Literally made a new blog because I’m exciting to share my particular flavors of self & gender
@mogai-sunflowers & @genderheaven since you two seem to be really big pillars & resources? gods I hope it’s okay to ping people i have no clue what tumblr’s social etiquette is
To explain a little about myself, I’m genderfaer viscousfluid, which is my fancy way of saying that most days I’m fem & then I have once-weekly NB or demi days. Most people, I just tell them I’m a trans woman, or just a woman. But none of those ever wholly fit. This last month, I had an NB day that was even stranger than usual - more non-spectrum than non-binary. It was also the most euphoric shift I’ve ever felt, the euphoria even lasting for several days after I’d shifted back.
That shift was the start of a weekslong journey that included a few posts from Reddit, & then a full dive into several wikis of xenogenders & most of genderheaven’s old resources.
I realized that I’ve been experiencing xennity my whole life - strange moments of self & being that defy any standard categorization, & often seemed connected to gender. With that in mind, I’d like to propose three new (I think) xenogenders:
-Petricore From Petrichor (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/petrichor) Petrichor itself is hard to define. Most dictionaries equate it with the smell of rain on dry earth after a storm, but I’ve always considered it more than that. Petrichor is that Sensation of Expectation, that unique smell before a rainstorm in a place like Scandinavia or the Pacific Northwest - the pre-rain smell & the forest smell mix together, & there’s this unique expectancy of Change, the precipitancy of that first lightning strike & the smell of ozone, that almost nostalgic feeling during the rain as it falls, the unique sound of millions of drops hitting the ground, & yes, the smell of the trees & earth after a storm. All of those, are, I feel, experiences & sensations that surround, but don’t define, the core of what Petrichor really is. So yeah, a gender identified with that sensation/experience - that’s Petricore. Don’t worry, it only gets more Vague & Ineffable from here. Flag: Something that incorporates the Washed Out Grays & Blues of a rainy, cloudy day. A single stripe of White somewhere in the middle, below a cloud Gray stripe, perhaps, for lightning.
-Vellicore From Vellichor (https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/57250260260/vellichoria) A gender identified with “the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read”. In other words, a Wistfulness of Worlds Lost, of stories you’ll never experience. That, but applied to yourself & gender. You might call Vellichor itself a type of reverse nostalgia, a longing for something that you’ve never had. Welsh has a word for it, I think: Hiraeth, which could prolly be a gender unto itself for someone. Flag: Wood-colored Brown on the bottom, two Black stripes, WC Brown in the middle, two more Black stripes, & WC Brown again at the top - like an empty bookshelf.
-Biblicore From Biblichor (https://lawhimsy.com/2017/09/13/word-nerd-biblichor/) Supposed to be the same as Vellicore, but I feel there’s two similar but different experiences here, so I’m throwing out the original definition of Biblichor. A gender identified with the weight of books on your shelf that you’ve already read - surrounding its core are not just the particular Smells & Sensations of the books you’ve come to own but also the nostalgia of all the worlds & adventures that sit on your shelf, combined with the wistfulness of knowing that you’ll never again experience them the same way. It could have the characteristics of an Antiquegender or Nostalgiacore? I guess that depends on the person. Flag: Black or Brown on the bottom (for a book cover), 3-5 slightly different shades of Creamy White (for aged book pages), & Black or Brown again at the top - like the reverse spine of a book. Could be fun to add dust cover stripes.
-Somnicore From Somnichor (but I actually made that one up) A gender identified with that feeling you have sometimes when you wake up from a dream & you spend the morning in a Meditative State; as in, Not Quite Real, or a Foggy Kind of Realness, as if you still had one foot back in a dream. Sometimes I get to feeling this way about myself, regardless of whether or not I’m dreaming. It’s very agender spectrum, I guess - or perhaps gender transcendent, or even just reality transcendent in general. Oh, but transcendent implies Above or Up, & this is sort of Sideways... oh dear. I should also clarify that when the feeling goes away, you’re left with a vague sense of Wistfulness, so much so that you might even feel pre-wistful before you’re even out of it. Flag: Bottom stripe deep Purple (representing the dream itself), middle stripe pastel Yellow (representing wakefulness), top stripe White (like white bedsheets). 5-7 stripes. Lilac could be in there somewhere.
These genders are all Coric Aesthetigenders because first, they attempt to describe a core sensory experience using things adjacent to that actual experience - that is, when I define petrichor, I feel as if I am not defining the sensation itself, but rather the things that surround it. The core of the experience is not composed of the things that surround it, only help to define it. Second, because making Petrichor into Petricore is just a great exercise in wordplay.
And before anyone asks, yes, I am a big fan of the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. My whole day today has been one big exercise in sonder.
I’ve hardly ever been more euphoric than I’m feeling right now; I’ve never felt more sure of my own self & at home in my own skin - or perhaps not precisely at home, but at least I know how to do the decorating now :) Thanks all!
P.S. If @mogai-sunflowers or anyone else is willing to help design flags & a design is already taken, totally willing to change it up, none of that’s set in stone. I might also like to try & come up with pronouns for petricore & somnicore, since I identify with those the most? I dunno, I’ve never thought about using xeno- or neopronouns.
P.P.S. I also wrote this late at night with an average of 5 hours of sleep this last week so some of my definitions might have a bit more of a lexical gap than usual
P.P.P.S. More a note for myself than anything if I add more genders they’ll prolly be music-related or other vague Hard To Define aesthetigenders. Isn’t it funny that I have to use this thing I have trouble explaining to explain my self & gender that I have trouble explaining?
