Androgyne vs. Neutrois...

[lady amarant]

Okay, so if this has been asked and answered before, please forgive.

What would you say is the difference, if any, between Androgyne and Neutrois? Thanks for playing all!

~Simone.

[Nero]

My guess would be that neutrois usually desire body modification to a more 'neutrally sexed' state.

[Laurry]

My guess...

Androgyne is really more of an umbrella term for Non-Binary-Gendered individuals.  It includes those who who are of mixed gender--both male and female (Intergendered), bi-gendered people, those who have no gender (Neutrois),  those who identify as a third gender, and anyone else who falls outside of the male/female binary model. 

People who identify as Neutrois have no gender...neither part-male nor part-female.

So, without offending anyone (hopefully), Neutrois is a subset of Androgyne, which is a subset of Transgendered.

That is my understanding of how things fit together.  Some of the more cerebral of us can expand and fill in the details.  Hopefully, one of our Neutrois will give their personal viewpoint.

......L

[Caroline]

In terms of gender identity, neutrois is not being male nor female gendered, it's a non-gendered or null-gendered state.  As for the definition of androgyne:

These are the only definitions that apply to the Androgyne community, at least on this web site.

Androgyne: An androgynous person
Androgynous: Being neither distinguishably masculine nor feminine, as in dress, appearance, or behavior.

Compare and contrast the use of 'male nor female' in one and 'masculine nor feminine' in the other.

'Neutrois' tends to be applied to those who experience body dysphoria towards their primary and secondary sex characteristics but it's certainly possible to identify as null/non-gendered without experiencing body dysphoria, just as it is for any other gender identity.

Those who are dysphoric may seek medical help to alleviate their dysphoria, and may refer to themselves as male-to-null or FtN (or IStN, I've encountered one such person) transsexuals.

[Seshatneferw]

Oh yes, it's summer again. 
(I think it was about last summer and early autumn that we had a few threads on the meaning of androgyne and a few related terms. We didn't quite get a consensus, although there was some progress.)

Anyway, my favourite answer revolves around the idea that gender is a continuum that can be conceptualised in different ways. The simplest way is to see just two genders, male and female, but one can split it as finely as one wants to. A natural three-way split would be male, female and androgyne, and that's more or less the division we use officially here: androgyne is everything that isn't clearly male or clearly female. I, personally, prefer a five-gender split: male, female, neutrois, bigendered and intergendered. The last three all fall somewhere between the first two: in binary terms neither, both but separate, and a mixture of the two. In a sense they can be considered subdivisions of androgyne.

  Nfr

[Caroline]

I, personally, prefer a five-gender split: male, female, neutrois, bigendered and intergendered. The last three all fall somewhere between the first two: in binary terms neither, both but separate, and a mixture of the two.

I basically agree with where you're going with this but you sorta contradicted yourself: neither can't be 'somewhere between'

Lumping neutrois and bigender together under the androgyne banner is lumping together total opposites.  I can see the thought behind it in a world where most people are male or female identified but consider the same logic from a different angle...
As my current forum sig says:
Null-gendered  ----   Androgyne/Male/Female  ----  Omnigendered
                              ^Inbetweeny fence sitters^

[Shana A]

I'm not neutrois so I can't speak for that. As an androgyne person, I feel that I am neither of the binary genders, I am not both. This isn't necessarily how other androgynes feel, just me.

Here's a few older threads that relate.

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,5752.0.html

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,14300.0.html

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,9148.0.html

Androgyne: Neutrois: Neither Gender
Neutrois. https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,5752.0.html
Being outside the gender spectrum. https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,5623.0.html
How to dress Neutral styles/colors. https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,9041.0.html
Man v Not man, female v not female. https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,5628.0.html
Preferring gender neutrality from others. https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,9266.0.html

[Seshatneferw]

I basically agree with where you're going with this but you sorta contradicted yourself: neither can't be 'somewhere between'

Yes, well, that's my gendered bias talking; sorry about that. Still, that's the sort of thing that happens when one projects a three-dimensional space onto a straight line.

