Genderqueer

A gender identity (and umbrella term) for people who reject or blur traditional gender categories.

Definition

A gender identity (and umbrella term) for people who reject or blur traditional gender categories. Carries deliberate political and anti-assimilationist dimensions - rejecting not just the binary but the entire social system of binary gender enforcement.

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Etymology

Gender + queer (reclaimed from a slur). Emerged in queer zines of the 1980s-1990s.

History

Predates "non-binary" and carries specific political history. Riki Anne Wilchins popularized it in a 1995 newsletter to describe people "whose gender expressions are so complex they haven't even been named yet." Wilchins' 2002 anthology GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary was a landmark. Today some use genderqueer and non-binary interchangeably; others distinguish them - genderqueer carrying more political connotation.