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Agender

Postgender

A gender you no longer have, that still shaped who you are. Not absence — aftermath.

  • One of seventeen Agender identities
  • No settled flag
  • 4 min read
A character reading among plants and bookshelves

A shorter entry: the essentials, written to the same standard. The fuller guides are on the main identities.

What it is

Postgender describes a particular kind of nothing. The record puts it in one sentence: a feeling that one's identity has been heavily influenced and shaped by a gender that one no longer experiences. A postboy no longer feels his gender is male, but is still strongly connected to masculinity, or still made of it in ways he would not undo. A postgirl, the same the other way.

So it sits in the agender family — no gender now — with a direction the other words lack. Agender says nothing there. Exgender says out of it. Postgender says after it: there was one, it has gone, and the shape it left is part of you. The "post" is doing the same work as in post-war or post-industrial. What came before is over, and still visible everywhere.

The paper trail is thin and this page will not pretend otherwise. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki records the word coined on or before 24 June 2014 by a Tumblr user, a flag submitted to a flag blog, and postboy and postgirl flags by another Tumblr user. That is all. One warning: postgender is also the name of postgenderism, a political position that gender should be done away with for everybody. The record says not to confuse the two. This page is about a person, not a programme.

Pronouns

Usually whatever came before, or they/them. A postboy may keep he/him for the rest of his life without contradiction — the pronoun belonged to the man, and the man is part of him. Others switch to they/them to mark the change. A few use it/its. Nobody here is obliged to change anything, and nobody is obliged to keep it.

Does this sound like you?

Someone calls you a man and it is not wrong so much as out of date, like being addressed by a job title from a career you left.
You still move through the world with the habits of the gender you had — the way you stand, the words you reach for — and you do not want them gone. They are yours. The gender is not.
Agender fits the present and misses the past. Trans words fit the departure and miss the fact that you did not go anywhere new.
You can say "when I was a girl" without it being a trans sentence or a childhood sentence. It is just a true one.
You have tried to work out whether you are a man who stopped believing in it or something that was never a man, and the answer is the first one, and that is the whole word.
The question "what gender are you" gets a two-part answer: none, and here is the one that made me.
On the days you miss it, you are not sure whether you miss the gender or the certainty that came with it.

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Nearby identities

The distinction is the useful part.

Exgender

Out of gender — left it, or was never in it, with no lasting mark and no interest in one. Postgender keeps the mark. If the past gender still counts for you, postgender is the closer word.

Compare Postgender and Exgender →
Agender

The parent. No gender, full stop, and usually no history of one. If you cannot remember ever having a gender to lose, agender is the plainer fit.

Compare Postgender and Agender →
Genderless

Also nothing, described neutrally. Genderless has no before. Postgender is all about the before.

Compare Postgender and Genderless →
Gendervoid

A hole where a gender should be, sometimes grieved. Postgender can involve loss, but the space is not empty — it is furnished with what the old gender left behind.

Compare Postgender and Gendervoid →
Demiboy

Partly a boy, now. A postboy is not partly anything — the boy is over. What remains is influence, not a fraction.

Compare Postgender and Demiboy →

It might not be you if…

  • You still have the gender, quietly, and are tired of it. Tired is not gone. That is a man or a woman who hates the rules, and there are better pages.
  • There was never a gender there to leave. That is agender, and it does not need a prefix.
  • What you mean is that gender as a system should end for everyone. That is postgenderism, a politics, and you can hold it with a perfectly ordinary gender of your own.
  • The gender went quiet when everything else did. If food stopped tasting of anything around the same time, give it a year before naming the absence. A gender that has gone flat often comes back.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between postgender and exgender?

Direction and residue. Both sit in the agender family and both describe being out of gender rather than simply without it. Exgender is the exit; it says nothing about what the old gender left behind. Postgender says the old gender still shapes you — a postboy is still connected to masculinity even though he no longer feels male. If the past matters, post. If it does not, ex.

Is postgender the same as postgenderism?

No, and the record says so explicitly. Postgenderism is a social and political idea that gender should be dissolved for everyone. Postgender, on this page, is one person's description of their own gender: had one, no longer do, still marked by it. You can be postgender without holding the politics, and hold the politics with any gender at all.

Do I have to pick postboy or postgirl?

No. Those are the two named versions on the record, and they fit people whose past gender was one of the binary two. If what you had was non-binary and is now gone, postgender on its own says it. The word is small enough that nobody is policing the sub-labels.

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Last updated · How these pages are written and checked

No flag is shown because none is settled. Text: written from how people who use the word Postgender describe it.

Sources:

  • Postgender — LGBTQIA+ Wiki — Definition, postboy example, "not to be confused with postgenderism", coinage on or before 24 June 2014 by Tumblr user Lamb777, flag submitted to Beyond MOGAI Pride Flags, postboy/postgirl flags by the-dawn-prayer. Fetched 2026-09-03.

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.