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Defining genderqueer:
Genderqueer is a term used to describe those who are non-binary and non-normative and may express their gender identity through diverse representations of both, either, neither, other or intermingled gender representations.
Examples include androgyne, agendered, neutrois, gender fluid, genderqueer, non-binary, girlfags and guydykes. These are not the same thing, but they are all similar in that they are non-binary and non-normative.
Breaking down the term leaves one with “gender” and “queer”. Consulting the Oxford Dictionaries Online definition for “gender”, a usage note reads: “Sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender refers to cultural or social ones”. Gender according to Oxford is defined as “the state of being male or female”, although as genderqueer communities and individuals show, there are plenty who have what they interpret as a gender identity that is not restricted to one of these two options. Unpacking gender as a concept is a difficult task since there are both psychological and socio-cultural elements at work in the shaping of gender identity. Further defining gender is a topic I must leave aside here, as it is too complex and wide-reaching for the scope of this project.
Next, “queer”, which implied an insult originally and can still be used in that sense today, is now more frequently used as an umbrella term to refer to LGBT rights and theory, as in “queer theory”, and to refer to all non-normative sexualities and gender identities[3].
Genderqueer identities don’t have a de facto connection with physical sex. There may be nuances and ties to physical sex concepts on an individual level, so there are non-operative and no-hormone, pre-op / pre-ho, and post-op / post-ho genderqueers. For example, a neutrois person may wish to dress in a neutral fashion not identifiable as masculine or feminine, or this may be accompanied with a desire “to lose the physical traits that cause them to be socially read and treated as”[4] men or women. Apart from some in group #5, as sexual orientation is tied in with gender identity for them, genderqueers can be of various orientations, hetrosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual and so on.
“Transgender”, while often considered an umbrella term for persons whose gender expression and identity is non-normative, an umbrella, as such, under which genderqueer may belong, is a term that tends to be associated with the binary identities of male and female, such as Female-to-Male (FTM, trans men) and Male-to Female (MTF, trans women), and with the process of transition, physically or in presentation, along binary lines. Identifying as transgender specifically may not express a genderqueer-associated or non-binary identity as clearly as the term “genderqueer” does, which may be seen as its own “umbrella” category as differentiated from, and overlapping with, transgender. Sexuality and law professor Nancy J. Knauer wrote in Gender Matters: Making the Case for Trans Inclusion (2007):
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