Lumping neutrois and bigender together under the androgyne banner is lumping together total opposites.

Yes. Then again, all five are opposites, and if you choose any pair, the other three are between them. It simply depends on how you happen to look at them. For visualisation, find a tetrahedron (known in gaming circles as a d4), choose two 'opposite' corners and see how the other two fall relative to this opposition.

  Nfr

[sd]

aww crap I thought this thread was going to be about who would win in a fight

I am glad there was nothing in my mouth when I read that.

[Caroline]

Yes, well, that's my gendered bias talking; sorry about that. Still, that's the sort of thing that happens when one projects a three-dimensional space onto a straight line.

I'm interested in how you're modelling this.  What do your three dimensions represent?

[Keira]

I don't want to sound to dense, but is
it even possible to have no gender (Neutrois).
I can understand not identifying as either gender
(and society's expectations of each), but society
will place you in one or the other regardless of
what is desired. Society doesn't have a category
for such identification yet and maybe making
it impossible for it to classify oneself is the
only hope in this case, though this is a
thin line that few can pull off!

In a sense its even worse
than being a TS since there's nothing that
can be done about it except acceptance
of society's need to gender everybody.

[Caroline]

I don't want to sound to dense, but is
it even possible to have no gender (Neutrois).
I can understand not identifying as either gender
(and society's expectations of each), but society
will place you in one or the other regardless of
what is desired. Society doesn't have a category
for such identification yet and maybe making
it impossible for it to classify oneself is the
only hope in this case, though this is a
thin line that few can pull off!

In a sense its even worse
than being a TS since there's nothing that
can be done about it except acceptance
of society's need to gender everybody.

Isn't one of the common factors that all trans people have that our identities are not dictated by what other people see?  Binary TSs may transition to a state where they're read in line with their identified gender on a regular basis, but at some point they identified in a way contradictory to how those around them percieved them. 

Our identities are certainly not dictated by what social roles are assigned to us or even what social roles exist.  I am what I am, other people's assumptions about gender can't ever change that.

I do not identity as male and do not wish to be male bodied, I do not identify as female and do not wish to be female bodied.  Male pronouns and female pronouns feel equally inappropriate to me,   Nothing and nobody can take that identification away from me.

You're right though, we have to accept that we will be misgendered on a regular basis and have an even harder time than non-stealth binary TSs in persuading people that our gender identities are valid.  However the body dysphoria aspect is certainly treatable, given enlightened medical professionals.

On a different note, I do feel as if I have a gender, just a gender defined by the lack of something that the vast majority of other people have.  I am therefore null-gendered or more broadly a 'third gender'.  I don't tend to use the agender or non-gendered terms to refer to myself, but can see why others do.

Identity is a complex business with many subtleties, I don't think I've met two people who frame their gender identity in exactly the same way.  What terms we identify AS or what terms or movements we identify WITH is a very personal thing.

[Shana A]

In a sense its even worse
than being a TS since there's nothing that
can be done about it except acceptance
of society's need to gender everybody.

Yes, to me this is one of the most challenging aspects of not identifying as either one of the binary genders. Everyone automatically genders us based on their binary perspective, we have no choice in the matter, regardless of how we wish to be seen. It's pervasive, people see what they want to see, and we just have to deal with it. My life would be much easier if I felt OK with being one or the other. But I don't.

Zythyra

[Jaimey]

I always felt like androgyne was an umbrella term, but that's just me.  I think it's all in how you interpret and understand the terms from your own experiences.

I've wondered about neutrosis too...it's a hard thing to pin down.  I know what I'm not and that's how I figured out what I am.  That's about as much as I understand about it all...

[Seshatneferw]

Yes, well, that's my gendered bias talking; sorry about that. Still, that's the sort of thing that happens when one projects a three-dimensional space onto a straight line.

