Pomogender
A gender that's definitely there and won't go into words — not for lack of trying, but because none of the available words are the right shape.
- One of three Exploring identities
- No settled flag
- 14 min read
What it is
Pomogender is short for postmodern gender. It names a gender that can't be described, sorted or fitted into the categories that exist — including the newer ones people offer you as a kindness.
Read this part first. This is a small word. It appeared online in the mid-2010s and it lives on wiki pages and a scattering of forum threads. There are no memoirs behind it, no research, no elders, no settled definition.
The people using it don't agree either. Some mean "my gender is undefinable". Others mean "I reject the whole system of gender categories". Those are different claims wearing the same word.
Keep reading
So this page is shorter than most on this site, and it's built differently. What follows describes the experience of having a gender you can't name — which a great many people report — rather than a pomogender culture, because there isn't one to report on. Where we don't know, we say so.
The core of it is a specific kind of failure. You try the words on. Man. Woman. Nonbinary. Agender. Genderfluid. Each is close enough that you understand why someone handed it to you. None of them is it.
Not "none of them fits yet". Not "I haven't found mine". The shape is wrong at the level of shape.
And it isn't emptiness. There's something there. It has weight, it reacts, it objects when people get it wrong. It just doesn't come apart into pieces that have names.
Pronouns
There's no pattern here. People who use this word use every set going — she, he, they, neopronouns, several at once, or none in particular.
Some rotate on purpose, so that no single one settles into a description. Some ask for "any", which is not indifference but a refusal to be pinned by grammar.
And plenty keep the pronouns they were raised with, because arguing costs more than it's worth, or because it isn't safe. Your pronouns are a tool for other people to use. They don't have to be a summary of you.
Does this sound like you?
Take the test
Twenty questions, about four minutes, nothing leaves your phone. It suggests. You decide.
An ordinary day
Nothing about the day is dramatic. That is rather the point.
You get dressed. Mostly you dress so that nobody reads you as anything in particular, which takes effort even when it looks like not trying.
Coffee. "Thanks, mate." Or "thanks, love." You don't correct it, because correcting it means offering a replacement, and you don't have one to hand over.
A form at the dentist. Male, Female, Other. You tick Other. You feel nothing much about it. Other is at least honest about being the leftover box.
Group chat. Someone's been trying new pronouns and asks what you landed on. You type a sentence. Delete it. Send "still figuring it out", which isn't quite a lie and isn't the truth.
Someone at work talks for ten minutes about how they finally found their word and how much lighter they feel. You're glad for them. There's a small ache underneath it you don't mention.
Evening. Nobody asked you anything difficult. You still spent a low, steady amount of energy standing slightly outside the sentence everyone else was in.
It doesn't ruin the day. It also doesn't go anywhere.
What people get wrong
How it actually plays out
Love
People want a noun before they want a person. Dating apps ask for one within three taps.
If you're dating, the question arrives early and casually. "So what are you, then?" Some people answer with the nearest workable word and do the longer version later. Some say "I'll tell you properly if this goes anywhere." Neither is cowardice.
Watch what happens in the second after an incomplete answer. Some people flinch. Some just carry on with the conversation. That second tells you more than the next three dates will.
A lot of the friction in relationships turns out to be about their word, not yours. They need to know whether they're saying boyfriend, girlfriend, partner — and what that makes them, and what they tell their mother.
That's a real problem and it's theirs to solve. You can help. You can't solve it by becoming describable.
The good version, when it comes, is quiet. Someone stops asking what you are because they've learned how you like to be treated, and that turned out to be the useful information all along.
If you're not dating, or not out, or not anywhere near able to be — none of this is a requirement. This isn't something you need a witness for.
Desire
Who you want is a separate question from what you are. Worth saying, because the two get tangled constantly.
The tangle is practical. Words like straight and gay need two fixed points to measure between. You're not a fixed point. So the maths doesn't run.
Most people here solve it by using a word that doesn't require the maths. Queer. Bi. Pan. Some keep the label they've used for years because it still describes who they end up with, even if the reasoning underneath has gone soft.
In bed, the recurring question is what you're being wanted as. Some people want a partner who doesn't gender them at all — no words for it, no role, just hands.
Others want to be gendered hard for an hour, in a way that has nothing to do with what they are the rest of the time. That's common and it isn't a contradiction. Play is not a confession.
Language for your own body can matter more than what's done to it. Some people need certain words replaced or dropped entirely. Saying so early is unromantic and saves a great deal.
