generic genre-gender flag
Genre-gender is an umbrella term for gender identities that exist without any reference to biology or binaries similar to the term non-binary but with an additional emphasis on free association.
The term non-binary could be used to describe all the gender identities under the genre-gender umbrella, and all of those genre-gender identities are transgender identities, but where transgender describes not being cis, and nonbinary describes not being binary, genre-gender being neither cis nor binary describes an entirely new model in which to conceptualize gender.
etymology of gender
The name genre-gender is derived from two sources, the first being the etymological root of gender and the second being a reference to how people conceptualize genres of media etc.
When people hear the word transgender or trans they often associate it with the word transition, leading to a lot of the misconceptions surrounding transgender people being those who want / have had a transition of gender / sex but many transgender people have not had nor want a transition, they consider their gender to have been the same all along, or they are comfortable with their bodies. While the struggle to break those associations and replace them with the true definition of “on the other side of [cisgender]” it is a very difficult task, and so genre-gender is an attempt to embrace an affinity based free association model of gender and the name implies this using the word genre.
In order for a gender to fall under the genre-gender umbrella it needs to be framed and related to by free association, in other words a person may choose to associate with that gender freely, and so it cannot have any conditions, qualifiers or any kind of gate-keeping applied to it.
As genre-gender is intended to be based on free association there is absolutely nothing stopping you from identifying as genre-gender. However to avoid reproducing the confusion that is present in current gender terminology it would be best if certain implications accompanied this gender identity.
Such as:
- all genre-gender people are transgender
- you cannot identify as binary and genre-gender (binaries are not free association models)
- you cannot prevent anyone else from identifying as a certain genre-gender regardless of their biology.
Practically speaking the intention is to include the word genre in a person’s gender identity in order to (by implication) educate people on the genre model of gender. However that is completely optional, a person can identify internally and conceptualize their gender as being genre-gender without including the word genre in their gender identity too.
However should you wish to include it, do so in any way you choose, some options are…
- genre-[gender archetype] like: genre-woman, genre-man, genre-demigirl, genre-agender
- [gender adjective] genre-[gender archetype] like: nonbinary genre-woman, genderfluid genre-neutrois
- [abbreviation]-genre / genre-[abbreviation] like: pan-genre or genre-queer
The flexibility and compatibility with existing gender identities / adjectives allows people to keep the same identity words they are familiar / comfortable with and simply replacing trans with genre, and as all genre-genders are inherently transgender this adds more information without removing any of the previous information being conveyed.
The symbol for genre-gender is a circle with many smaller circles within it of various sizes. the inner circles are each colored using colors from existing gender identity flags but the inner circles could alternatively be all white or transparent.
genre-gender symbol
The three largest circles hold the colors from the transgender flag to communicate the inherently transgender nature of genre-gender. The smaller circles hold colors from other flags such as two versions of the nonbinary flag and the pangender flag. The center of the symbol has the green color present in the agender flag as including agender people in the genre-gender umbrella is core to the term.
This arrangement of circles is in fact a low level of detail fractal. Fractals are patterns that get repeated the more you “zoom” in, this particular fractal is called an Apollonian gasket and was chosen because a circle is easy to integrate into existing symbology as well as the appealing aesthetic and similarity between genres / sub-genres to the circle / sub-circles.
genre-gender flags
The symbol can also be included in the existing gender flags by being placed ontop of them, allowing people to specify that they identify as genre-gender in addition to whichever gender identity the flag would otherwise be representing.
genre-gender gender symbols
It is also compatible with the gender symbols that are widely known thanks to the circle shape.
genre-gender symbol is a fractal implying infinite genders
Genre-gender is compatible with a transhumanist society, when everybody ise able to have any gender expression they want there will be no practical use of cisgender or binary gender language, nor even language that communicates a negation of such, rather we will use language that communicates our gender affinities and genre-gender is already making use of that language. This makes it particularly well suited to fictional future utopias as an alternative to portraying then-obsolete concepts like the gender-binaries.