stretch.
It did not fit the top or the bottom.
Pronouns
Pronouns
She/her at every setting is common and not a cop-out. So is they/them, chosen precisely because it never needs updating. Some switch by the week, which needs people who pay attention. None of it proves or disproves anything.
Consider another path
This might not be your word if…
- 1Your womanhood is constant and your dysphoria comes and goes. Almost every trans woman has loud weeks and quiet ones. That is not flux.
- 2What changes is which gender, not how much. That is girlfluid or genderfluid.
- 3The flat weeks flatten everything: food, friends, music. That may be depression or dissociation borrowing this shape, and it deserves its own attention.
- 4You landed at partial years ago and have not moved. Demigirl fits a dial that is not turning.
Close by
Related identities
Genderflux
The umbrella, without the anchor named. If you always know the gender getting louder is a girl's, girlflux is simply the tighter word.
ReadBoyflux
The same dial on a boy's gender. Some people have both, a girl part and a boy part that each rise and fall, and then bigender or multigender may fit better.
ReadEnbyflux
The dial on a non-binary gender. If the thing that gets louder was never a girl's, look there.
ReadGirlfluid
Moves between female, neutral, androgynous and genderless, never male. Fluid changes which; flux changes how much. Many people cannot tell from inside, and some use both.
Read
Demigirl
Partly a girl, stably. Girlflux passes through demigirl on the way somewhere else. If you have sat at partial for years, demigirl is the more accurate word.
ReadGirlflux, side by side
Questions people ask
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between girlflux and girlfluid?+
Fluid changes which gender; flux changes how much. A girlfluid person may be a girl this week and neutral next week. A girlflux person is a girl throughout, at full volume then barely, sometimes down to none. Plenty of people are both.
Am I a trans woman if I am girlflux and was assigned male?+
You can use both words if they fit. Trans is a wide word for not staying where you were assigned, and a girlflux person assigned male at birth is not staying there. Some prefer trans woman, some non-binary, some just girlflux. Nobody checks.
Does girlflux mean I am non-binary?+
Most people file it under non-binary because part of the range is not fully a girl. Some girlflux women say they are women, full stop, whose intensity varies. Both positions are held by real people and neither is wrong.
The flag
Many competing designs; the most common (Pride-Flags) is dated only 'between September 2015 and July 2016'; the original by kitsuneshay (2015-08-19) is a PNG with no hex values.
Sources
- Girlflux — LGBTQIA+ Wiki Fetched. Definition, the agender-to-female range with paragirl/demigirl/librafeminine stops, alternatives femaleflux and womanflux, boyflux and enbyflux as equivalents, and the coining by kitsuneshay on 19 August 2015.
- Genderflux — LGBTQIA+ Wiki Fetched. The flux/fluid distinction (intensity changes, gender does not) and the girlflux example.
Still figuring things out?
Twenty questions, four minutes, and a few words worth trying on.