Gender identity

Neutrois

A neutral gender — not a man, not a woman, and not a mix of the two. For many people it comes with wanting a body that gives nothing away.

Agender
Category
Agender
Pronouns
Xe/Xem, Ze/Hir, Ey/Em, It/Its
Read
6 min

Overview

What neutrois means.

Neutrois is a neutral gender. Not male, not female, and not both at once. Where some people describe a gender they have, most neutrois people describe something closer to a setting of zero — a blank where the answer is supposed to go.

The word is older than people assume. It was coined in the mid-1990s by H. A. Lindsay, who ran a site under that name, long before the current wave of gender vocabulary. It spread through personal sites and blogs — Neutrois Nonsense was one of the best known — written by people documenting their own moves towards neutral, in detail, over years.

So there is real lived material behind this one. Not a huge amount, and much of it written by a small number of people, but it is not invented. What you will find is first-person writing rather than research.

The community has never agreed where neutrois ends and agender begins. Some use the two interchangeably. Others hold that neutrois specifically means a neutral gender plus a wish for a neutral body — removing sexed characteristics rather than swapping one set for the other. Both usages are in genuine circulation. Nobody is going to hand you a ruling.

It is also a word in decline. Plenty of people who would have said neutrois in 2014 now just say nonbinary or agender. If it fits you, expect to meet fewer people using it out loud than you would like.

One thing to say early: distress is not the entrance fee. Some people arrive at neutral through years of dysphoria. Some arrive calmly, notice it fits, and get on with their week.

A neutral or null gender identity. Often associated with a desire to reduce gendered characteristics.

Neutrois in one line

Origin

Where the word comes from

Neutrois was coined in 1995 by Holly A. Burnham (also cited as H. A. Lindsay/Burnham), who was active on Usenet at the time and formed the word to describe hirself and others experiencing gender absence alongside a wish for a neutral body. The word blends the French/Latin 'neutre'/'neuter' with 'trois' (French for 'three'), gesturing at a third category outside male and female.

It predates the current wave of internet-coined gender vocabulary by nearly two decades, circulating through Usenet, personal websites and later blogs such as Neutrois Nonsense well before Tumblr-era terms appeared. Usage has declined somewhat since the mid-2010s as many people who might once have used it now say 'agender' or 'nonbinary' instead, though the word remains in active use and was even named Wiktionary's Word of the Day on 8 November 2025.

Coined by
Holly A. Burnham
First recorded
1995
Where
Usenet

Signs people describe

Common experiences

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

01

Sir and ma'am land the same.

Not one better and one worse — both slightly wrong, in the same way.

02

When someone misgenders you as the other one, there is no secret flicker of pleasure. It is just a second wrong answer.

03

In photos the clothes are fine.

It is the shape underneath them that you cannot look at.

04

Your mental picture of yourself has no chest, no hips, not much jaw.

Closer to a shop mannequin than to anyone you know.

05

You want less body, not a different body.

The words that keep surfacing are flat, smooth, quiet, gone.

06

Compliments come in two piles — handsome and pretty — and there is nothing in either pile you want.

07

You have thought about what voice you would pick, and the answer is one that tells people nothing.

08

Clothes shopping is not wanting the other aisle.

It is wanting an aisle that does not exist.

09

You are calmer when nobody can tell.

Over text. On the phone to a stranger. In a heavy coat. In the dark.

10

Being read as androgynous is closer, but still off, if people are reading you as a bit of both rather than as neither.

11

It is not that you were born in the wrong body.

It is that there is too much body, pointing in a direction.

12

The daily reminders bother you more than the label does — a bra strap, a period, stubble, a morning erection, the sound of your own name.

13

You have ticked 'other' on a form and felt oddly fine about it.

14

When you imagine being fully seen, there is no gender in the picture.

Not a new one. None.

Day to day

What it looks like on a normal Tuesday

The first few minutes of the morning are often the easiest part of it. You have not been looked at yet.

Then dressing, which is not fashion but arithmetic. Which top does the least. Which trousers say the least. Binder or three layers or tuck or give up and wear the coat indoors.

At the café someone says "ladies" or "lads" to your table. You let it go, because correcting it costs more than absorbing it. You will absorb about nine of these before lunch and remember two.

Work email: a new client opens with "Dear Ms". You decide, again, whether this is a reply-and-correct day.

The toilets. Two doors, both wrong, and a calculation about which one gets you the least trouble today — which depends on the building, the city, your face and how tired you are.

Someone asks whether you are a boy or a girl, as though the sentence has an answer inside it.

Home, alone, the volume drops. Nobody is assigning you anything. For a few hours your body is just the thing that carries you around. That is the part you would like more of.

Across the parts of a life

Open the area you came here for.

Straight answers

What people get wrong

It is a Tumblr word someone made up around 2014.

It was coined in the mid-1990s, before Tumblr existed. It circulated on personal sites and mailing lists for over a decade before the current gender vocabulary arrived. You are allowed to dislike the word. You cannot call it new.

Neutrois is just agender with extra syllables.

They overlap heavily and many people use both. The usual distinction is that agender is an absence of gender and neutrois is a gender that is neutral — a zero rather than a nothing — and that neutrois more often comes bundled with wanting a neutral body. Not everyone accepts the distinction. That is a real disagreement in the community, not you failing to follow.

You have to want surgery.

No. The word grew up around physical transition towards neutral, which is exactly why it was useful — there was no other term for wanting sexed characteristics removed rather than exchanged. But plenty of neutrois people take nothing and do nothing. Wanting no medical steps does not disqualify you. Wanting many does not either.

It means androgynous — a bit of both.

