#maverique culture asks

[maveriquecultureis]

maverique culture is feeling a weight lift off your chest when you FINALLY find pronouns that are right for you, especially when they're unconventional/neopronouns.

maverique culture is!

[this-is-exorsexism]

not an exorsexism ask

just think you obviously have a lot of negative things to see to run this blog n wanted to give you some positivity

pls listen to your favorite song today! be kind to yourself! eat something yummy! remember that you deserve joy n happiness n all the nice things!

flowers for u > 🌻🏵️🌺💮🌼🌻🏵️🌺💮🌼

also a four leaf clover 🍀

this is so sweet, thank you so much. 💛

giving this energy to people affected by exorsexism who follow this blog too.

just remember that being outside of the binary is a beautiful thing and there is no wrong way to do so. if you don't have a gender, you're beautiful. if you relate to the gender binary in some way, you're incredible. if your gender is neutral, you are amazing. if you have multiple genders, you are powerful. if your gender is fluid, you are marvellous. if your gender can only be described with concepts, objects or similar, you are radiant. if you have a partial gender, you are perfect. if you don't label your gender, you are awesome. if your gender is not related to the binary, you are outstanding. if you are questioning your gender, you are phenomenal. if your gender is specific to your culture, you are astonishing. if your gender is outside the binary and you don't identify as nonbinary, you are fabulous. if i didn't describe your gender here, you are still excellent and you matter so, so much.

shoutout to people who law gender leads to using terms that "don't go together". shoutout to nonbinary cis people, to enbyhets, to lesboys, to turigirls, to afab transfems, to amab transmascs, to boygirls. i love all of you.

shoutout to people whose genders lead to using terms that don't get much visibility. shoutout to trixics, torics, enbians, cenelians, maveriques, neutrois people, diamorics, pera people and so many more. i love you so much.

shoutout to people who avoid any gendered terms altogether. shoutout to people who just want to be called a person. shoutout to people who don't use gender-specific orientation terms. i love you, always.

shoutout to people outside the binary whose experience is often overlooked. shoutout to Black people, indigenous people and other people of colour, to disabled people, to fat people, to intersex people. i love you forever.

i love this community and our infinite diversity so much. things often feel so dire for us but gosh, you all are so loved.

[themaveriqueagenda]

what's this blog about?

this blog is about maverique visibility, pride & celebration and anything else related to the maverique identity. vesper's (the person who coined the term) maverique blog has been inactive for a few years, so i decided to make one to give some visibility to something that a lot of people only treat as a hypothetical. for maverique culture, please go to @maveriquecultureis.

on this blog, you're welcome to ask questions, be proud, be visible, be you.

who runs this blog?

i'm Delta and my pronouns are they/them. i'm asexual, omni, fat, disabled, white and of course maverique. i've been out as maverique since 2018.

what is maverique?

in short, maverique is a gender that is disconnected from manhood, womanhood, neutrality and anything derived from them, without being genderless. for further reading, i recommend the coining post.

[ballsalsda]

Hi there !! I'm currently researching a paper on xenogenders and queer online culture, and I wanted to reach out to a few people in the community to ask about their experiences. If you're up for it, I would love to hear about your gender identity and journey. /pos /gen (And if you answer, are you comfortable with being quoted with credit?) ^^

Sure! You can quote me with credit. But this is a long story that might have gaps where I don't remember stuff clearly.

So. I was assigned male at birth, and I identified with that for a long time. I'm even pretty comfortable with masculine terms now. I think it all started when my sibling came out as non binary. I was confused and I didnt know you could do that, so I was kind of a bitch about it from deadnaming to misgendering.

I used to go on the r/lgballt subreddit on reddit and look at all the funny comics. This is probably where I learned a lot of the labels and basics on being non binary. I started to identify as a demiboy when I was a little 9 year old or somewhere around that. I thought I was non binary, but I was comfortable with my AGAB. I searched around a bit (looked at a single quora thread) and concluded that I was a demiboy.

I learned about a lot of stuff through Pinterest and all the lgbtq+ wikis. I went through a lot of identities, but the one that really stuck with me was neoboy. If you've never heard of it, neoboy according to lgbtqia.wiki is "a gender with a connection to masculinity, but in a way that's largely different from how most boys/men are connected to masculinity. Neoboy is a non-binary identity that is mostly separate from being male, though it can be described as a gender that is masculine-aligned, neutral-aligned, mingender, and/or miaspec." This was it. I felt like a boy in a non-binary way.