And some readers want little or no sex at all. That's its own thing, unrelated to this, and nothing here assumes otherwise.
The body
Dysphoria usually comes with a direction. You know what's wrong and you know roughly what would be better. Here it often doesn't work like that.
You know the current arrangement is off. You can't say what right would look like. That's harder to act on than plain dysphoria, and harder to explain to anyone assessing you.
Some people who use this word have no dysphoria at all. Their body is fine, it's the sorting that isn't. That doesn't disqualify anything.
If you want to test things, reversible experiments answer more than thinking does. A haircut. Binding or not. Shaving or not. Voice. Sleeves.
Use relief as the measure, not resemblance. The question isn't "do I look like the right thing" — there's no picture to match. It's "did I stop thinking about my body for an hour."
Where medical routes exist and you can reach them, be warned that many systems want a coherent story with an endpoint. Not everyone has one. Some people describe a wanted change without claiming to know what it makes them.
Some go part of the way and stop, because that turned out to be it. "Unfinished" is a judgement made from outside. Access to any of this varies enormously depending on where you live, and plenty of readers have none. That doesn't make the body feeling less real.
Work
Work is where you're read all day by people who will never ask.
Uniforms sorted into two. Name badges. "Ladies and gentlemen." Customer scripts written by someone who assumed. None of it hostile, all of it constant.
HR forms with two boxes and a payroll system that physically cannot store a third. Sometimes the limit really is the software, and knowing that helps slightly.
The maths is what wears you down. Correcting one colleague means explaining to eleven, twice, and being the gender person in every meeting for a month. Some days it isn't worth it. That's a calculation, not a surrender.
Many people run a simplified work version of themselves and keep the real thing off the clock. That's rationing, not dishonesty.
If you're not safe to be out at work — and in a lot of jobs and a lot of countries you're not — staying quiet is the correct answer, not a compromise you should feel bad about.
Where you do have some safety, the request that travels best is small and specific. A name. A pronoun. One sentence, no theory. People can do small and specific.
Family
Parents usually want a word so they can tell relatives. When they ask "but what ARE you", the question underneath is often: what do I say to your grandmother.
That means the useful answer is frequently instructions, not a definition. "Keep my name. Stop saying my daughter. I'll answer to anything." People can follow that. They cannot follow a paragraph about the limits of categories.
Some families won't get any version of this. In religious or traditional households, in languages where the word has no equivalent, it may never be said at home. Living without telling them is a survival decision, not a failure of nerve.
Siblings often adapt fastest, because they've watched you longest. Older relatives sometimes surprise you by not caring at all.
If you have children, they generally want to know what to call you and then want their dinner. They take an invented answer far better than adults do.
Coming out
Most coming-out scripts end in a noun. "I'm gay." "I'm a trans man." Complete sentences. Yours isn't, which is why the usual advice doesn't fit.
Three shapes people actually use.
Borrow the nearest word for public purposes. Say nonbinary, or say queer, and keep the longer thing for people who earn it. This is not lying. It's a summary.
Skip the noun and give instructions instead. "Call me this. Use these pronouns, or any. Don't introduce me as your daughter." People handle instructions far better than definitions. They want to know what to do.
Say nothing. To anyone who doesn't need it. You are not required to explain yourself to be the thing you are.
Expect one specific response: "so you're nonbinary then." Decide beforehand whether you're correcting it. Often the answer is no, and letting it stand costs you less than the argument.
Safety comes first and it isn't a footnote. In some homes, some workplaces, some countries, this is not sayable. Staying quiet there is not weakness or self-betrayal. It's reading the room correctly.
Nearby identities
The distinction is the useful part.
Nonbinary gives you a location: outside the two. This word says the locating itself doesn't work. Most people who use pomogender also say nonbinary in public, because it's the version other people can hold.
Compare Pomogender and Non-Binary →Agender is absence — nothing there to name. Pomogender is presence without a name. If you press on it and find blank space, agender is the more accurate word and far easier to live with.
Compare Pomogender and Agender →Genderqueer carries a political edge: the categories are the problem and you're not cooperating. It overlaps hard with the "rejects the system" reading of pomogender. If your thing is mainly about refusing the framework rather than an inner unnameable, this word says it and has actual history behind it.
Compare Pomogender and Genderqueer →Fluid means moving between recognisable points — some days one thing, some days another. Pomogender doesn't require movement at all. It can sit perfectly still and still be unnameable.
