Dictionary

metagender en · NOUN

Etymology

From meta- + gender.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The use of categories to conceive of gender; the possible ways in which gender can manifest itself.
   • When I write of someone being a Woman or a Man, I mean to indicate the metagender assumption that they have, so to speak, all their gender building blocks incontestably in one metagender box, i.e. if you are l-, f-, p-, and j-female, then (and only then) are you a Woman. Deviation from the standards set for any of the four genders will cause your metagender to be questioned. Patriarchal metagender does not allow for any ambiguity -- Woman and Man are the only available divisions. 2009, Clare Beckett, Owen Heathcote, Marie Macey, Negotiating Boundaries? Identities, Sexualities, Diversities, →ISBN, page 48:
   • Gender mainstreaming is a metagender equality strategy (Krook and True forthcoming; True 2009b). 2010, Brooke Ackerly, Jacqui True, Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science, →ISBN, page 11:
   • The realities of "being or doing" the "differences of being either female, feminine, woman or male, masculine, man" (Coates 1998, 295-296), the socially assigned sequestered private spaces and public roles we encounter in our daily lives, are not to be confounded with metagender. There should, therefore, be concurrent dialogues, one on gender and the other on metagender, particularly in view of the “after gender” issue. 2007, Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, Stephan Miescher, Africa After Gender?, →ISBN, page 292:
   • A number of critics see Shakespeare endorsing cross-gendering. Shakespeare is, what might be called, a skillful exponent of metagender beliefs. 2017, Philip C Kolin, Routledge Revivals: Shakespeare and Feminist Criticism (1991), →ISBN:
2. (countable, uncountable) A gender identification that is neither male nor female.
   • Metagenders can have any body type, genital configuration, or chromosome type. 2003, Tracie O'Keefe, Katrina Fox, Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex and Gender Diversity, page 76:
   • She did not point this out, but I was pleased to see that a significant number of contributors are women and one identifies as metagender, as so often esoteric conversation is dominated by men’s conversation (and white men at that). 2014 May 5, Brandy Williams, “Review: Abraxas 5”, in Star and Snake:
   • But note also Rhonda McDaniel, in this volume, who traces another possibility–that of a “metagender” that transcends male and female and is available to saints of both sexes who pursue virginity – in the writings of Ambrose. 2013, Paul Szarmach, Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, →ISBN:

Forms

Relateds

genderqueer