Intergender
A gender that sits between man and woman rather than outside them — and a word much of the intersex community says belongs to intersex people alone.
- One of twenty-eight Non-Binary identities
- No settled flag
- 12 min read
What it is
Intergender means a gender located between man and woman. Not outside the two. Not the absence of both. Between — pulled by each of them, landing at neither end.
Before anything else: this word is contested, and you should hear that from the page rather than from a stranger in your replies. A substantial part of the intersex community holds that intergender is theirs — that it names a gender formed by having an intersex body in a world that only builds two. They ask perisex people (people who aren't intersex) not to use it. Other non-binary people have used the word for years and disagree. There is no settled answer, and pretending there is would not help you.
So this page covers both uses and keeps them apart. If you are intersex, the word may be yours in a way it isn't for others. If you aren't, you should know you may be asked to explain yourself, and that the people asking usually have a reason.
Keep reading
The second honest thing: there is very little written about actually living as intergender. What exists online is mostly definitions — wiki entries, glossary lines, coining posts — rather than people describing their Tuesdays. This is a small word. This page is short on purpose, and nothing below is invented to fill space.
What people who use it do say, fairly consistently, is that it describes a position rather than a blur. Both poles stay visible. You can feel roughly where you are in relation to them.
Pronouns
There is no intergender pronoun. People who use the word use he, she, they, a mix, neopronouns like xe or ey, or none at all — some prefer their name repeated instead. Mixed sets (he/they, she/they, any) are common, and they usually aren't hedging: they're a way of keeping both poles in the room at once. If someone tells you theirs, use it, correct yourself quickly, move on. If you're reading this about yourself: you can change your mind later, and you don't owe anyone the reasoning.
Does this sound like you?
Take the test
Twenty questions, about four minutes, nothing leaves your phone. It suggests. You decide.
An ordinary day
Most of it is forms.
Two boxes on the pharmacy sign-up. Two options in the work HR system. A dropdown with 'other' that then asks you to specify in a field that rejects anything over twelve characters. You pick whichever costs least today and carry on.
Then there's the sorting. The waiter who says 'ladies' to your table. The security queue that splits by sex. A changing room where you weigh which one is safer against which one is right, and safer usually wins.
Some of it is good. Someone reads you as ambiguous and doesn't try to resolve it. A colleague uses your pronouns without the small pause. You catch yourself in a shop window and think, that's about right, that's roughly where I live.
And a lot of the day is nothing at all. You do your job. You answer messages. Gender isn't a full-time occupation, and anyone who says it is hasn't had to do it.
What people get wrong
How it actually plays out
Love
Dating means explaining twice. First that you aren't a man or a woman. Then that you aren't outside the two either — you're between them, and that second part matters to you far more than it will to most people you tell.
Apps handle the first explanation badly and the second not at all. You'll get filtered out of searches by people who would have liked you.
Watch what someone does with the information, not what they say when you give it. The ones who use the right words and then quietly round you to whichever side is easier to introduce to their friends — you'll spot them by month three.
The good version is unremarkable. They use your pronouns when you're not in the room. They stop saying 'girlfriend' without being asked twice. They don't treat you as a topic.
You can be any orientation at all. Straight, gay, bi, ace, none of the above. Your gender doesn't hand you a matching one.
Desire
Two things get said to people like you a lot. 'Best of both worlds.' And 'I've always wanted to try someone like you.' Both are about a category rather than a person.
Being wanted for being between isn't automatically bad. People are allowed to find you attractive for what you are. The test is whether they're still interested when you're tired, ill, or boring.
If you're intersex, this lands harder. Your body may already have been examined, photographed and discussed by people who never asked. Someone treating it as a novelty in bed can pull all of that back into the room at once.
Some people want their body changed. Some want nothing altered. Some want to be looked at, some want the lights off. None of that is prescribed by the word, and none of it makes you more or less what you are.
Say what you want in plain sentences before it matters. Less romantic, works better.
The body
If you're intersex, this may be the part you opened the page for. Your gender and your body may not come apart cleanly. There may be a medical file with your name on it that you've never seen in full. There may be a surgery you didn't agree to, at an age where nobody could have asked. Some people find 'intergender' names precisely the gender that grew out of that. Others want no word that references their body at all. Both are common and neither is a mistake.
If you're not intersex, the body question is different and usually lighter. Dysphoria here often doesn't point at the other side. It points at the middle. Hormones as a destination rather than a route. A voice, a chest, a jaw that stops somewhere specific and stays there.
The middle is medically awkward. Care pathways are built around travelling from one end to the other, and asking to stop halfway can mean justifying yourself repeatedly to people who control access.
Plenty of intergender people want nothing at all. No surgery, no hormones, not even a haircut. That doesn't make the gender less real, and no clinician gets to grade you on it.
Work
Work is where the forms live. Payroll with two options. A uniform that comes in two cuts. A system that will change your surname in ten seconds and your title never.
Most people who use this word aren't out as intergender at work. They're out as non-binary, or out as nothing. Explaining 'between rather than outside' to a manager still working out 'they' is a poor use of a Tuesday.
Pick battles by cost. Pronouns in an email signature are cheap and do a surprising amount. A full explanation in a team meeting is expensive and does less.
If you're intersex, be careful what you hand to occupational health. Medical information about you travels further than you expect, and you rarely get to see where it went.
Staying private isn't cowardice. In a great many workplaces and countries it is simply the correct call.
Family
Family is the two-step problem again, and it's the second step that fails. Some get as far as 'not a girl'. 'Between' then sounds to them like unfinished, or undecided, or a phase with a start date they can wait out.
