To binary people, be they cis or trans, there is the constant that you have always had the language, ideas, and concepts to describe, at least at a basic level, your gender. Most trans people only realise how to do this as they gain awareness of transness and/or crack their egg, but it’s still there. And for binary trans people, there exists a total dichotomy between misgendering and correct gendering. Society generally ignores agender issues and gender neutrality, so there’s this dichotomy.

But for nonbinary people, and for binary trans people in certain transphobic situations, there’s also the issue of non-gendering. This doesn’t get a lot of press because it’s a rare experience even for most trans people. But for xenogender people it’s especially obvious in its existence. I didn’t know what gender I was for a long time even after I started transitioning. I went through the route of starting with “I am a trans woman”, and then “I am a demigirl”, and then “I am nonbinary” and slowly got closer and closer to my gender identity until I figured out, and there was a very steady forward progress. But for lots of us, there’s a trap: Lots of people think nonbinary and agender mean the same thing.

Now obviously this misconception isn’t really a problem for agender people. And for people along the binary spectrum such as demiboys it’s easy to explain “I’m half male and half agender”, or whatever other combination is present. But this misconception is really tough on xenogender people, because it blocks cis people from understanding that our genders are remotely possible. Even self-identified allies.

And plenty of nonbinary people internalise this because they aren’t exposed to positive examples, and they’ve figured out “I’m nonbinary” and they conclude “I must be agender”, because they don’t have the knowledge to keep looking further.

And then their life is in danger, because they’re never being gendered correctly.

And even if they come to realise they’re xenogender, or if they took a path like I did, cis people are still gonna non-gender them.

I’m out as nonbinary at work. But not as xenogender. In fact, after I say I’m nonbinary, 99% of people don’t even ask what gender I am, they just jump straight to non-gendering. And that sucks.

Binary trans people also experience this, oddly, from certain transphobes. The good old loophole "I don’t have to gender trans women correctly if I call her “they”. And that’s when binary people run into non-gendering and its effects. But because it’s motivated from a position of enforced gender neutrality instead of enforced agenderness, it’s not obvious as a different phenomenon than binary transphobia, than misgendering. It’s certainly not coming from a place any different than binary transphobia.

But I think it’s useful for binary trans people and xenogender people to talk, and share experiences, and build a complete theory of gender together. So here’s the big news: Non gendering is dangerous. It can lead to dysphoria, depression, and

And sometimes non-gendering is necessary, because the alternative is even more dangerous. I’m not coming out as xenogender at work, I don’t want to deal with that. But it does deeply suck that I can’t do that, because the “safer” alternative is not being myself in public, just meeting the cis people halfway at the limits of their comprehension. And there are nonbinary people who are genuinely at risk from non-gendering. Who don’t have spaces to be open with their friends and loved ones about not being agender, or who don’t even know xenogenders are a thing. And framing this whole issue under a dichotomy of misgendering vs correct gendering, well that ignores a whole dimension of harm.