What is Trans-Neutrality?

Happy Pride Month!

In honor of pride month, I’ve decided to write about one of my personal identites as well as the identity that every one seems to think just being nonbinary is: trans-neutral!

What Does Trans-Neutral Mean?

Trans-neutral is a label for people who’s gender to them is neutral, aligns with neutral genders or someone who’s transitioning into gender-neutrality. This is different from just being nonbinary because nonbinary means being a gender that’s not a man or woman whether partially or completely. The partial binary aspect of the nonbinary label makes genders that are on the binary spectrum like androgyne, demi-girl, demi-boy, trans-masc, trans-fem, etc included and therefore not trans-neutral.

If all you were doing was transitioning into neutrality even though your gender wasn’t neutral in anyway you could use the label trans-neutral as well.

Some neutral genders are:

Neutrois: A label for a gender that is neutral.

Agender: A label for the lack of gender.

These two terms can be interchangerable sometimes for some people, but I separated the two to show you that there can be a difference (also because I am Neutrois, but not Agender.) An analogy to describe the relationship Neutrois and Agender have with each other is the concept of 0, which is both a number and nothing at the same time. It’s like the difference between saying there is “zero” eggs in the fridge then saying there is “no” eggs in the fridge. When you say there’s zero you’re still implying that there’s a certain quantity of eggs, with the quantity just being zero, while when you say there’s no eggs you’re implying that there is no quantity of eggs at all. Technically, you’re talking about the same thing but you’re experiencing and thinking about it differently.

A Bit More in Depth on Gender Neutrality

So, what actually is gender neutrality?

Gender neutrality is a gender quality that can describe the behaviors/mannerisms, presentations and/or social roles that relate to neither masculinity, femininity, or androgyny. People tend to equate both androgyny and gender neutrality together; and while it’s possible for something like an outfit to be both androgynous and neutral, it’s not inherently the same thing. Gender neutrality is an abinary quality, and is much more similar to being unisex, ambiguous, or even something completely new gender wise than it is androgynous.

It is one thing for an individual person to view their own gender and presentation as being interchangably neutral and genderless, but there is a society-wide idea that in order to be gender-neutral it must be genderless. That there are no genders that can be recognized outside of just the binary spectrum we have now. But understand, there are more ways to categorize personal behaviors and presentations than the ideas we have in the binary (which is why I LOVE xenogenders, but that deserves it’s own thing), so holding onto those two possibilities when talking about trans-neutral would be most beneficial.

Gender Neutral Presentation

When people think of gender neutrality presentation, it can seem very limited and almost even impossible. Gender neutrality is usually representated by skinny white people in either suits or plain outfits. At some times, it can even lean a bit too much into masculinity with anything a little too feminine instantly not be read as gender neutral anymore.

Gender neutrality, just like femininity and masculinity, is a gender quality and not a style. In terms of fashion, there’s personal aesthetic, and then how you style within that aesthetic. This is how gender qualities can be most easily understood. Neutrality can be used in any style like streetwear, Y2K, indie, punk or grunge, old money, cottagecore, etc. However, it can be hard to find neutrality in fashion because it’s so underrepresented in it’s fullest state. If you want to dig deeer into finding neutrality for your aesthetic, focus on what would be the beauty standard for both gender-conforming men and women. Now, don’t just default to overly stereotypical fem and masc presentations, but try to think of the general types of things that fall into those two categories. What’s a general trend among feminine and masculine people and how are they expected to look? Even gender nonconforming people, if they have anything on them or physical attributes that signals to their actual gender, what are those? Do they line up with some of the things that people who do conform to their gender do? How are they different?

The best way to do this exercise is on Pinterest or any other kind of social media good for finding outfit inspiration. It helps you train your eye into finding gender neutral options for you, and it may even open you up to things you didn’t know you liked before!

Trans-neutrality is a very surprisingly underrepresented part of tranness. Even on Tumblr it’s hard to find actual trans-neutral content. If trans-neutral sounds like a label you’re interested in exploring then I hope you find some comfort in it! If not, then I hope this at least helped you to understand it better.