After a lot of switching around, I came to realize that a lot of the genders I was using were mainly masculine aligned, neutral aligned, or really anything not feminine. I found the term gendersatyr on reddit before that, and I remembered that and used the term. Gendersatyr, according to gender.fandom.com, "Gendersatyr is a form of genderfluidity that does not encompass genders that are fiaspec, fingender, or binary womanhood. This identity primarily encompasses xenogenders and uncommon genders, but can/does include other genders as well."

I dont remember when I learned about xenogenders, but it was pretty early on in my journey. I paid no attention to them since I thought they didnt quite fit me. I don't remember what my first xenogender was, but according to Pinterest the first one on my gender identity board was mossgender. I know purplegender was also a big one back then.

My gender board is pretty big, and on my new Pinterest account it's also pretty big. I know a big part of my gender used to be the deep sea. Now that i think about it, abimegender was probably my first xenogender. Instead of quoting the first paragraph in this post, you can read about it here: https://gender.fandom.com/wiki/Abimegender

I also identified as a neoboy maverique for a while before what I'm about to talk about. I mean neoboy maverique as in like I identified with masculine terms and felt "masculine" but I don't really know what it means to be a boy. There probably would've been a better label for that. I think neoboy alone would've accomplished that meaning.

Recently I joined the alterhuman community. I'm an otherlinker and my linktype is a supermassive black hole. My connection to my identity as a black hole seemed to influence my gender a lot. I felt like my gender was tied to black holes. I felt like I was seeing my gender through the lense of a black hole. This leads up to one big thing.

I like to think of my gender as a black hole. I don’t experience my gender the same way my friends, peers, adults, or really anyone I know in real life does. I do call myself a boy, male, etc., but I don’t actually think I am that. Whatever that is. I feel like my gender started simple, I used to identify with the terms used on me, but as I explored what that really means, my gender got more and more complicated that it eventually imploded on itself and now it acts like a black hole. There’s the singularity, with every gender I once identified with compressed into a 0 dimensional, infinitely dense point. This is the core of my gender identity. There’s then the event horizon, that seeks to swallow any gender it can and integrate that into my identity somehow. I think of my gender in points of time. There’s the pre-supernova, before my gender imploded and became this weird black hole. There’s the supernova, which is not really any point, but a gradual shift in my identity. And then my post-supernova self, who I am now, the black hole, and how my supernova and pre-supernova identities affected how the black hole turned out. This is where things get confusing. This is where you have to stop thinking in terms of male, female, non binary, masculine, feminine, neutral, or androgynous to truly understand. My gender is everything and nothing at the same time. My gender can’t be defined in relation to male or female. My gender exists in a vacuum, not in relation to the social constructs created. My gender is a black hole, but it is also a neutron star, outer space in general, it’s the color pink, it’s the color purple. I’m agender, I’m pangender. I'm gender neutral, but I’m also completely atrinary. I’m aporagender but masc at the same exact time. I’m androgynous. I’m feminine. I’m a femboy. This is why gendered terms don’t work on me. At my core, my gender is some weird Thing. It’s a hideous black hole that hurts to look at. It’s mentally damaging to look at, but you can’t take your eyes off it. It’s like the sun in that way. This is my experience with gender, and it’s why I’ve started to shift towards exclusively using xenine expressions to describe my gender ever since the supernova.

That was a really long paragraph that probably doesn't even make much sense, but that's how I really feel in the present moment. I'm exclusively xenine, but I'm only out to like 3 of my friends, and 2 of them I've only explained the basics (that I'm non binary). I don't feel safe coming out around really anyone or opening up about my feelings to anyone except one of my friends. She's the most supportive imo.

It would be a handful to explain my gender to anyone in my classes and I would probably get laughed at. No one really understands how hard it is to figure out your gender when you're autistic with a sense of gender not tied to male, female, or even non binary terms at all since most of the non binary terms describe their enby-ness (is that a word?) in relation to how the gender binary doesn't fit them.

I feel as if it's important to describe my gender as in how it doesn't work with the system we've put in place, but I feel it's also very important to explain how your gender feels, and stop comparing your gender to the binary for a second to explain how your gender feels. I use xenogenders for this and it's really helped me because I can use black holes as a metaphor for my abomination of a gender.

I have synesthesia, and that has affected my geder because it lets me visualise my identity. I think that's the main reason on why I use xenogenders. Because I know what my gender looks like, and I need non-gendered concepts to explain it. My gender is pink, my gender is purple, my gender looks like a black hole and functions like a blck hole, my gender is so much more.