Opposite arithmetic. Androgyne adds; neutrois subtracts. A blend of masculine and feminine is still made out of masculine and feminine. Neither ingredient is in this.

You are on the way to being a binary trans man or woman and have not arrived.

For some people gender does shift over years and neutral turns out to be somewhere they passed through. For most people using this word it is the destination. Being asked to justify it as a phase for twenty years is exhausting, and you do not owe the answer.

Wanting to be 'neuter' means you see yourself as an object, or that you have no interest in sex.

A neutral gender says nothing about libido, romance or how much you like being touched. Some neutrois people are asexual. Plenty are emphatically not. The two questions run on separate tracks.

If your childhood had gone better you would be fine with your body.

Neutral is not a wound. Some neutrois people had rough histories and some had unremarkable ones, and neither explains it. Being asked to produce a cause is usually a polite way of asking you to produce a cure.

Nobody actually uses this word, so it does not count.

It is genuinely less used than it was a decade ago, and that is worth knowing before you introduce yourself with it. A word going quiet is not a word being wrong. It just means you may end up explaining more often than you would with 'nonbinary'.

Take care

On the hard days

The particular hard thing about this one is that there is often no route.

Binary transition has a map. Gatekept, slow, imperfect, but a map. Wanting a body that reads as nothing has almost none. Few surgeons, fewer who will say yes, hormone plans you are half inventing alongside a doctor who has never done it, and endless forms with two boxes.

The second hard thing is being rare in the rooms that were supposed to be yours. Trans spaces often run on a binary story. Nonbinary spaces often run on androgyny and a bit of both. You can end up the only person present who wants less rather than different.

Then the days when nobody has read you right in weeks and you start wondering whether you made the word up to explain being uncomfortable. That thought is not evidence. It is what tiredness sounds like.

What helps is smaller than it should be. A garment that flattens the outline. One person who uses the right word without being reminded. The fifteen minutes before anyone has looked at you. Text-only conversations where you are a voice with no shape.

If it turns dark in a way that frightens you, tell someone — a friend, a helpline, a doctor you half trust. Being unusual is not the same as being alone, and the practical things (a name, a binder that fits, a GP who does not flinch) do more for a bad month than any amount of arguing about definitions.

Pronouns

Pronouns

They/them is the most common, but there is no neutrois pronoun. Some people use it/its on purpose — chosen, not thrown at them. Some use neopronouns like ey/em, xe/xem, ze/hir. Some keep he or she because it is safer where they live, or because pronouns simply do not carry much weight for them. Some ask for their name every time and accept the friction. None of this makes anyone more or less neutrois. Ask the person, not the label.

All pronoun sets →

Consider another path

This might not be your word if…

  • 1Your picture of yourself has both switched on — masculine and feminine at the same time, deliberately. That is androgyne.
  • 2You have a definite gender with texture and content to it, just not one of the standard ones. Look at maverique or aporagender.
  • 3What grates is the roles and the expectations, not being called a woman or a man. You may be a gender-nonconforming woman or man, and there is nothing small about that.
  • 4You would take being read as the other one, and it would be a relief. That is binary trans, and it is a different word with a different set of problems.
  • 5You like androgynous clothes and short hair and are otherwise content with she or he. That is a style, and styles do not need a gender label under them.
  • 6You genuinely have never cared what anyone calls you. Some people call that gender apathetic. Neutrois people usually do care — neither is the point, and man or woman still lands wrong.
  • 7It moves. Neutral on Tuesday, something else by Friday. That is fluid or flux.
  • 8Nothing in the body section rang true and 'neutral' is only about pronouns for you. That does not disqualify you — but agender or plain nonbinary may sit more easily than a word most people use with the body attached.
  • 9You are mainly looking for a word that gets you out of a category you are being punished for. Understandable, and worth saying honestly to yourself first, because a label will not do that job.

Questions people ask

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between neutrois and agender?+

The line most people draw: agender is no gender, neutrois is a neutral gender. A blank versus a zero. In practice they overlap heavily, plenty of people use both about themselves, and the community has never settled it. The most useful working difference is that neutrois is more often tied up with wanting a neutral body, while agender often makes no claim about the body at all. If neither definition sorts you cleanly, you are in the same position as most people who use these words.

Do I have to want surgery or hormones to be neutrois?+

No. The word grew up around people who did want physical steps towards neutral, which is precisely why it filled a gap — there was no other term for wanting sexed characteristics removed rather than swapped. But there is no threshold. Some take low-dose hormones, some have chest surgery, some want nothing, and some want things they cannot get where they live. The word describes a gender, not a procedure list.

Is neutrois a real term, or was it invented online recently?+

Real, and old by internet standards. It was coined in the mid-1990s by H. A. Lindsay and spread through personal sites and blogs long before the current gender vocabulary existed. It is used less now than around 2014 — many people who would have said neutrois then say nonbinary or agender today. A word going quiet is not the same as a word being made up.

What pronouns should I use if I am neutrois?+

Whichever ones you can stand hearing. They/them is the most common. Some people use it/its on purpose and mean it kindly about themselves. Some use neopronouns like ey/em or xe/xem. Some keep he or she for safety, or because pronouns carry little weight for them. You can test one for a fortnight somewhere low-stakes — a game, a new group chat, one friend — before telling anyone it is permanent.

The flag

Three horizontal stripes: white on top, green in the middle, black at the bottom. Green stands in for neutral because it sits opposite purple, the usual pink-and-blue mix; black for the absence of gender. The exact green varies between the versions you will find online, so do not worry if a swatch you see is a shade off. Its origin is not clearly documented.

Sources

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