Susan's Place Transgender Resources

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.

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

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

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:

QuoteThese 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.

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

Quote from: Seshatneferw on June 23, 2008, 01:37:16 PM
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^

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,5752.0.html)

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

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

Quote
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

Quote from: Andra on June 23, 2008, 01:49:11 PM
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.

Quote
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

Quote from: redfish the medically constructed on June 23, 2008, 01:29:53 PM
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.

Quote from: Seshatneferw on June 23, 2008, 02:36:58 PM
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?

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.

Quote from: Keira on June 23, 2008, 03:13:30 PM

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.

Quote from: Keira on June 23, 2008, 03:13:30 PM
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

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...

Quote from: Andra on June 23, 2008, 03:10:21 PM

Quote from: Seshatneferw on June 23, 2008, 02:36:58 PM
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

QuoteAlso, 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.

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

Quote from: Seshatneferw on June 24, 2008, 01:33:38 PM
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.  ^^

Quote from: Keira on June 23, 2008, 03:13:30 PM

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

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?  >:D

~Simone.

Quote from: lady amarant on June 26, 2008, 09:07:07 AM
And yeah, since Redfish brought it up, I wonder who WOULD win ...

Andra vs. Z maybe?  >:D

Goodness no, I don't want to fight with anyone... they'd most likely win anyway. When I was a kid, I was picked on all the time, I never fought back. I just tried to avoid violent situations.

Actually, when I read what Andra wrote in this thread, I sometimes feel rather similar to what sie describes, although I don't think I'm neutrois. I don't really know what I am anymore, but that's a whole other story.

Zythyra

Quote from: lady amarant on June 26, 2008, 09:07:07 AM
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?  >:D

~Simone.

Not quite, you're nearly there though :)

I had to look the definition of null up to check I was correct:

QuoteNull:
1.   without value, effect, consequence, or significance.
2.   being or amounting to nothing; nil; lacking; nonexistent.
3.   Mathematics. (of a set)
a.   empty.
b.   of measure zero.
4.   being or amounting to zero.

As I see it 'non-gendered' or 'agendered' is a state of not having a gender identity, simply not being able to personally relate to the concept of gender.   On the other hand 'null-gendered' is a state of having a gender identity that occupies the null or zero point on the gender spectrum by not consisting of any 'maleness' or 'femaleness'*.  I don't consider the two synonymous as I've noticed a fair difference in perspective between people who don't have a gender identity at all and those who are null-gendered.

I think neutrois is best described as somebody who feels either non-gendered or null-gendered and who experiences body dysphoria and wishes to remove their primary and secondary sex characteristics to alleviate it.  (People can feel non-gendered or null-gendered without experiencing body dysphoria, just like some androgynes don't wish to have an intersexed body)

*I hate using the terms 'maleness' and 'femaleness' but I think it gets the idea across.  People towards being bigender would feel they have 100% of both (or thereabouts), androgynes some mixture in the region of 50%/50% and null-gendered people 0% of both (or thereabouts)

Still, since there is so much that is gendered, how can you have 0% of both?
I think its a practical impossibility to be seen as such. Though, as an
identity, it could be something to strive for.

I guess there's plenty of things that are neutral. But, do you
avoid everything that can gender you, that leaves off a lot
in the social interaction arena especially where gendering by
others, if not by yourself, at least is universal.

Quote from: Andra on June 26, 2008, 11:49:42 AM
I think neutrois is best described as somebody who feels either non-gendered or null-gendered and who experiences body dysphoria and wishes to remove their primary and secondary sex characteristics to alleviate it.  (People can feel non-gendered or null-gendered without experiencing body dysphoria, just like some androgynes don't wish to have an intersexed body)

*I hate using the terms 'maleness' and 'femaleness' but I think it gets the idea across.  People towards being bigender would feel they have 100% of both (or thereabouts), androgynes some mixture in the region of 50%/50% and null-gendered people 0% of both (or thereabouts)

So ... a neutrois is a null/non-gendered person whose dysphoria is strong enough to want to transition to being in an ungendered body, while an androgyne is a bi-gendered person, and there, BY CONTRAST, the dysphoria could be strong enough to want an intersexed body? And really then, the terms used should not be neutrois and androgyne, but null/non-gendered and bi-gendered, with neutrois and androgyne being the goal? Using that framework, the proper term for transsexual people then WOULD be transgendered, and for them the goal is to become either man or woman?

(Sorry if this take ends up offending anybody, but me be mightily confuzzled. Just trying to figure this out in my head.)



~Simone.

Quote from: Keira on June 26, 2008, 01:54:04 PM

Still, since there is so much that is gendered, how can you have 0% of both?
I think its a practical impossibility to be seen as such. Though, as an
identity, it could be something to strive for.

I guess there's plenty of things that are neutral. But, do you
avoid everything that can gender you, that leaves off a lot
in the social interaction arena especially where gendering by
others, if not by yourself, at least is universal.