Most of the hate xenogenders get is mainly from misunderstanding how they're used. They think using a xenogender means you are that, not your gender. They think you think you are the color purple, not that your gender is purple. And I think thats a difference that's not highlighted enough.

TL;DR (aka: the labels I use today, coined by me or not coined by me): I am a xenine aligned person that uses many xenogenders. They are: blackholegender, pinkgender, purplegender, spacegender, dirkcharic (referring to dirk from homestuck), ragegender, and probably more. My gender is mainly personified by pastel colors (particularly 🩷←this pink) and black holes. In relation to the gender binary, you could say I am maverique/atrinary.

This is my experience with gender, and I hope it was enough and not too confusing. Thank you so much for offering me to infodump my identity, I didn't know I needed this and it honestly helped me figure some stuff out, not to mention I love oversharing on the internet.

[your-bigender-big-brother]

Here are some new honorifics I came up with! (And don't forget to check out this post that lists some already existing gender neutral honorifics.)

♡ General:

Nr. - "neutral"; can also pronounce as 'ner' Nb. - "enby"; can also pronounce as 'nib' Nn. - 'none', inspired by 'nonbinary' or being genderless Du. - "dual", inspired by having two genders Bd. - "blend", inspired by having two genders Tr. - "tri", inspired by having three genders Pn. - "pan", like 'pangender' or pan-anything Omn. - "omni", like 'omnigender' or omni-anything Ab. - "ab", like 'abinary' Mv. or Mvr. - "maverique" or "maverick"; can also pronounce as 'mav' Vd. - "void", inspired by 'gendervoid' Xr. - "zer" Xrs. - "zers"; can be a soft or hard S (The previous two can also be Zr. and Zrs.)

♡ Dragon Inspired:

Dra. or Drg. - "dragon"; can also pronounce as 'drag' Drc. - "draconic"; can also pronounce as 'drak' Hd. or Hrd. - "hoarder"; can also pronounce as 'herd' Fl. - "flame" Fr. or Fir. - "fire"; can also pronounce as 'fear' or 'fur' Wng. - "wing" Fng. - "fang" Str. or Stm. - "storm" Srp. - "serp", inspired by 'serpent' Wyr. or Wr. - "wyrm"

♡ Other Nonhuman Inspired:

Cr. - "cryptid" Rb. - "robot"; can also pronounce as 'rob' or 'robe' Cy. or Cb. - "cyborg"; can also pronounce as 'cy' or 'cybe' Mns. or Mtr. - "monster" Crt. - "creature" Om. - "omen"; can also pronounce as 'ome' or 'om' A. or Al. - "alien" Mg. or Mag. - "magic"; can also pronounce as 'maj' or 'mage' Amg. - "amalg", inspired by 'amalgamation' Atm. - "autom" like the beginning of 'automaton'

♡ Nature Inspired:

W. or Ww. - "willow" Asp. - "aspen" Pne. - "pine" Frn. - "fern" Flw. - "flower"; can also pronounce as 'flow' Stg. - "stag" F. or Fe. - "fae" or "faerie" (note that 'Fe' is the elemental abbreviation for iron, and iron is toxic to actual faeries. Might be good to keep in mind for faekin and fae headmates!) Flr. - "flora"; can also pronounce as 'fler' Fn. - "fauna" Lf. - "leaf" Bg. - "bug" Vrd. - "verd", inspired by 'verdant'

Do honorifics seem kind of silly? Well, besides the formality of them, they could work for anyone who might view them as a status. Fictives might have a certain ranking or status from their source. Otherkin might see their species as having some kind of required rank or formality based on the culture. Nonhumans in general might want to do away with any honorifics that refer to them as human, gendered or not. I think they could be useful and fun! 💙💚

Some example sentences below:

"This is Nr. Apollo and xe are visiting the local college to talk about xer experiences as an agender person. Have you been to one of xer lectures? I love to listen to xem talk. Go check out Nr. Apollo when you get the chance."

"Cy. Silver doesn't consider itself human and instead, it is robotkin! Its special interest is technology, old video games, and documentaries on animals. I hope Cy. Silver takes care of itself today!"

"Say hello to Str. Orion when you see em. Ey are headed to the store right now to get emself some new pencils. Ey really like to draw mythical creatures in eir sketchbook. If you ask, ey might show you some of eir work."

