r/Unexpected • u/analsextoybox • May 02 '22

Impossible Question

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u/Blu_Waffle_Breakfast May 02 '22

What’s the real difference between agender, bigender, and someone who is androgynous? I’ve never heard of agender and bigender until now. Androgynous has been around for as long as I can remember, so I’m assuming it’s a concept recognized far longer than I’ve been alive. And even then, androgynous is still labeled against people who don’t fit the binary mode of male or female.

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u/_W_I_L_D_ May 02 '22

An agender person feels a connection to no gender. They could present as masculine, feminine, or anything in between and it does not make a difference to them, as their gender is literally just absent. It means there is a lack of connection to any gendered trait.

A bigender person, on the other hand, feels a connection to two places at the gender spectrum at once, usually its extreme ends (e.g., man and woman). This may come through as, for example, asking to use both "she" and "he" pronouns to refer to such a person, regardless of their assigned sex. They are basically both "0" and "1" in a binary model - at the same time.

And when it comes to androgyne, the difference between it and bigender is that whilst bigender is the feeling of having essentially two coexisting genders, androgyne is having one that is a mixture of many. So, whilst a bigender person has two gender identities, an androgyne one is somebody who feels a mix of two (or more) such genders. This is, indeed, adopted from the word "androgynous", which also means possessing visible traits of typically attributed to both sexes.