Demigender means identifying partly, but not fully, with a gender, alongside another gender or none. A demiboy is partly a boy or man. A demigirl is partly a girl or woman.
Definition
The rest may be another gender, no gender, or something the person has no word for. Demigender identities sit under the non-binary umbrella.
The clearest way in is to take "partly" literally. A demiboy is not a boy who feels insufficiently masculine, and not a boy in training. He is partly a boy, and that partial identification is stable and complete in itself. The rest of his gender is something else.
Demiboy, also demiman or demiguy: partial identification as a boy or man.
Demigirl, also demiwoman: partial identification as a girl or woman.
Demineutral or demienby: partial identification with a neutral or non-binary gender.
The words say nothing about sex assigned at birth. A demiboy might be assigned female at birth and be partly a man, or assigned male at birth and find that "man" only covers part of it. Both are common, and neither is the real version.
They also say nothing about pronouns, presentation, transition or sexual orientation. Some demigender people use he or she, some use they, some use several. Some transition medically, most do not. Some describe themselves as trans, some do not, and both are correct usage.
Is this me?
Things people who use these words often say they recognised:
"Woman" being true enough that you would not correct it, and not true enough to feel like a description.
Feeling connected to a gender without feeling contained by it.
Reading non-binary and thinking "yes, but I am not nothing".
Finding that agender does not fit because something is definitely there, just not all of it.
Seven-stripe symmetrical design: dark gray, light gray, light yellow, white, light yellow, light gray, dark gray. The grays mark the partial or absent part of the gender, the yellow marks the non-binary part, and the white centre marks non-binary or agender identity. This is the umbrella flag for demigender as a whole. Demigirl and demiboy use the same layout and swap the yellow for pink or light blue.
No colour codes have ever been published for any flag in this family. The designs were posted without hex values and without stated meanings, and the readings above are ones the community settled on afterwards. We have not found a sourced set of yellow values in circulation, so the colour table here is empty rather than guessed. If you know of one, we would like to see it: see our sources page.
Attribution is unsettled. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki at lgbtqia.fandom.com credits this design to Salem, Tumblr user @transrants, whose demigirl and demiboy flags were posted on 18 February 2014 and reuploaded to the Pride-Flags archive on 4 July 2015. The separate wiki at lgbtqia.wiki instead credits Tumblr user alexander--the-great, with an earliest sighting of 21 June 2013. We name neither as settled. The credit to a Tumblr user called microliths, which circulates widely, has no source behind it that we can find.
From the Latin prefix demi, half, attached to gender, boy and girl. The prefix carries the same meaning it does in demisexual and demiromantic, and points at partiality rather than deficiency.
Demigender vocabulary emerged from genderqueer and non-binary online communities in the early 2010s, principally on Tumblr, in the same wave that produced genderflux, the xenogender vocabulary and much of the rest of the non-binary lexicon in current use. As with most terms from that period, no individual coiner is documented.
History
These terms arrived at a specific moment: after non-binary had become an established umbrella but while the vocabulary underneath it was still thin. The available options were roughly binary trans, agender or genderqueer, and a substantial number of people found that none of the three described a partial, stable relationship to one gender.
Demigender terms now appear consistently in community surveys of non-binary identity language, including the annual Gender Census, which has tracked term usage since 2013 and reports demiboy and demigirl among the more widely used specific identity words.
The demigender, demiboy and demigirl flags
All three have seven horizontal stripes in a symmetrical arrangement: grayscale at the edges, a coloured band either side of a white centre. The grayscale reads as partial or unaligned gender; the colour reads as the gender partially identified with; the white centre reads as non-binary or agender identity. The three flags share a layout and differ only in the colour of that band.
Demigender flag. The umbrella version, with light yellow in the coloured band: dark gray, light gray, light yellow, white, light yellow, light gray, dark gray. See the demigender flag page.
Demiboy flag. Dark gray #7E7E7E, light gray #C3C3C3, light blue #9AD9F2, white #FFFFFF, then light blue, light gray and dark gray again. See the demiboy flag page.
Demigirl flag. Dark gray #7E7E7E, light gray #C3C3C3, light pink #FFADCA, white #FFFFFF, then light pink, light gray and dark gray again. See the demigirl flag page.
The demigirl and demiboy designs are credited to Salem, Tumblr user @transrants, who posted the two together on 18 February 2014; both were reuploaded to the Pride-Flags archive on 4 July 2015. Attribution for the yellow umbrella flag is less settled, and the wikis that cover it disagree, so we name nobody for that one. Salem published the flags without colour codes and without stated meanings, which means the hex values above, and the reading of each stripe, are community convention rather than anything official. No sourced set of values is in circulation for the yellow, so that flag's page carries no colour table. If you have a dated original, we would like to see it: see our sources page.
Common myths
Myth: demigirl just means a woman who is not very feminine
Gender expression and gender identity are separate axes. A demigirl can be extremely feminine. The partial part is about identity, not about how girly anyone is.
Myth: it is a stepping stone to a binary trans identity
Some people do move on from it. Many do not, and describe demigender as a settled long-term identity. Treating every non-binary identity as a stage on the way to a binary one is the same argument that used to be made about bisexuality.
Myth: you cannot be partly a gender
The objection assumes gender is an all-or-nothing category, which is the thing being questioned. If gender is an internal experience rather than a box, a partial one is no more mysterious than a fluid one.
Myth: demiboy is the same as genderflux
They describe different structures. Genderflux is intensity that changes over time. Demigender is a stable partial identification that does not move. If both are true, demiflux is the word.
Myth: it is too niche to be worth a word
Demiboy and demigirl are among the most commonly reported specific non-binary identity terms in community surveys, which puts them some way from niche.