[lotus-flower-ebola]

Menacing intro post

Hey!! This is my attempt at an introduction post (brackets someone please be my friend)

Name - Raven (change over time but Raven is always good, it’s usually in my server name)

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Pronouns - Pronounfluid (change over time, please ask!)

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Gender - Genderfluid, Galactian Alignments, Maverique

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Orientation - Omni, Arojump, Ambiamorous

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Ethnicity - Hungarian (part Romani)

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Likes - Pokemon (special interest :)), art, music, medicinal herbs and plants, books, alone time, dogs, caramel flavored things, cheese pizza, slam poetry, poetry in general, Japanese culture and mythology, Hungarian culture, Made in Abyss, Land of the Lustrous, Vocaloid, Pjsk, HI3, Magical DOREMI, Touhou Project, Onibi series, Sister's story, Maha's story, Liar's story, Secret story, Seventh brother, Kemono friends, I am not okay with this, Devil’s candy, Nanbaka - the numbers, Flying witch, Danganronpa, Argo, Repo! The genetic opera, Heathers, Fack ju göhte (Suck me shakespeer), Üvegtigris, Macskajaj, Kontroll, Hell’s Kitchen, COPS, Kitchen Nightmares, Bar Rescue, internet drama, lolcows and similar media, Ghost And Pals, Shakespeare, Wuthering Waves, Magical Girl Raising Project

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Hobbies - making songs, daydreaming, playing the recorder, playing the djembe, biking, learning Japanese, playing video games, traditional art (pencil, watercolor), digital art, writing (books, poetry)

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Dislikes - Basic dni, rctas/ectas, endo systems, etc…

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DMs - mostly open

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Alt acc - @lotus-flower-rabies @lotus-flower-flu

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Extra - fav song: Shikyou Amanojaku/Ryan & Dave, fav artists: masa works design/Penelope Scott/rie20s, fav characters: Tsukuyomi/Arceus/Subway twins/Volo/Shikyou (there’s a lot but they have priority)

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Important - I am mentally unwell so please be careful around me if you don’t know how to deal with it, I get very defensive over my interests so just be prepared :{{, I HAVE DAs. I WILL BLOCK YOU IF YOU TALK ABOUT THEM.

I have anxiety, maladaptive daydreaming disorder and autism

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DNI - basic DNI criteria, proshippers/comshippers, if I know you irl and we aren’t close, assholes in general,

>>ANYONE WHO LIKES MY DAs. Automatic block.<<

I will use this blog as a sort of main account as I am way too lazy to make different blogs for all of my fandoms 💀

I might add more to this later on lol so

Lorem ipsum

[TAGS ARE FOR REACH]

SOMEONE PLS BE MY FRIEND.

[bloomshroomz]

Looking up terms you don't know is always a good place to start, because typing up a long list of definitions is a lot to ask of anyone. But here's a brief description of each term:

Abrosexual: Having a fluid sexual orientation. For example, being asexual at one point, straight at another, and bisexual at another.

Achillean: Being a man who is attracted to men, or a nonbinary person whose identity is adjacent to that experience. This is an umbrella term for gay men, bisexual men, pansexual men, nonbinary people who are gay for men, etc. Also known as MLM.

Agender: Having no gender, having a neutral gender, being neither a man nor a woman, or having another experience adjacent to these things. Usually not having a gender at all.

Alloace: Being alloromantic and asexual/ace-spec. In other words, experiencing romantic attraction regularly,* while experiencing little or no sexual attraction.

Aplatonic: Experiencing little or no platonic attraction, or having little to no desire to form platonic relationships/friendships.

Apl: Short for aplatonic. Pronounced "apple"

Aroace: Being both aromantic/aro-spec and asexual/ace-spec. In other words, experiencing little or no romantic attraction, and also experiencing little or no sexual attraction. This is not a synonym for "a-spec" and should not be used as an umbrella for all aces and aros. Asexual people are not always aromantic, and vice versa.

Aroallo: Being aromantic/aro-spec and allosexual. In other words, experiencing little or no romantic attraction, while experiencing sexual attraction regularly.*

Bigender: Experiencing two distinct genders, whether simultaneously or varying between the two.

Demiboy: Being partially a boy, but not fully. A type of demigender.

Demigender: Experiencing a gender partially, but not fully.

Demigirl: Being partially a girl, but not fully. A type of demigender.

Enbian: A term for nonbinary people who are attracted to other nonbinary people, whether exclusively or not.