Expect the archive. Baby photos. 'But you loved your dresses.' A story about you aged four produced as though it closes the matter.
Some families come round over eighteen months of small corrections and no speeches. Some never do. Neither outcome tells you whether you were right about yourself.
If you're intersex, your family may hold facts about your own body that were never passed on to you. Asking is a hard conversation and often a necessary one. You can also request your records from the hospital directly and skip the conversation entirely.
Chosen family isn't a consolation prize. With a word this small, it may be the only place you meet someone who has heard it before.
Coming out
You may never come out. That's a full option, not a delay.
If you do, keep it to two sentences and don't run a seminar. 'I'm not a man or a woman. I'm somewhere in between, and I use ___.' Then stop. Let them ask.
Decide in advance whether you'll use the word 'intergender' at all. Because it's disputed, saying it can start a different argument than the one you meant to have — especially online, especially if you're not intersex. 'Non-binary' does most of the same work with none of the fight, if you want a quiet life.
Practise on one safe person first. Not the person you most want to tell. The one most likely to be fine about it.
Weigh safety honestly: housing, income, immigration status, family, the country you're in. There are places where this sentence costs you everything, and no version of being out is worth that.
Nearby identities
The distinction is the useful part. Names without a link don’t have a page yet.
The closest neighbour, and the better-documented word. Androgyne usually points at a blend, or at a presentation that reads as both. Intergender usually points at a location between two poles. Many people use both; some treat them as synonyms.
Compare Intergender and Androgyne →Two genders, together or in turns. Intergender is generally one gender that happens to sit between them. If it feels like you have two of something, that's the other word.
Compare Intergender and Bigender →Movement over time. If where you sit changes week to week, that's fluidity. Intergender is usually a fixed spot you keep returning to.
Compare Intergender and Genderfluid →Outside the map, or empty of gender entirely. Intergender keeps man and woman clearly in view and stands between them. If the two poles feel irrelevant rather than nearby, look here instead.
Agender → · Neutrois →Broader and older, with a political edge. It says you're off the binary without saying where. Intergender says where.
Compare Intergender and Genderqueer →Anchored to one side, with something else attached. Intergender isn't anchored to either side.
Demiboy → · Demigirl →Not a gender at all — a set of variations in bodies. Most intersex people are men or women. Some use intergender for their gender, and that overlap is the reason the word is disputed.
It might not be you if…
- You feel outside the man/woman map altogether rather than positioned between two points — agender or neutrois will describe that better.
- Where you sit changes. If Tuesday and Friday genuinely differ, look at genderfluid first.
- You have two genders rather than one in between. That's bigender.
- You're mostly one of the two, with something else attached. That's demiboy or demigirl.
- You like androgynous clothes and haircuts but your gender itself is settled. That's a style, and styles don't need a label from this list.
- You're intersex and your gender is simply man, or simply woman. Extremely common. An intersex body does not issue you a third gender.
- You're not intersex and the intersex-only argument sits badly with you. You don't need a contested word to be who you are — androgyne or non-binary cost you nothing and describe nearly the same thing.
- You want a word nobody will argue with. This isn't that word, and it may never be.
On the hard days
The worst days usually aren't dysphoria. They're the argument.
Being told the word you use isn't yours. Or watching people use it who you believe have no claim to it. This fight is loud in a very small pond and it wears people down. If you're intersex, it isn't abstract — it's about your body being borrowed as an aesthetic. If you're not, being asked to justify yourself isn't persecution, even on the days it feels unfair.
Then the ordinary hard days. Sir and madam within the same hour. Correcting someone for the fourth time and hearing yourself sound difficult. Explaining 'between' to a person who keeps hearing 'confused'.
And the 2am one: what if I made all of this up. That thought arrives for nearly everybody and it tells you almost nothing. The useful test is time — read this page again in three months and see whether the same lines still land.
If tonight is bad, you don't have to settle the word to get through the night. Put the label down. It'll still be there in the morning.
Questions people ask
Is intergender the same as intersex?
No. Intersex describes a body — chromosomes, hormones or anatomy that don't fit the two standard templates. Intergender describes a gender. Most intersex people are men or women. Some use intergender for their gender, and that is the single point where the two words touch.
Can I use intergender if I'm not intersex?
The community genuinely disagrees, and anyone telling you it's settled is picking a side. A substantial part of the intersex community says the word is intersex-only and asks perisex people to leave it alone. Other non-binary people have used it for years and reject that. If you're not intersex: know you may be asked to stop, know the request isn't frivolous, and know that androgyne or non-binary describe almost the same thing without the fight attached.
Is intergender the same as non-binary?
Intergender sits inside non-binary. Non-binary says you aren't simply a man or a woman. Intergender adds a location — between the two, rather than outside them or without gender at all.
What is the intergender flag?
There isn't a settled one. Several designs circulate and none has won out; most borrow the intersex flag's yellow and purple, which is part of why the word is disputed in the first place. If you want a flag tonight, the non-binary or genderqueer flags are widely recognised and nobody will query them.
Read next
You have probably read a list like this before. This one includes the parts that usually get left out: the forms, the money, the people…
Guide · 14 min readComing Out as Transgender or Non-Binary: A Complete GuideMost guides to coming out are about the sentence. This one is about everything around it: whether to say it at all, who gets it first…
This is not a clinical instrument, not a diagnosis, and not evidence of anything about anyone. It describes experiences so you can recognise your own — or rule them out.