I'm interested in how you're modelling this.  What do your three dimensions represent?

First of all, I'm more interested in seeing the genders than the space in which they exist. That is, in this a 'gender' is an abstraction that has been distilled out of a (large) number of real people's gender identities, just like 'chair' is an abstraction based on a large number of real-world objects. In a way, the dimensions are not that interesting by themselves.

That said, the way I see it the five genders I mentioned earlier can be separated from each other along three axes. The first one is the male--female axis that is commonly seen. The second one is the one that shows the difference between bigendered and intergendered: how much one's gender goes back and forth over time. The third is the one between null and full gender, so to say.

I mentioned the male--female dimension first, since it's clear if one just looks around that this is the one that explains the largest amount of gender variation in just about any human population. The other two I cannot put in order in that way, but I'm pretty sure they are there. Also, the five-gender system would seem to lack some sort of omnigendered extreme opposite to neutrois, but I don't think I've come across anyone who identifies that way (or even that I'd recognise such a gender identity if I did, for that matter). No, sorry -- on second thought, I suppose there's a stereotype seen in some porn sub-genres that would qualify.

  Nfr

[Jaycie]

Also, the five-gender system would seem to lack some sort of omnigendered extreme opposite to neutrois, but I don't think I've come across anyone who identifies that way (or even that I'd recognise such a gender identity if I did, for that matter). No, sorry -- on second thought, I suppose there's a stereotype seen in some porn sub-genres that would qualify.

Could you possibly clarify this part. It seems on the surface that you're both saying that you wouldn't recognize such an identity as valid, and conflating a body image with identity. Which, in the latter case,  doesn't really work all that well since we know and have members on this forum that have identities that don't "match up" with the expected desires for the "standard configuration" that people automatically add to said identity.

[Seshatneferw]

I flatly refuse to make any sort of judgement on whether someone's identity is valid; I was merely saying that such a gender is so alien to me that it's difficult to imagine what it is like, or possibly even to recognise it if I came across someone who identified with it.

  Nfr

[Jaycie]

I flatly refuse to make any sort of judgement on whether someone's identity is valid; I was merely saying that such a gender is so alien to me that it's difficult to imagine what it is like, or possibly even to recognise it if I came across someone who identified with it.

  Nfr

Well,  given that identities are both invisible and intangible, it would be silly to think you could ever recognize it until the person in question told you what it was.  I can't begin to imagine what it's like being male, or female, or having a fluid identity at all. That's a fact that doesn't bother me in the least either.  ^^

[Kendall]

I don't want to sound to dense, but is
it even possible to have no gender (Neutrois).
I can understand not identifying as either gender
(and society's expectations of each), but society
will place you in one or the other regardless of
what is desired. Society doesn't have a category
for such identification yet and maybe making
it impossible for it to classify oneself is the
only hope in this case, though this is a
thin line that few can pull off!

In a sense its even worse
than being a TS since there's nothing that
can be done about it except acceptance
of society's need to gender everybody.

The only country that I know officially recognizes other than male and female is India with the Hijra gender (Options M, F, and E, with E for Eunuch) even on passports. The second closest country would be thailand with the Kathoey, although the kathoey are more of a mixture of ts and other gender and there is no official passport gender that I know of.

And of course the Two-Spirit recognized by the American Indian Nation

[lady amarant]

Aw, thanks everybody so much for responding - it did help to ease the confusion a fair bit. So if I have this more or less straight, the next time I face the anti-non-ts-transgender (yeah, I find it massively confusing too) crowd, I can explain to their ignorant selves as follows:

androgyne - a group-name describing any non-binary gendered individual.
bigender - an individual who identifies as both male and female at the same time.
null-gendered - an individual identifying with no gender at all, an ungendered person
neutrois - a true "third gender", identifying as neither male nor female, but considering themselves a gender distinct from either.

And yeah, since Redfish brought it up, I wonder who WOULD win ...

Andra vs. Z maybe?  >

~Simone.