Orientations & Identities – What types of gender identities are there?
Types of Gender Identities
Gender identities describe your inner sense of your own gender. Beyond woman and man, they include non-binary, genderfluid, genderqueer, agender, bigender, demigirl and demiboy, pangender and xenogender, as well as cultural identities like Two-Spirit.
What counts as a gender identity?
A gender identity is how you experience your own gender, which may or may not match the sex you were assigned at birth. It’s different from gender expression, how you dress and act, and from sexual orientation, who you’re attracted to. Cisgender and trans describe whether your identity matches your assigned sex. Many other labels sit under the non-binary umbrella.
How do you talk about someone’s gender respectfully?
Go by what the person tells you. Ask for their pronouns if you’re unsure, use the name they give you, and don’t guess someone’s gender from their looks. Labels can change over time, and that’s fine.
What types of gender identities are there?
17Agender
Agender describes people who don’t feel they have a gender at all, or who feel neutral about gender, rather than identifying as a man or a woman.
Androgynous
Androgynous describes a look, style or identity that mixes masculine and feminine traits or sits somewhere between them.
Bigender
Bigender describes people who experience two genders, either at the same time or moving between them, and it falls under the non-binary umbrella.
Cisgender
Cisgender, often shortened to cis, describes people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.
Demigirl & Demiboy
Demigirl and demiboy describe people who feel partly, but not fully, like a woman or a man, and both are identities under the non-binary umbrella.
Enby
Enby is a casual, affectionate short form of non-binary, from the pronunciation of the letters N and B, used for people whose gender is neither exclusively male nor female.
Gender Nonconforming
Gender nonconforming, or GNC, describes people whose appearance, style or behaviour doesn’t follow the norms their culture expects for their gender, whatever that gender is.
Genderfluid
Genderfluid describes people whose gender identity shifts over time, for example between man, woman, non-binary or something else, over days, months or years.
Genderqueer
Genderqueer describes people whose gender sits outside, between or beyond the usual categories of man and woman, often with a political, norm-questioning edge.
Neutrois
Neutrois is a non-binary gender identity describing a neutral or null gender, neither man nor woman, sometimes combined with a wish for a body that looks less gendered.
Non-Binary
Non-binary describes people whose gender is not only man or woman, but both, neither, somewhere in between or something else entirely.
Pangender
Pangender describes people who identify with many or all genders, either at the same time or in changing combinations, as part of the wider non-binary spectrum.
Third Gender
Third gender describes gender categories beyond woman and man that many cultures recognise, such as the hijra in South Asia, and legal options like Germany’s “divers” entry.
Trans
Trans describes people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, including trans women, trans men and many non-binary people.
Transmasc & Transfem
Transmasc and transfem are umbrella terms for trans people whose gender leans masculine or feminine, including trans men, trans women and non-binary people on either side.
Two-Spirit
Two-Spirit is an umbrella term used by some Indigenous people in North America for gender and sexual diversity, rooted in their own cultures and traditions.
Xenogender
Xenogender is an umbrella term for non-binary genders that people describe through concepts beyond woman and man, such as nature, animals, colours, sounds or feelings.