I don't see what you're getting at here.  What do stereotypical gender roles have to do with gender identity? They're two very different things surely.  Do you insist that m2fs don't engage in ANY stereotypically male activities?  Pre-transition were you actually a man because you were read that way?  I'm pretty sure you'd regard yourself as ALWAYS having been a woman, which is contradictory to the thinking you've used above.  I don't see my gender identity as something contructed or to "strive" for either.  Doesn't this just feed the idea that transsexuals CHOOSE to ADOPT a different gender identity rather than acting based on something they always were?

Posted on: June 27, 2008, 02:45:48 AM

---

Quote from: lady amarant on June 26, 2008, 11:30:41 PM

So ... a neutrois is a null/non-gendered person whose dysphoria is strong enough to want to transition to being in an ungendered body, while an androgyne is a bi-gendered person, and there, BY CONTRAST, the dysphoria could be strong enough to want an intersexed body? And really then, the terms used should not be neutrois and androgyne, but null/non-gendered and bi-gendered, with neutrois and androgyne being the goal? Using that framework, the proper term for transsexual people then WOULD be transgendered, and for them the goal is to become either man or woman?

A null/non-gendered person may not experience body dysphoria at all. 

Androgyne is not synonymous with bi-gender.  In a stricter sense androgyne is in the region of 50% male + 50% female whereas bigender is in the region of 100% male + 100% female. 

Assuming for a minute that body image always matches gender identity, androgynes (intergendered people) would want an intersex body whereas bi-genders would want a body that's fully both male and female, rather than being an intermediate state (also ignoring the plural/multiple bigender people for a moment).

I don't think you can define neutrois and androgyne as being 'goals' any more than you can define woman/female as being the 'goal' for a female-gendered person (pre-transition m2fs would tend to get annoyed if you told them they weren't women yet). 

Non-gendered/null-gendered would be describing the persons gender identity without reference to body image.  Neutrois would be describing a person in a way that also included body image.

This all gets more complicated because androgyne can be used as a blanket term to cover the stricter definition of androgyne I've used in this thread and also cover neutroises and bigenders (and other genderqueers).

... My head aches ...  :icon_zombie: :icon_headache: :icon_nosebleed:

Hehehe. Thanks Andra, I think I have kinda got what you mean. I kinda meant the same you said with the "androgyne and neutrois as goal" thing - just a breakdown of language skills more than anything else. What I meant was to say that the goal may be, for a dysphoric neutrois or androgyne, to pursue a body that either eliminates sexual characteristics entirely, or else exhibits both (respectively)

So, final attempt before my brain melts:

Androgynes (The Group):
bi-gendered - 100% male, 100% female
intergendered/androgyne (the individual) - somewhere inbetween, but ballpart 50% male, 50% female
null/non-gendered - 0% male, 0% female

a person might have any of the above gender identities but not have body dysphoria, should zir body-image match zir body, but WILL experience dysphoria and possibly desire transition to either a neutrois or intersexed body.

So really then, we can refine GID as having more to do with body image than gender identity. For cisgendered individuals, gender identity, body image and body all align, so funky bananas; For transsexual people gender identity and body image align, but body is in conflict; And for androgynes (the group) any combination of the three may not align.

Anyways, sorry for hammering on this so, and forgive my denseness, but it's important to me to get this right. I know how much it bothers me to be confronted with ignorant people, so I don't want to be on the other side of that fence.

~Simone

Without being stereotypical, where do I talk of that!!
When you say 0% male or female, you've got to use a definition of both
to compared with. We live in society and regardless of our identity and
we use the language (verbal or otherwise) to define ourselves externally
AND internally. So, what would being 0% female or male mean in Iran
versus Iceland is VERY different.

In an extremely gendered society like Iran, being to express no gender
to others would be impossible (without being arrested and beaten).
And, even if you had those feelings, they're so alien to the society at
large that they probably couldn't even express them even
internally (you'd have no reference)

Quote from: Keira on June 27, 2008, 10:41:27 AM

Without being stereotypical, where do I talk of that!!
When you say 0% male or female, you've got to use a definition of both
to compared with. We live in society and regardless of our identity and
we use the language (verbal or otherwise) to define ourselves externally
AND internally. So, what would being 0% female or male mean in Iran
versus Iceland is VERY different.

In an extremely gendered society like Iran, being to express no gender
to others would be impossible (without being arrested and beaten).
And, even if you had those feelings, they're so alien to the society at
large that they probably couldn't even express them even
internally (you'd have no reference)

As for the body image part of figuring out what I am: I can take testosterone and feel like crap, I can take high doses of estrogen and progesterones and feel like crap.  I can take the minimal amount of hormones necessary to stave off menopausal symptoms and feel great.  I can play around with my body, hiding bits or accentuating them, I can pass as female, I can pass as male (with a bit of effort).  I can blend characteristics and look androgynous and people will not be able to put me easily in one box or the other.  I can totally hide ALL my sex characteristics, primary and secondary and feel my dysphoria significantly reduced.

