How You Can Access Your Inner Sense of Gender
Stellarity was a term I coined in December of 2025 to describe the act of deliberately subverting gender in tactical ways - through the reshaping and redefining of gendered language, the contradictory use of pronouns, and unconventional methods of presentation. Sometimes, stellarity is the rejection of gender concepts, such as alignment, sex, labels, or AGAB. It is a way to access one’s “inner sense of gender” by reclaiming interpretive authority over it, and it’s grounded in autonomy, unalignment, and nonconformity.
Someone who engages in this specific kind of gender autonomy is called a Gender Stellar Person, heavily inspired by the idea of being a Stellar Nonbinary Person (stellarian; someone who is unaligned or who rejects alignment.) While stellarity is a nonbinary-focused concept, anyone may be a Gender Stellar Person regardless of gender and regardless of whether the person is cis or trans. It isn’t necessarily a gender, but a way to describe how we navigate gender through subversion.
So how does one access this inner sense of gender, as determined by the practice of stellarity? For some, that may be breaking away from conformist gendered concepts, or a subversion from expectations and norms. Many may see these gender divergences within the genderpunk identity or through gender nonconformity. Others may do away with categories and the constraints that come with them, as seen in gender autonomy, which is the refusal of governance and gendered systems.
Other ways to access one’s inner sense of gender may include the unconventional navigation of gender. This can take the form of unconventional pronoun use - mixing, matching, or embracing contradiction - as well as the rethinking of labels and gender terms, which often act as tools of categorization that some may choose to discard entirely.
Reinterpretation is another core aspect of accessing inner gender. This can expand to how people see their own sex and anatomy as abinary or even entirely ungendered, opting for un-binarized labels for these traits or doing away with labels for them altogether. Many could even decide to use “strange” sex labels - “My sex is stellar” or “My sex is not human”, etc. Other concepts, such as expression or even gender itself, may also be reinterpreted. One’s expression might look traditionally masculine, but they may decide to call it aporine, maverine, or ilyagine instead. Some might present in a way that leans more feminine, but they choose to call it their own brand of masculine.
Stellarity does not forbid labels, however, but refuses restrictive or reductive ones (such as having to identify as masculine because one is a man.) Other labels one might reject are binarist labels like the dichotomy of masc/fem, FtM/MtF, transmasc/transfem, or TME/TMA. Even the concept of gender alignment may be redefined or refused by a Gender Stellar Person. The focus is on removing what is unnecessary and redefining gender in a way that works for the individual, even if it isn’t how the larger queer community views those concepts.
So what problem does stellarity actually solve and why is it important as a concept? It may resemble identities like genderpunk or gender nonconformity from the outside, but it extends beyond denouncing the binary or resisting gender norms. Nonbinary people are often forced into categories based on their gender, sex, presentation, and other identity aspects. Stellarity exists to circumvent this forceful gendering of our traits by saying “No, I will not get into that box. I don’t care how you view me or where you think I should fit.” Even in nonbinary spaces, categories and the gendering of the body is expected. Alignment, AGAB, trans-aspect terms, etc. are all normalized and encouraged as concepts. Stellarity can be used as a tool to reject those categories we may be forced into.
As for myself, I have many ways of engaging in stellarity. The refusal of some categories is one key aspect, such as refusing to see my trans manhood as transmasculine or my transmaverinity as outherine - these parts of my gender experience are wholly their own self-contained identities. I also refuse to use alignment terms for myself, which reflects the stellarian relationship to alignment, and I reject binary concepts like FtM because they impose a linearity on something that is not linear for me.
Refusing the gendering of my sex plays into this as well, because I don’t call my sex male or female - if anything, I might call it nonbinary because I understand my body to be nonbinary. This prevents people from having preconceived notions over how my body should look or what my “real gender” should be based on arbitrary physical traits. Stellarity allows me to maintain autonomy over both my sex and my gender, as it encompasses many aspects of one’s identity that are gendered.
Authority over one’s gender is the core concept at the heart of stellarity, and that matters because trans people are often forced into categories and subjected to the gendering of traits that we see as ungendered. If we use certain labels, we are bound by the expectations of those labels. If we have a specific body type, we are expected to transition along only one physiological path. If we have a gender, it must be understood through the lens of the binary. But within stellarity, we can throw away all the restrictions, expectations, and categorizations in favor of gender that is wholly self-defined, self-interpreted, and no longer subject to external authority.