Genderfluid: Having a fluid gender. For example, being agender at one point, a woman at another, and a bigender at another.

Genderflux: Having a gender which fluctuates in intensity. For example, having no gender at one point, being partially a boy at another, and being fully a boy at another. It is similar to genderfluid, but is more specific, as it refers to gender intensity in particular.

Genderqueer: Having a queer gender, or queering gender in some way. For example, transgender people, nonbinary people, gender nonconforming people, and cis people with a non-normative relationship to gender may identify as genderqueer. Often mistaken as a synonym for nonbinary.

Maverique: Having a gender which is not male, masculine, female, feminine, in between, neutral, nor derived therefrom, while also not being genderless.

Neutrois: Having a neutral or null gender.

Omnisexual: Being attracted to all genders, especially when one's attraction is impacted by gender.

Pangender: Experiencing all genders within one's culture and life experience, experiencing too many genders to count, and/or experiencing an infinite gender.

Polysexual: Experiencing attraction to multiple genders, but not all

Pomosexual: Rejecting or not fitting into conventional labels for sexual orientation, instead preferring a loose and undefined approach to one's identity.

Sapphic: Being a woman who is attracted to other women, or a nonbinary person whose attraction is adjacent to that experience. This is an umbrella term for lesbians, bisexual women, pansexual women, nonbinary people who are gay for women, etc. Also known as WLW.

Toric: A term for nonbinary people who are attracted to men, whether exclusively or not.

Trixic: A term for nonbinary people who are attracted to women, whether exclusively or not.

Xenogender: A term for genders which are not strictly defined in relation to manhood, masculinity, womanhood, or femininity, and instead use other terms to describe one's experience with gender. For example, instead of just saying "I'm not a man or a woman," a person might say "I'm catgender; my gender is like a cat."

_

*Regularly as in:

recurring at uniform intervals.

happening frequently.

happening on a habitual basis; usual; customary.

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This took a very long time to type; please just look up the terms you don't know next time. You can find all of these very easily by looking them up, with the exception of apl and toric, based on me searching each term in Chrome guest mode. For apl and toric, you need to add "lgbt" to the search ("apl lgbt" and "toric lgbt") and then you'll find them just as easily as well.

Also, you're going to find that people use terms you don't know about a lot. You don't need to know every term; just be respectful even when you don't understand.

Imagine

[soft-enbee]

the moon isn't a woman nor is it called she what are you on

Uhm, atleast in spanish (my mother tounge) the moon has a femenine gramatical gender. Its La Luna, not El Luna /nm

Also, is Artemis, a moon goddess (with a masculine sun counterpart in apollo) not something you are familiar with? Just to show that the concept that moon and femininity being associated is not something i made up, and has in fact been around since atleast ancient greece. (probably since before then, but im not familiar with every single culture out there)

Here is a link if you want to read about her.

Also, responding to the other ask. I double checked, and yes, im sorry, neutrality and maverique do not mix. Im sorry for the confusion. I meant "not man or woman or in between".

Im sorry that my language (lexicon?? Is that a word that applies here?) Is not perfect, English is my second language (Spanish is, im mexican) and even though i consider myself pretty good at it im not an expert.

Feel free to correct me about misuse of terms or language in the future, i am always looking to be better at communicating.

Better yet, correct me about anything im wrong on (with sources pretty please? I want to trust everyone but i must be wary, misinformation can run rampant these days! Plus, sources give me places to read up and be informed)

All i ask is you are kind in your corrections. I do not appreciate the the tone with which these two asks were sent. I just shared my subjective, empirical experience with my own personal gender, simply because i wanted to share my happiness! Being a demigirl is something i find joy in being, and i shared it in a space specifically made for demigirls to share their experiences.

(God im so nervous to post this please let this not blow up on my face)

[queerascat]

This is probably a complex issue, so apologies in advance if I have to send multiple asks, but I'm white l, and recently I have been identifying as Maverique, it is the best way I've found to describe my gender and it sits very well for me, but I had someone who was a POC tell me it was appropriative of POC cultures and was basically just 'white people taking it and making it okay to id as a third gender' and, while I disagreed with them and it was very upsetting, (pt 1)

I know it is not my place to argue with them over what is and isn't cultural appropriation. I'm not really sure what to do, because they told me it would be racist of me to continue id'ing as maverique and that I should use neutrois or something similar instead, but neutral terms aren't really accurate for how my gender feels, and it's not a absence of gender like agender is. (pt 2) 