"And, even if you had those feelings, they're so alien to the society at
large that they probably couldn't even express them even
internally (you'd have no reference) "

Do any of us have a true frame of reference for gender identity?  Nobody can see what goes on inside another persons head.  Just like the old question of 'how do I know you see the colour blue in the same way I do', how do you know how other people see 'female'?  Gender identity just seems to be this deeply held feeling you have, you KNOW what you are, but it's impossible to explain why or how (at least I've never heard anybody explain the nature of it). 

I'm not a 'he', I'm not a 'she', I'm not some blend of the two, I don't have that 'maleness' or 'femaleness' thing that other people seem to have and identify with.  If anything, that's my frame of reference: other people seem to have those identities (usually one or the other, sometimes a mixture, sometimes both) and trying to apply them to myself causes dysphoria.  That's the only reference I need.  There are men, then there are women, then there is me, I'm not an intermediate state, I am what you get if a person is born without that 'maleness' or 'femaleness' present at all.

I am me, null-gender, neutrois, pronoun: it.
(heehee, I have a sudden wave of gender euphoria from typing that out  :laugh: )

from what I see there are 6 ends, 3 lines
or each side of a cube
male - female
Omnigendered - Nullgendered
single - milti (bigender)

and the place on any line for some people is static other people it moves a bit or a lot
I move around on all 3 lines 2 different amounts
if i were to list all my traits as
male,fem,both,other now would give different results to yesterday or tomorrow

Quote from: Caroline on June 27, 2008, 11:20:24 AM
As for the body image part of figuring out what I am: I can take testosterone and feel like crap, I can take high doses of estrogen and progesterones and feel like crap.  I can take the minimal amount of hormones necessary to stave off menopausal symptoms and feel great.  I can play around with my body, hiding bits or accentuating them, I can pass as female, I can pass as male (with a bit of effort).  I can blend characteristics and look androgynous and people will not be able to put me easily in one box or the other.  I can totally hide ALL my sex characteristics, primary and secondary and feel my dysphoria significantly reduced.

"And, even if you had those feelings, they're so alien to the society at
large that they probably couldn't even express them even
internally (you'd have no reference) "

Do any of us have a true frame of reference for gender identity?  Nobody can see what goes on inside another persons head.  Just like the old question of 'how do I know you see the colour blue in the same way I do', how do you know how other people see 'female'?  Gender identity just seems to be this deeply held feeling you have, you KNOW what you are, but it's impossible to explain why or how (at least I've never heard anybody explain the nature of it). 

I'm not a 'he', I'm not a 'she', I'm not some blend of the two, I don't have that 'maleness' or 'femaleness' thing that other people seem to have and identify with.  If anything, that's my frame of reference: other people seem to have those identities (usually one or the other, sometimes a mixture, sometimes both) and trying to apply them to myself causes dysphoria.  That's the only reference I need.  There are men, then there are women, then there is me, I'm not an intermediate state, I am what you get if a person is born without that 'maleness' or 'femaleness' present at all.

I am me, null-gender, neutrois, pronoun: it.
(heehee, I have a sudden wave of gender euphoria from typing that out  :laugh: )

I wholeheartedly endorse this explanation.

(Bumping the thread because I think it's a useful thing for folks to read-- "not-male" and "not-female" isn't an easy category to pin down by any means.)

Recently, I've seen a difference between neutrois and agender/genderless get expanded on by some smart folks about the internet. (I identify as some mix between agender and neutrois, or someplace in between them, but just use 'agender' for the simplicity of the word.) Neutrois is, as I've seen, defined as not a complete lack of gender, as is the case with being agender and genderless, but rather having a gender that is neutral-- not on any kind of spectrum. Passing for most nonbinaries of any stripe, and especially for those of us who are neutral-gendered or have no gender at all, is impossible without making the identity explicit, so presentation is often... not less important, but less precise. There's no metric we can go by like MtFs and FtMs can (as toxic as passing guides and advice can be).

There is an implication that neutrois people have a negative relationship with their secondary sex characteristics, and sometimes even genitalia, while genderless people are more ambivalent. But this isn't any sort of rule, and these feelings should definitely not determine how you identify.

My experience as an agender person is this: I identify with no gendered constructs, institutions, or narratives. I pick and chose the things that reflect my identity as a person without caring what gender it was meant for, and oftentimes only being able to understanding the distinction in a superficial way. If I woke up one day with no secondary sex characteristics, with no sex organs or genitals, I would not be unhappy. I have considered going on T, but the benefits to me would be minor compared to the drawbacks (face masculinization and fat redistribution vs more hair, higher libido, and enlarged clitoris).

For more resources from the leading neutrois activist, check out Micah's site, http://neutrois.me.