Neutrois as a Stabilizing Element

I am both a man and neutrois at the same time. Neutrois is the part of my bigender identity that is abinary, not-male, and not as strongly gendered as my manhood. It's, of course, neutral in nature, but I never knew how to explain what neutrality means to me other than using it to describe something not-binary and not-genderless. It doesn't lie far outside of convention (if at all) and just simply exists passively as a part of my gender. I chose the neutrois label because I connect with the concept of a gender that exists not too far from the binary but is not incredibly gendered. It is present in the same way that air is, or gravity, or warmth - it’s an invisible but ever-present force that can be felt.

Of course, I’ve explained neutrality as a general, non-abstract concept in past videos, essays, and zines. It can be something unmoving, something in between the binary, some kind of “blended” gender, a “gray area” of gender, gender ambiguity, or maybe even something ungendered. For me, my neutrois identity doesn’t really fit these descriptions, but fills a different sort of role in my bigenderedness. It has an influence on the male part of my identity that makes for an overall nonbinary manhood.

Before my realization of being bigender, I exclusively called myself a demiboy (though nowadays I use “demiguy” instead.) I knew that I was part male, surely mostly male, but I assumed there was some kind of other part to it. I knew it wasn’t female and it wasn’t genderless. For a time, I adopted the term “neptunian” - a gender that is linked to the void and fluctuates with soft celestial masculine energy. I personally love all things related to space, so I used this space-themed microlabel as a way to represent a changing intensity of masculinity. I would come to realize that my masculinity had always felt “soft”, that something was causing it to be neutral-leaning. This is where neutrois comes into play. For me, my male identity feels like it alone overpowers everything else about my gender. I am predominantly a man, but not fully. It’s more like I am 80% man and 20% neutrois.

That 20% of neutrois is the part that sort of “stabilizes” my gender, softening the male aspect of me and establishing it as a partial male experience. While it may feel like a passive aspect of my gender, my neutrois-ness (neutrosity?) has a particularly unavoidable influence on my manhood in a way that makes it feel less strongly gendered and more neutral, for lack of a better word. This may not be the same experience for other demiguys: Some may consider themselves partly male and partly genderless, while others may simply be part male with no other part. Demigenders, like all genders, are flexible in that way.

Oftentimes, being multigender means that one of our genders might have a tangible effect on other genders, like neutrois’ ability to neutralize or stabilize another gender. Its existence as an intrinsic balancing quality isn’t an aspect of my gender that I typically notice, much like those invisible but ever present concepts I talked about earlier, but that’s exactly what makes it a neutral identity to me - not moving one way or the other and not strongly felt. Instead, it exists simply as a softening or balancing element to my gender. Neutrality may seem like a simple abinarine concept from the outside, but it has impressive complexities.