Overview
What postgender means.
Postgender describes a particular kind of nothing. The record puts it in one sentence: a feeling that one's identity has been heavily influenced and shaped by a gender that one no longer experiences. A postboy no longer feels his gender is male, but is still strongly connected to masculinity, or still made of it in ways he would not undo. A postgirl, the same the other way.
So it sits in the agender family — no gender now — with a direction the other words lack. Agender says nothing there. Exgender says out of it. Postgender says after it: there was one, it has gone, and the shape it left is part of you. The "post" is doing the same work as in post-war or post-industrial. What came before is over, and still visible everywhere.
The paper trail is thin and this page will not pretend otherwise. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki records the word coined on or before 24 June 2014 by a Tumblr user, a flag submitted to a flag blog, and postboy and postgirl flags by another Tumblr user. That is all. One warning: postgender is also the name of postgenderism, a political position that gender should be done away with for everybody. The record says not to confuse the two. This page is about a person, not a programme.
Your gender is gone, but the one you had left its mark and still counts in how you see yourself.
Postgender in one line
Origin
Where the word comes from
The identity postgender is documented by the LGBTQIA+ Wiki as coined on or before 24 June 2014 by Tumblr user Lamb777, with a flag submitted to the Beyond MOGAI Pride Flags blog and separate postboy/postgirl flags added later by another Tumblr user, the-dawn-prayer. Beyond that, the record is thin: no essay, no manifesto, just the definition and the flags.
It should not be confused with postgenderism, an older and unrelated transhumanist movement: the term was proposed in a 2008 paper by George Dvorsky and James Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, arguing that technology would eventually erode gender as a category for everyone. That postgenderism is a political and philosophical position about the future of gender in general; the identity postgender, coined six years later on Tumblr, is a personal description of having had a gender that one no longer holds.
- Coined by
- Lamb777 (Tumblr)
- First recorded
- 2014-06-24
- Where
- Tumblr
Signs people describe
Common experiences
None of these is a test. Most people recognise a few and shrug at the rest.
Someone calls you a man and it is not wrong so much as out of date, like being addressed by a job title from a career you left.
You still move through the world with the habits of the gender you had — the way you stand, the words you reach for — and you do not want them gone. They are yours. The gender is not.
Agender fits the present and misses the past.
Trans words fit the departure and miss the fact that you did not go anywhere new.
You can say "when I was a girl" without it being a trans sentence or a childhood sentence. It is just a true one.
You have tried to work out whether you are a man who stopped believing in it or something that was never a man, and the answer is the first one, and that is the whole word.
The question "what gender are you" gets a two-part answer: none, and here is the one that made me.
On the days you miss it, you are not sure whether you miss the gender or the certainty that came with it.
Pronouns
Pronouns
Usually whatever came before, or they/them. A postboy may keep he/him for the rest of his life without contradiction — the pronoun belonged to the man, and the man is part of him. Others switch to they/them to mark the change. A few use it/its. Nobody here is obliged to change anything, and nobody is obliged to keep it.
Consider another path
This might not be your word if…
- 1You still have the gender, quietly, and are tired of it. Tired is not gone. That is a man or a woman who hates the rules, and there are better pages.
- 2There was never a gender there to leave. That is agender, and it does not need a prefix.
- 3What you mean is that gender as a system should end for everyone. That is postgenderism, a politics, and you can hold it with a perfectly ordinary gender of your own.
- 4The gender went quiet when everything else did. If food stopped tasting of anything around the same time, give it a year before naming the absence. A gender that has gone flat often comes back.
Close by
Related identities
Exgender
Out of gender — left it, or was never in it, with no lasting mark and no interest in one. Postgender keeps the mark. If the past gender still counts for you, postgender is the closer word.
ReadAgender
The parent. No gender, full stop, and usually no history of one. If you cannot remember ever having a gender to lose, agender is the plainer fit.
ReadGenderless
Also nothing, described neutrally. Genderless has no before. Postgender is all about the before.
ReadGendervoid
A hole where a gender should be, sometimes grieved. Postgender can involve loss, but the space is not empty — it is furnished with what the old gender left behind.
Read
Demiboy
Partly a boy, now. A postboy is not partly anything — the boy is over. What remains is influence, not a fraction.
ReadQuestions people ask
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between postgender and exgender?+
Direction and residue. Both sit in the agender family and both describe being out of gender rather than simply without it. Exgender is the exit; it says nothing about what the old gender left behind. Postgender says the old gender still shapes you — a postboy is still connected to masculinity even though he no longer feels male. If the past matters, post. If it does not, ex.
Is postgender the same as postgenderism?+
No, and the record says so explicitly. Postgenderism is a social and political idea that gender should be dissolved for everyone. Postgender, on this page, is one person's description of their own gender: had one, no longer do, still marked by it. You can be postgender without holding the politics, and hold the politics with any gender at all.
Do I have to pick postboy or postgirl?+
No. Those are the two named versions on the record, and they fit people whose past gender was one of the binary two. If what you had was non-binary and is now gone, postgender on its own says it. The word is small enough that nobody is policing the sub-labels.
The flag
Lgbtqia.wiki says the flag was an anonymous submission to Beyond MOGAI Pride Flags; designer unknown.
Sources
- Postgender — LGBTQIA+ Wiki Definition, postboy example, "not to be confused with postgenderism", coinage on or before 24 June 2014 by Tumblr user Lamb777, flag submitted to Beyond MOGAI Pride Flags, postboy/postgirl flags by the-dawn-prayer. Fetched 2026-09-03.
- Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary — Wikipedia Background on the unrelated transhumanist postgenderism movement, proposed by George Dvorsky and James Hughes in a 2008 IEET paper, used to distinguish it from the identity postgender. Fetched 2026-09-06.
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