A Gender for Stellar Enben

Recently, I was under the familiar duress of questioning my gender, which involved trying to conceptualize my relationship with the label of neutrois - this is a gender that can encompass anything from neutrality to genderlessness. The neutral aspect of this gender is what appealed to me the most because that’s what the non-male part of my bigender identity is - neutral, as in not feminine or masculine, not female or male. I was both a man and neutrois, both male and neutral. However, I mostly considered the neutrois label to be a placeholder term, something to give a name to something I nebulously referred to as neutrois. Somewhere, there must have been something more out there for me.

My recurring predicament was that neutrosity is often linked to genderlessness, and I wanted a more specific word to only include neutrality but without any implication of ambiguity (like epicene) or intangibility. It also needed to stand alone as its own identity rather than being combined with another identity, like neutramale or neumasc. What I was looking for was an entirely unaligned, neutral, aporine gender that is not ambiguous or nebulous. It also needs to not be xenine (a quality related to xenogenders) because I don’t find any part of my gender to be outside of the human understanding of gender. Something had to replace the neutrois label with something more accurate to my experience. So, the search began.

Neutral would not do because that’s too vague and only refers to a gender quality - you know, like masculine or feminine. Aporagender is also too broad and despite the focus on neutral aporine genders in neolabel spaces, neutrality is not actually intrinsic to aporinity. I needed aporinity but pulled back to specifically be about neutrality. Ningender is an umbrella term, not a specific gender on its own (much like nonbinary, an umbrella term that can be used by itself, but is not specific enough.) Epicene is neutral, but it’s ambiguous - it lacks distinction between feminine and masculine. Neuter, the final label I considered, is actually a sort of “unlabel” that is meant to represent a refusal to limit oneself to any one label or category. None of these could quite encapsulate just how my gender feels along the abinary spectrum.

Here I was, finding myself doing yet another deep dive into genders. I’d seen a lot of neutral-aligned genders and genders that can include neutrality, and it felt an awful lot like I’d hit a dead end. It felt like I’d seen all these genders before and while a handful of them resonated with me in part, none of them felt like they spoke to me entirely. I scoured gender Wiki sites, my gender hoard, and my own resources on neutral identities. All of my avenues for gender research had been used up as far as I could tell, and I assumed that I might just be stuck calling myself neutrois from here on out.

At a certain point I remembered a recent label I added to my gender hoard: Stellarian. This term, of course, is not a gender. It describes a type of alignment and in this case, unaligned. In its original coining, it was meant to describe “Stellar Nonbinary” people - those who defied the idea of having an alignment forced on them. Somewhere along the way, the general usage of neutral came to mean “unaligned”, as in not aligned with the binary. One can of course be called neutral-aligned, which I had always believed was separate from unaligned, but I could never put into words why I thought this. I guess I wanted neutrality to have its own personhood, because one of my genders is a neutral one and that aspect is important to me. Not feminine, not masculine, but also not so far as to be outherine. It was simply neutral. What exactly did I think neutrality was? Why did I try so hard to define it outside of being unaligned?

Of course, this can be entirely a preferential thing. Someone might decide that they want to call themselves neutral-aligned, but they don’t consider themselves unaligned. To them, these might be two different things because maybe neutrality is so important that the concept in and of itself is an alignment. Someone else, however, might see neutrality as unalignment, as being unaligned with any existing gender quality - no masculinity, no femininity, no androgyny, no outherinity, nothing. I find myself more in this range nowadays but, instead of seeing myself as unaligned, I reject alignment as a concept altogether. I’ve always refused to see myself as aligned with any kind of gender or quality. Because of this, it made more sense for me to say that my gender is neutral. It’s very similar to those who prefer to call themselves aphorian instead of abinary, because the former rejects the concept of the binary. I reject the concept of alignment.

With all of this in mind, I began to wonder if stellarian should have a gender form - something that is a specific ningender, unaligned with any kind of gendered concept, but not related to genderlessness as neutrois is. It needed to have that same trait that neutrois has, a gendered element that “softens” the very strongly gendered male side of me (making my malehood a demimalehood.) The cosmic theme of stellarian also appealed to me, so I wanted to keep that intact and find something similar to the stellar name. These were very specific details that I could find in some neutral genders, in part, but never altogether in one definition.

This is where I would come up with the term asteresque - a gender that is entirely neutral and unaligned at its core, but is not genderless (which makes it an aporagender.) It lacks ambiguity which differentiates it from terms like epicene and it is abinary, completely unrelated to the gender binary or anything in between. The neutral quality of this gender can often “soften” or “neutralize” one’s gender, sort of like neutrality creates a more subdued male experience for me. It pushes the limits of neutrality not only as an unalignment, but as a neutrality that is active.

“Asteresque”, of course, means “star-like.” It calls back to the stellarian identity, an identity that is astral by name. It's a name that matches my love for outer space and its many celestial bodies, which were the inspiration for the entire galactian alignment system (where terms like stellarian, lunarian, and solarian come from.) It’s not necessarily a xenogender but some xenogender folks might like to see it that way, given that it’s inspired by the cosmos.

So, I am astereque, at least partially so. My bigender identity consists of malehood and a specific kind of neutrality I’ve been lucky enough to give a name to. With a name that can encompass a variety of gendered feelings, I can see myself explaining my gender by name first and then having the opportunity to delve into all its intricacies for those who are curious. I can see myself saying “Let me tell you a little bit about my stellar nonbinary identity.” It feels more me than neutrois ever did (though neutrois will, of course, always hold a special place in my heart. It’s a wonderful label.)

I hope to see more asteresque folks, truly. This is a term that means a lot to me, but it’s not so exclusive to my experience that other people can’t relate to it in some way. Maybe more and more astral nonbinary folks will start coming out, experimenting with all that asteresque can be and coming up with even more detailed language to talk about what their gender feels like and what being astral means to them. This is what every neolabel coiner dreams of, to see their terms used by people who connect so deeply with them that they become an intrinsic part of their identities.