anon: Hi, could you tell me the difference between a neogender and xenogender? I’m unfamiliar

radiomogai:

i’ll be honest: this is something i’ve struggled with myself a lot. while i definitely have a better understanding than i used to, i’m still not 100% confident in my explanation

that said! neogender is an umbrella term referring to any gender coined after 2000. some people place the cut-off date as 2010 or so, but i believe most people consider it to be 2000. beyond this, there is no other criteria for something to be a neogender. is it a gender that was coined after 2000? if yes, it’s a neogender. if no, it’s not a neogender

xenogender is much harder to define, largely because the definition has changed drastically over time. common definitions are:

• xenogender is an umbrella term for any gender referring to objects, concepts, plants, animals, and other atypical gender experiences
• xenogender is an umbrella term for any gender that can’t be explained in human gender terms, or genders related to nonhumanity
• xenogender is an umbrella term for autonomous gender identities related to external concepts. xenogender is an inherently personal identity

my personal favourite is the third one! for clarification, autonomous means that the gender is distinct and exists separately from other gender concepts, such as masculinity, femininity, luxinity, agenity, etc. external concepts means that it relates to something outside of the self, such as objects, plants, colours, etc. being inherently personal means it’s experienced and defined differently by each xenogender person

while this is, in my opinion, the best definition of xenogender that we have, i’m aware it isn’t exactly easy to understand. unfortunately, such is the nature of gender. i’m taking a sociology of gender course next semester and if i learn anything in that class that does clear stuff up, rest assured, i’ll be posting about it here lol

xenogender was coined in 2014, which does make xenogender itself a neogender. neogender, however, is not an autonomous gender identity related to external concepts; it’s simply any gender that was coined after 2000. you know how every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square? it’s like that. every xenogender is a neogender, but not every neogender is a xenogender. if y’all know of any xenogender that isn’t a neogender, please do let me know, i’d be curious

so, to recap: a neogender is a gender coined after 2000. a xenogender is a personal and autonomous gender related to external concepts. all xenogenders are neogenders, but not all neogenders are xenogenders

i hope that helps!! here are some posts that helped me with my own understanding of this, if you would like to check them out. if you need any clarification, have any other questions, etc, please let me know!!! MOGAI is my special interest and i utterly love talking about it and answering questions. i am a MOGAI encyclopedia

first post (link), second post (link), third post (link)

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