Adgender

Adgender is a gender modality that refers to someone who moves towards a given gender and/or presentation. The prefix 'ad' derives from the Latin word that means "to" and "towards," and it's meant to signify a movement/transition. This is similar to terms like transmasculine and transfeminine, but adgender is intended to be more inclusive. This term could be used by people who don't feel included under the trans umbrella and for those who don't consider themselves to be transgender.

Subcategories

• Adfeminine - Someone who moves towards a feminine gender or feminine presentation.
• Admasculine - Someone who moves towards a masculine gender or masculine presentation.
• Adneutral - Someone who moves towards a neutral gender or neutral presentation.
• Adandrogynous - Someone who moves towards an androgynous gender or androgynous presentation.
• Adfemmasculine - Someone who is both Adfeminine and Admasculine.

Flags

Beyond MOGAI Pride Flags on tumblr created the Adgender Flag on July 14th 2018; they also added that this term may be useful for individuals who don't feel included in trans- (ex: transmasc, transfem, transneu) and/or for individuals who are demigender, polygender, intersex, genderfluid, etc.

Celestialsofia on Wiki created the adfeminine, admasculine, and adneutral flags on July 22, 2021.

TheMagisttrate on Wiki created the adandrogynous flag on August 17th, 2021

Kenochoric on tumblr created the alternate Adgender flag on December 21st, 2021.

adorable-abomination on tumblr created the adfemmasculine flag on December 31st, 2021

• 
  Adgender flag (created by beyond-mogai-pride-flags)
• 
  alternate Adgender flag (created by kenochoric on tumblr)
• 
  Admasculine Flag (created by Wiki user Celestialsofia)
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  Adneutral flag (created by Wiki user Celestialsofia)
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  Adfeminine flag (created by Wiki user Celestialsofia)
• 
  Adandrogynous flag (created by Wiki user TheMagisttrate)
• 
  adfemmasculine flag (created by adorable-abomination)

History

Coining

On June 21st of 2018, A tumblr user named Queer-Buccaneers coined the two terms 'Admasculine' and 'Adfeminine'. They had explained how this was meant to be slightly more inclusive than transmasculine and transfeminine, and had listed some examples of what identifying with 'Adgender' could look like.

admasculine: transitioning towards masculinity

adfeminine: transitioning towards femininity

these are meant to be slightly more inclusive than ‘transmasculine’ and ‘transfeminine’. who wouldn’t feel included by trans-? why do we need ad-? i’m glad you ask! here are some examples:

an AFAB bigender person who has been on T for a long time and now needs to do the same things as transfeminine people to pass on girl days would be transmasculine but adfeminine.

a man in a system who has to dress up the body of his cis woman host when he fronts to feel himself would be admasculine.

a trans woman would be adfeminine, because it’s an umbrella term that transfeminine falls under.

a cis man with kallman’s syndrome who chooses to take T might be admasculine.

an AFAB nonbinary femme might call themselves adfeminine because they feel like they’re transitioning into a different kind of femininity than the heteronormative role they were assigned at birth.

a butch woman who transitions but wants to avoid the connotations of transmasculine might feel more comfortable calling herself admasculine.

a woman in a system who’s transfeminine inworld but fronts into an AFAB body would be adfeminine.

an intersex person who has undergone medical intervention but doesn’t consider themselves trans might talk about their experiences instead as an adgender person.

—queer-buccaneers on tumblr

Criticisms

The creator had good intentions but faced a little pushback in regards to the examples they used. Queer-Buccaneers responded to one of the criticisms that was expressed by Tumblr user skinfeeler. This user specifically had an issue with the "a trans woman would be adfeminine" example.

this falls like, really flat with butch trans women, and honestly i’d say a number of things here simply do not cohere with transfeminine embodiments and presentations and the unique tensions they exist under in general. until such a point where this categorisation does at the very least represent such realities, it is obligatory to rethink it because typically when an analytic attempt like this doesn’t serve all transfeminine people, it tends to directly serve their oppressors— consider such past attempts as vulgar socialisation theory et cetera.

—skinfeeler on tumblr

In a summary, She's basically saying that it's crucial to ensure that these terms genuinely resonate with and represent the experiences of all individuals within those categories. Queer-Buccaneers admitted that she had a point and said that it was a "case of thoughtless wording leading to generalizations of trans women’s experiences". They continued by explaining that they have transfeminine mods that pitched these terms and worked on the original post. They ended it by saying that they are aware that a few people don't represent every trans women/or transfem and asked for the opinions of any trans woman who may feel misrepresented by this term.

On June 28th of 2018, Queer-Buccaneers made a post that was responding to a comment made by Tumblr user apocalypslater This user was referring to one of the examples that was used by the coiner and said; "a cis person taking hormones to fix a health issue isn't transitioning". Queer-Buccaneers had replied and basically explained that not everyone would use this term and that it's for the people that do resonate with it. They created this term to provide a space for individuals to discuss their experiences without appropriating existing labels that may not fully encompass their circumstances.

Purpose

This term was created because Queer-Buccaneers felt that the terms 'transmasculine' and 'transfeminine' had connotations of transitioning from one binary gender to another.Because of those issues, they decided to coin Adgender. Again, They also created it for the people who want to discuss their shared experiences without feeling like they're appropriating labels and for those who may not feel included under the trans umbrella.

‘transitioning’ just means changing from one state to another. ad- isn’t meant to be a gender identity or make you lgbt or anything. it’s just a nice umbrella term for people who want to talk about shared experiences.

—queer-buccaneers on the meaning of adgender

See Also

• Isogender
• Absgender
• Cisn't