Compare Pomogender and Genderfluid →Xenogender describes gender through things that aren't human categories — a colour, a texture, a concept. That's an attempt at description, and it works for people. Pomogender is what's left when even those attempts don't land. Some people use both: xenogender terms to gesture, pomogender for the gap they don't close.
Compare Pomogender and Xenogender →The closest neighbour. Egogender means a gender so personal that only the individual can define it. The difference is fine but real: egogender says only I can say what this is. Pomogender says it can't be said.
Compare Pomogender and Egogender →Questioning expects an answer eventually. This word tends to be used by people who stopped expecting one. If you're still actively looking, questioning is the truthful label for now and there's no rush to leave it.
Compare Pomogender and Questioning →Maverique is a gender with its own positive content — real, felt, and independent of masculine or feminine, but describable by the people who have it. Pomogender resists content. If you can feel a distinct something with texture to it, maverique may be nearer.
Compare Pomogender and Maverique →It might not be you if…
- You haven't actually tried the existing words yet. Try them. They're free, and one of them fitting is much easier than this.
- The honest answer to "what's there" is nothing. That's agender, and it will get you further with far less explaining.
- You can define it perfectly well — you're just tired of explaining it to people who don't deserve the explanation. That's privacy, not undefinability. Different thing, and completely reasonable.
- What you mean is that you don't care about gender. That's apathy about the question, not an unnameable answer to it. Gender apathetic or cassgender says it better.
- You're three weeks into questioning and this feels like somewhere to sit down. It might be. It might also be a stall. Gender questioning is the honest word while you're still moving.
- Your point is mainly political — that categories are a con and you won't play. Genderqueer says that, people understand it, and it comes with actual history.
- You're a man or a woman who doesn't perform it the way you're told to. That's the rules being narrow, not your gender being unnameable. Plenty of men and women live nothing like the instructions.
- You like the word more than you recognise yourself in it. If the appeal is that it sounds interesting, put it down and check again in a month.
On the hard days
The hard part is not the not-knowing. It's that you can't hand it to anyone.
Everyone else in the queer group has a noun. They say theirs, people nod, the conversation moves on. You say yours and the conversation stops for a tutorial you didn't want to give.
So you get quiet in the rooms that were meant to be the easy rooms. That's a particular kind of lonely, and it catches people off guard.
Then there's the fraud feeling. Not "am I queer enough" — the older, colder version. Maybe there's nothing here. Maybe I built a word around an absence and got attached to it.
That thought turns up most at night and it argues well. It's worth knowing that it turns up for nearly everyone without a clean label, including people who are certain by daylight.
Other people's reading of you doesn't help. Undefined gets heard as undecided. You get treated as mid-process by people waiting politely for you to finish.
What helps, in the order people report it helping. One person who takes the incomplete answer without flinching. Describing what you want done rather than what you are. Giving yourself permission to stop searching without calling the search a failure.
And a plain note. If the not-knowing sits under a heaviness that doesn't lift, or you're finding it hard to see a reason to keep going, that's worth telling someone out loud — a friend, a doctor, a helpline. That's not about gender. It's about you still being here.
Questions people ask
Is pomogender a real identity or just a Tumblr word?
Both, honestly. It was coined online in the mid-2010s and it lives on wikis and forums rather than in research or memoirs. Being coined online doesn't make an experience fake — plenty of words we now use started that way. But it doesn't make the word useful either. The only test that matters is whether the description above matches something you already had before you read it. If you had to talk yourself into it, it probably isn't yours.
What's the difference between pomogender, nonbinary and agender?
Nonbinary tells you a position: not a man, not a woman. Agender tells you there's nothing there. Pomogender says something is there, it has weight, and no available category — including those two — describes it. In practice many people who use this word also call themselves nonbinary in public, because it's understood. If your honest answer to "what's there" is "nothing", agender is the more accurate word and it will serve you better.
Is there a pomogender flag?
There are images circulating that people call one, but the versions disagree with each other and none has a clear, documented origin. We'd rather show you nothing than show you the wrong colours. If your corner of the internet uses a particular one, use that. Nothing about this requires a flag to be true.
How do I tell people if I can't explain it?
Stop trying to define it and describe the effects instead. "Man and woman both feel like the wrong file. I don't have a better word yet. Use they, or use anything, and don't call me your daughter." That's a complete request even though it isn't a complete definition. Most people want to know what to do, not what you are. And you can borrow a nearby word — nonbinary, queer — for public use without it being a lie.
Read next
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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.