Low-poly illustration of a person representing the Intergender identity

Gender identity

Intergender

A gender that sits between man and woman rather than outside them — and a word much of the intersex community says belongs to intersex people alone.

Non-Binary
Category
Non-Binary
Pronouns
Any set
Read
6 min

Overview

What intergender means.

Intergender names a gender located between man and woman — not outside the two, not the absence of both, but pulled by each and landing at neither end. That's the core idea across every version of the word, but the word carries two separate histories that don't fully agree with each other.

The first recorded use, from an internet newsgroup charter dated 1998, described intergender as an open umbrella for anyone who felt 'in between' or genderless, regardless of whether they were intersex. A second, later definition ties intergender specifically to being intersex — a gender shaped by having an intersex body in a world built around two sexes. Much of today's intersex community holds that this second meaning is now the only legitimate one, and asks perisex (non-intersex) people not to use the word at all.

This page tries to hold both histories honestly rather than pretend the argument is settled. If you are intersex, the word may belong to you in a way it doesn't for others. If you aren't, you should expect to be asked to explain your use of it, and the people asking usually have good reason. There is very little first-person writing about daily life as intergender online — most of what exists is definitions and wiki entries rather than people describing their lives — so this page stays close to what is actually documented.

A gender identity located between man and woman. Carries two distinct histories: an older, open definition of 'in-between', and a newer one tying the gender directly to being intersex — which many intersex people argue is now the only legitimate use.

Intergender in one line

Origin

Where the word comes from

The word's first recorded use was in an internet newsgroup, alt.support.intergendered, created before 1998 by Donna Lynn Matthews, herself intergender and perisex. Its 1998 charter defined intergendered people as those who 'do not gender themselves as men or women, but somewhere in between, as a mix of both masculine and feminine qualities', explicitly open to anyone, intersex or not. That open, non-exclusive meaning was the dominant one for years afterwards. A separate, later definition emerged tying intergender specifically to intersex experience, and much of the intersex community has since argued that this is the only definition that should stand — leaving the earlier, general-audience meaning treated by many as obsolete.

First recorded
1998
Where
alt.support.intergendered newsgroup

Signs people describe

Common experiences

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

01

Someone says 'so you're basically neither' and it lands wrong — you aren't outside the two poles, you're somewhere between them and can feel the pull of both.

02

Being called a man feels off by a measurable distance; being called a woman feels off by a different measurable distance. Both are near-misses rather than nonsense.

03

You find 'how much of each' an easier question to answer than 'which one'.

04

Androgyne felt close but too tied to how you look, rather than to where you actually sit.

05

Being read as ambiguous in public doesn't feel like a failure to fix — it feels like the nearest anyone gets to accurate.

06

Multiple pronoun sets don't feel like hedging to you; they feel like coverage for a position between two points.

07

If you're intersex: your sense of gender doesn't come apart cleanly from your body's medical history — the appointments, the file, the words used about you before you could answer back.

Pronouns

Pronouns

There is no single intergender pronoun. People who use the word use he, she, they, a mix, neopronouns such as xe or ey, or none at all — some prefer their name repeated instead of any pronoun. Mixed sets, like he/they or she/they, are common and usually aren't hedging: they're a way of keeping both poles visible at once. If someone tells you theirs, use it.

All pronoun sets →

Consider another path

This might not be your word if…

  • 1If your gender is unrelated to being intersex and you aren't intersex yourself, many intersex people would ask you to consider a different word, given how contested this one is — midgender is one alternative some community wikis point to for the older, open 'in-between' meaning.
  • 2If what you feel is the absence of gender entirely, rather than a position between two genders, that's closer to agender than intergender.
  • 3If you move between two distinct, nameable genders rather than sitting at a steady point between them, that's closer to bigender or genderfluid.
  • 4If your gender identity is intersex-linked but specifically about being both nonbinary and intersex, some people use the narrower term internon instead, coined in 2022 specifically for that combination.

Questions people ask

Frequently asked questions

Is intergender only for intersex people?+

This is genuinely contested. Much of the intersex community argues yes — that intergender should name a gender shaped by being intersex, and that non-intersex people shouldn't use it. Historically, though, the word was coined in 1998 as an open term available to anyone who felt 'in between', regardless of sex characteristics. Both positions are held by real people today, and this page can't declare a winner.

Is intergender the same as intersex?+

No. Intersex describes variations in a person's chromosomes, hormones or anatomy — it's about the body. Intergender describes a gender identity. Intersex people can be men, women, non-binary, intergender or anything else; being intersex doesn't automatically make someone intergender.

Does intergender mean feeling 50% man and 50% woman?+

Not necessarily. Most people using the word describe a position between the two poles rather than a fixed split, and that position doesn't have to sit exactly in the middle.

Why do some people call the general 'in-between' definition obsolete?+

Because a real shift happened in how the word is used: the 1998 open definition has been widely displaced by the intersex-linked one within intersex-led spaces, and a separate word, midgender, now exists for the older, non-exclusive meaning of simply feeling in between man and woman.

Is there an intergender flag?+

Several flags exist, none from a single agreed source — including one credited to Interpunked and CripDeaf, a simplified version by Intervex, and others by different designers. Because there are multiple competing flags rather than one adopted standard, this page doesn't present any single one as definitive.

The flag

Multiple intergender flags exist from different designers (including versions credited to Interpunked and CripDeaf, and a simplified redesign by Intervex), but no single flag has emerged as the agreed community standard, so no one set of colours is given here as definitive.

Sources

Illustrated group of people walking together towards the gender identity test

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