 I'd figured I'd come to you, since you coined maverique and all, but in general i'd just appreciate another perspective on this issue? Because maverique is the best way for me to describe my gender, but I feel like it would be racist for me to ignore that I have been told it's cultural appropriation for me to id that way. (pt 3/fin)

oh, anon.... i’m very sorry to say that you are but the latest of many who have found themself in this situation that you’re in. it is a complex issue, although not necessary in the way that others are presenting it as. this claim that white people identifying as maverique is appropriation of “POC cultures”, with inevitable references to “third gender”, is a common one. it is a claim that people have made since the day i coined the word “maverique”; it is a claim that in fact goes well beyond maverique-- having most likely always been a thing within non-binary communities, used time and time again against any and every term / identity that has sought to distinguish itself from any and all connections to the gender binary.

this claim / accusation is so prevalent that i have already written a number of posts about my stance on this, both in regards to maveriques and in general:

※ anon: maverique kind of reminds me of third gender.※ me: ...yeah, no.

※ anon: that one term that’s like third gender is appropriative. use maverique instead, it’s coined by a PoC.※ me: ...yeah, no.

※ anon: ...but aporagender is racist because it’s the same as third gender, coined so that white people can use it too.※ me: ...people keep recycling these claims and arguments, but yeah. no.

※ me: here, have a rant re: maverique, aporagender, aliagender and third gender because i’m tired of this shit.

※ anon: thank you!※ me: *shrugs* the elephant in the room that is the non-binary community on Tumblr is annoying as fuck, so.

in short, identifying as maverique as a white person is not appropriation and anyone who disagrees can come fight me. no, seriously. they are entitled to have opinions that differ from mine, of course, but that does not entitle them to police someone else based on their opinions. the next time someone questions your gender identity or accuses you of appropriating “POC cultures” by identifying as maverique, by all means do reference or refer them to any of my posts. better yet, literally point them my way because i am more than happy to disagree with them on your behalf as well as my own and i couldn’t care less whether they’re white themself or not. when it comes to maverique specifically, i am beyond Tired of people spreading misinformation,trying to talk over me or use my race as a means of justifying usage of one word over another.

actually, i extend the above to anyone who finds themself in a similar situation as anon, be it in regards to maverique or aporagender, etc. while i am beyond Tired of dealing with this issue, i also have zero fucks to give anymore and will rehash my feels (and links) at whoever happens to be on the receiving end of them. also, ain’t gonna lie, for whatever reason i hold out hope that eventually someone will actually have an original opinion on this topic rather than simply repurposing the same old arguments all the time.

[maverique-culture-is]

hi!

this is a culture blog for Maverique folks! 

what is Maverique culture? send an ask in telling me! but in more serious terms for those who don’t know what Maverique means:

"Maverique is a term for a non-binary gender identity that is characterized by autonomy and conviction about one's inner sense of self which is not related to or derived from manhood or womanhood, but also is not gender neutrality or a form of agender.” 

sorry for tagging, but. @neptunic-culture-is @transmasc-culture-is @trixic-culture-is could I maybe get a promo? 

[gendercensus]

hi! i was wondering if you, as the one running this, would consider your data to be exclusively pertaining to english speakers, or if in the future you would like to have more opportunity for non-english speakers to participate? would you consider the lack of non-english/culture specific terms to be missing data, or is that not the sort of data you're looking for? would it make things too complicated to moderate/measure? (i got to analyze the data in stats class + it really piqued my curiosity!)

This is a great ask, because it’s brought up in the feedback box of the survey quite often and I have a lot of thoughts about it but I have just never gotten around to responding to it properly!

i was wondering if you [...] would consider your data to be exclusively pertaining to english speakers, or if in the future you would like to have more opportunity for non-english speakers to participate?

I am not 100% sure that I know what you mean by non-English speakers, so I will answer both versions of the question to cover all the bases!

I am very happy for people who speak languages other than English to participate, and I specify in the survey: “It's okay to enter non-English words that you would use to describe yourself while speaking English.” That’s how languages grow, right? Words get transplanted between languages all the time, and everyone knows that English is about 17 languages in a trenchcoat. For example, people often choose or type in words like “neutrois” and “maverique”, which may or may not originate from the French language itself. Ay’lonit (Hebrew) and Takatāpui (Māori) have been quite common in recent years, off the top of my head.

I can’t run a survey for people who don’t speak English.

