What is Gender Neutrality?
If you were to look up “gender neutral” on most gender wiki sites, you’ll come across a definition that’s something like “Gender neutrality is the experience of having a gender that is neutral, not male or female.” Then, the word “neutral” might link you to a list of neutral-related identity labels. Pages like these don’t seem to have a super thorough answer, but they have a lot of words for this experience - niaspec, ningender, neutrois, neutral-aligned, etc. Not being male or female could mean any number of things, and not all identities that are not-male and not-female are neutral. So, what does gender neutrality actually refer to?
Neutrality, in the gender sense, can refer to an experience of in-between or blended gender. One term you might be familiar with is androgyne, a gender that combines maleness and femaleness into one identity. While this means having a combination or blend of genders, some people may consider being an androgyne as being in between male and female - a point in between two other points. This is what neutrality most commonly refers to, but it doesn’t just have to be in between male and female. If you are genderfluid, but that fluidity is between agender and maverique, then you may consider neutrality as being between those two points instead. It doesn’t have to be an exact dead-center point in between two genders, but that tends to be the way people describe it.
Neutrality may also refer to a “gray area” of gender. Take the term demigender for example. If you are a demiboy or a demigirl, then you are partially a boy or partially a girl respectively. What about that other part? If you are part one thing, then there may be another part to make it 100% an entire identity. The gray area, the neutrality, lies in that other part (at least for some people such as myself. Some people in contrast may see this other part as agender instead.) This idea of a gray area can also work for identities such as genderflux. If you experience peaks (spikes) of gender, then neutrality could be the valleys in between - this would be an unmoving part to an otherwise ever-changing gender.
On the topic of gray areas, being “on the cusp” of a gender can be considered a gray area. Proximal genders come to mind, which describe an experience of being close to a specific gender (proxvir is close to maleness, juxera is close to femaleness) but existing as its own separate gender. Maybe your gender is almost agender, but is on its own plane of existence that makes it not-agender. Paragender is a similar term that means being 99% a certain gender but something about the identity keeps it from being 100%. That’s where this gray area may come into play, attempting to “neutralize” the remainder of the identity. This gender has a partial neutrality to it.
Yes, neutrality can actually be a neutralizing aspect of one’s identity. Take the term ambonec for example. Ambonec means being both male and female, but also neither at the same time. The “neither” part is where maleness and femaleness may overlap and neutralize as a result. They cancel each other out, making for a complex identity that is three parts at once and yet not. Other identities that may have overlapping parts would be something like bigender or trigender, where there are two or more genders at play but they overlap in some areas. The neutrality is in the overlap.
Remember the terms I talked about in the beginning of this post? Niaspec is a term for the neutrally gendered spectrum, which can mean any number of neutral or neutral-adjacent experiences. One term that comes to mind is aporagender, a gender that is not male or female but is also not genderless. Under niaspec, you’ll see the term ningender, a word for any gender that is “neutral-in-nature” - any gender that is inherently neutral by definition. One of those genders is neutrois, an umbrella term for genders that are neutral, androgynous, genderless, and more. This is why some people may consider their agender identity as part of the niaspec umbrella, being proximal to a neutral experience.
Gender neutrality could also literally mean being neutral about the idea of gender. Someone may decide that they are indifferent to gender and therefore don’t have any sort of preference for pronouns or gendered language. Cassgender is a term for being gender indifferent, but many people who feel indifferent to gender might not choose to use that label. A lot of the time it’s a take-it-or-leave it sort of attitude toward gender - any pronouns at all, call me a boy, call me a girl, call me an entity, I’m going to wear whatever I feel like without leaning one way or another into any one gender presentation. Genderpunks and gender nonconforming people understand these views most of all, but you may also see this sentiment in the agender and multigender communities.
Other generally neutral experiences might refer to having an ambiguous gender (androgynous or ambiguine), having an unknown gender (uingender, graygender, quoigender), being pangender or having an unquantifiable number of genders (omnigender), or any other experience that doesn’t fall into any one specific category. Neutrality can be a word to mean flexible, nebulous, blurry, intangible, impartial, complex, or even nonexistent. One follower described its experience with neutrality as the feeling of an impending storm: It’s not actually raining, but it’s about to, and you can tell by the change of lighting. That goes back to the ideas of being “on the cusp” of a gender and being in-between genders. People will have a variety of reasons for using this term to describe their gender experience, so there isn’t just one solid definition for it!