X-gender

The Japanese term X-gender is made up of an X indicating indeterminacy and the loan word gender, which is borrowed from English but may have somewhat different connotations from the English term. The international terms "transgender", "genderqueer" or "non-binary" or their Japanese-language equivalents were historically rarely used for such gender identities in Japan. As a result, the term became more widespread through use in social media and increased awareness of the gender discourse in public opinion. == Classification ==

X-gender is considered part of the transgender spectrum and is often considered a gender identity disorder (). Since "X-gender" encompasses a wide variety of gender identities, there is no clear definition of this category in terms of a specific gender; three subgroups are used by some queer groups but do not have the same mainstream reach: • : Individuals with characteristics of both sexes (bigender/androgyne); • : Persons with a gender identity beyond male or female (third gender/gender neutral); • : People who do not have clear sex characteristics (intersex) or do not want to be tied to one of the two gender roles (agender). The word component used in all of these designations means "gender" and refers to both biological and identity characteristics. In addition there is a fourth subgroup: • : Gender identity of a person whose gender identity fluctuates between two specific genders (genderfluid) The meanings of "transgender" and "gender identity disorder" originally referred to the change between the two sexes, from one to the other entirely (transsexuality). Part of the idea was also that there was only this dual gender, combined with a heteronormativity of the respective sexual orientation (opposite sex love). In contrast, Japanese X-gender offers an indefinite possibility of gender assignment outside of the two categories without questioning their binary or heteronormativity. and sometimes XtM and XtF, depending the gender identity • People born female are described as FtX analogous to FtM transgender people • People born male are described as MtX analogous to MtF transgender people ==See also==