Ethnologue tells me there are over 7,000 living languages, although 23 languages account for over half of the world’s population. I speak 1.02 languages. (English, and a little French.)

Here’s a selection of issues that I would run into for those 7,000+ other languages if I were to run the survey in more languages:

As a person who only fluently speaks English, do I have the expertise to run this survey in any language I do not speak at all?

Do I translate the survey into other languages? If so, which ones, and how? If not, I am limiting responses to people who speak another language and English - is that ethically okay? Would it produce biased data?

In some languages sex and gender are indistinguishable. How would I change the identity question to ask about [sex/gender] sensitively [in a language I have never spoken], as someone who has never encountered this mindset personally and has no knowledge of how trans people growing up with this language feel about this issue?

For the title question, if I ask native speakers for a selection of titles (standard and gender-neutral) in their language, how will I know who’s trolling if I don’t speak the language? What about the languages where titles are just not used?

For the pronoun question, English pronoun sets have five forms: subject, object, dependent possessive (determiner), independent possessive, reflexive. Other languages have more than five, and others have fewer than five. How are those neopronoun sets formatted in writing when communicating your pronouns to others? What about languages where, unlike in English, pronouns are an open class - would I need to change that question in some way?

For any language that is not English, how would I spot and remove trolls, abusive TERFs, etc? Bigotry can have nuance, where something can seem superficially inoffensive while actually being transphobic/bigotry/trolling (e.g. concern-trolling), and realistically only a native-speaker or someone who is very familiar with nonbinary-specific trans issues in that language/culture would be able to recognise it.

A lot of these questions are themselves shaped by my limited worldview as a person who only fluently speaks English, and that’s before we get to my being white and from a country whose empire covered a quarter of the globe. The actions of my ancestors decimated whole peoples, many of whom had genders that were not what I would consider binary. The fundamental concept of the gender binary is rooted in historical white Western acts of oppression and worse.

No doubt there are questions that should be in the list above that I wouldn’t even be able to conceptualise. As people often point out in the feedback box, the survey is super white - it is very obviously designed by and mostly filled in by white people, the whole concept of the gender binary and genders outside of the binary being deviant is extremely white-Western, and I don’t even know enough to know how to start overcoming that. All I really know to do right now is read and listen to all the feedback box entries as best I can, keep researching interesting genders from across the globe and throughout history, and take extra care to combine and count all the various spellings of non-white, non-English gender identities so that they can be added to the checkbox list if they go over the 1% threshold. (Part of this process has led me to learn that in a lot of cultures “trans” and “LGB” are not necessarily separate parts of someone’s identity/character the way they are in most white Western cultures that I’ve encountered, and that’s a big part of why I’ve enthusiastically added lesbian and gay as identity words in relation to gender in this year’s survey.)

But if we sidestep all of that (nope), the answer to a lot of these questions is: recruit people who speak those other languages natively. At that point I become a manager! Instead of being a 2-3 month per year task, the Gender Census would become a year-long management job without pay, and I wouldn’t be able to run the English version of the Gender Census. Even if I had the skills and executive function for that (and I don’t), I’m not here to be a manager, I’m here to read and process 40,000+ gender identities and play with spreadsheets, you know?

So I’ve concluded that it’s inappropriate for me to run the survey in other languages, I would also be incapable, and even if neither of those things were true it just wouldn’t make me happy. It seems more fitting for me to support, endorse and amplify the voices of people running similar surveys in other languages, which I do try to do.

would you consider the lack of non-english/culture specific terms to be missing data, or is that not the sort of data you're looking for?

I do like to learn about non-English specific terms, and that data is not missing. The questions specify “while speaking English”, and people enter non-English identity words, titles and pronouns all the time. They don’t ever go over 1%, but they are typed in and they are counted. I love to learn about them, and anyone downloading the data will be able to learn about them too.

I can’t hope to include the “while speaking a language other than English” data in the survey as things currently stand, so that’s not the sort of data I’m looking for.

[maveriquecultureis]

Maverique culture is cringing whenever someone asks you about your gender presentation because being forced to choose between feminine, masculine, neutral/androgynous, etc feels so restricting and wrong

maverique culture is!

[finley-myself]

Hey is it possible to prove nonbinary people exist? Asking as a maverique person who has a family that only believes in two genders (its stressing me out quite a bit) and dosent know how to prove to them i exist. (also i’m closeted ooffff)

Hey, friend. I’m sorry you’re stuck in that situation right now. I would argue that it’s your family who needs to prove there are only two genders, however. Modern science backs up the idea that gender and sex are not the same, and no true binary of either exists. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of cultures all across the globe that recognize three (or more!) genders. The concept of the gender binary is purely colonial in its origins.

[transbutts]

Can you Maybe do me a favor and list either different pronouns or alternatives for "boy, girl"?

Some neutral pronouns are they/them/theirs (which I use) and it/it/its

So here are some “regular” neopronouns (regular meaning these are more common neopronouns or new pronouns that are used in place of the binary pronouns) Some of these are nounself pronouns which are if I remember correctly are when a person identifies with a noun and then adapts them for use as their pronouns. 

xe/xir/xirself

ze/zir/zerself

ey/em/emself

ne/ner/nerself

shi/hir/hirself

tey/tem/ter/temself

ey/em/eir/emself

e/em/eir/emself

thon/thon/thons/thonself

fae/faer/faers/faerself

vae/vaer/vaers/vaerself 

ae/aer/aers/aerself

ne/nym/nis/nymself

ne/nem/nir/nemself

xe/xem/xyr/xemself

xe/xim/xis/ximself

xie/xem/xyr/xemself

ze(or zie)/zir/zirs/zirself

zhe/zhir/zhirs/zhirself

ze/hir/hirs/hirself

sie/sier/siers/sierself

zed/zed/zeds/zedself

zed/zed/zeir/zedself

ce/cir/cirs/cirself

co/cos/cos/coself

ve/vis/vir/verself

jee/jem/jeir/jemself

lee/lim/lis/limself

kye/kyr/kyne/kyrself

per/per/pers/perself

hu/hum/hus/humself

bun/bun/buns/bunself

As for words that aren’t just boy/girl, there are several nonbinary genders such as agender, genderqueer, genderfluid, nonbinary, androgyne, genderflux, bi/tri/polygender, demigenders (demiboy/demigirl), genderneutral, gendervoid, maverique, neutrois... there are many more, some are culturally related as well. 

I’d say do your research and try things out. There’s nothing that says that you have to stick with a label forever. If you have any more questions about these leave us another ask, we will do our best to get you more information. 

- Ren

[oasis-nadrama]

It's not that difficult: just ASK people before gendering them*. And if you have to talk about them while you do not know their gender, just say "they", "them", "this person", "this individual".

Ask people for their pronouns, because you cannot use a person's appearance or behavior to determine their gender, and it's up to them and only them to define their own gender. That's basically all there is to know.

If someone tells you their gender is "maverique" and their pronouns xe/xyr, just use the pronouns they gave you.

*Sadly, since the dominant culture is extremely toxic, it can be complicated if not impossible to ask someone their gender. There's even, sometimes, a necessity to misgender trans/NB people in some situations, in accordance to their will and for their own protection. So let's ask people their gender... when possible.

[your-bigender-big-brother]

Gender trinary may make it seem like neutrois people are somehow privileged to the detriment of other nonbinary genders.

But also, many people believe there's somehow monogender or comgender privilege in some nonbinary experiences too, that doesn't make terms like suptilian invalid.

And gender trinary is also used vaguely to refer to expectations/new gender roles for nonbinary people (see this: https://x.com/lesbianoir/status/1442572207830536200?t=DOCvkX5KaIbL5mpSGMRXng&s=19 )

So I think it's used in different contexts. One is implying there's a norm about being non-binary, but the other is about identity and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with oppression points or identity lanes.

Anyways, aliagender was once cancelled and some ppl still use it.

EDIT: I NO LONGER BELIEVE IN A GENDER TRINARY. Anything below is an outdated belief but I'm leaving it here for accountability. It's a good example of good intent that causes a lot of harm under the guise of "I don't understand why it's wrong!"

I think that's where the misunderstanding comes from, that the gender trinary is being used to talk about oppression and privilege. I use it because it's the best way to describe my experiences as well as tangential nonbinary experiences. Since I am male and neutrois, but experience that through a maverine lens, the best way to show that is to use male/female/neutral as a basis, then explain the atrinarity.

I can see where it might look bad though, where it could just end up being used as a new oppressive system against nonbinary people. I never want to perpetuate that.

I've recently educated myself on aliagender and have seen nonbinary people of color (as well as the coiner of maverique) ask people to stop considering it a racist term because there is no "POC culture" nor can "third gender" be appropriated (because third gender was a colonialist concept forced on indigenous people, and a lot of POC reject the term.)

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about it!

- 💙💚