i want to explain some of my reasoning behind the concept of gender novarity.
for quite a while i have been thinking a lot about gender, the way our community has expanded on it, and why it exists at all.
the truth is, gender is meant to be the social expression of sex. society has assigned social roles and identifiers to the male and female sex. this is often oppressive and results in violence towards those who do not conform. these roles sometimes correlate with actual sex characteristics, but often times they do not.
the age in which we break down the gender binary was coming. i will never be surprised that non-binary folks, xenogender folks, outherine folks, etc. have started making themselves known more and more in today's day and age. when the supposed sex-based gender binary stops making sense and becomes more blatantly obvious as a way to keep us in line, it's clear that many were bound to stop subscribing to it.
when people have become less interested in contributing to reproduction and are becoming more comfortable with discussing goals in life that do not revolve around the goals laid out for certain genders, this was all bound to happen. if we no longer wish to live out the lives of what men and women should be doing in the eyes of western capitalism, then what are we? how do we define ourselves without this binary? those are the questions we have addressed and thrived off doing so.
i think it's time we look at gender itself and ask what purpose it must serve if we are to continue to use its base definition. if gender is an expression of sex, how can we expand on that without reverting to the binary we fought so hard to escape from?
this thought process is essentially how i came to coin the gender novarity.
the gender novarity is a system that uses the three core elements of physical sex characteristics and how they influence our social lives. it splits the idea of gender into three roles: parental, sexual, and cosmetic. the parental role is expressed by gonaders, geniters for the sexual role, and hormoders as well as deuters for the cosmetic role.
since the main purpose of sex is reproduction, the first two roles were bound to revolve around it, and it works; parenthood and sexuality are inherently social aspects of life and involve interacting with other people. when you think about it, these roles are already typically gendered. parenthood is split into two roles: mother and father. hell, our sexual orientations revolve around gender, not even sex.
the cosmetic identity is more complex and uniquely human; since secondary sex characteristics do not contribute to reproduction (other than the breasts), we have always used them to accessorize ourselves in ways that are not inherently purposeful to parenthood or sexuality. the cosmetic identity is a simple expression of the self. for those who are completely uninterested in reproduction and sex, many still identify with the cosmetic aspects of gender.
i think this way of categorizing the roles of gender serves as a safety net. the gender binary has been weaponized because of its vague nature, allowing it to be morphed into a tool of oppression that decides that men and women must act in certain ways and inhabit certain roles, often for the sake of contributing to capitalism and oppressing those of female sex characteristics. a split gender system that only revolves around one's parental, sexual, and cosmetic roles cannot be weaponized in such a way.
when further conceptualizing the system, i realized that xenine gonaders, geniters, and deuters were absolutely necessary. i thought about how i would apply myself to these concepts and realized that my own roles were largely atypical. xenogonaders, xenogeniters, and xenodeuters are similar to xenogenders except they denote particular roles. i personally feel that xenodeuters are most versatile given that many people revolve their gender identity around their cosmetic appearance.
i really hope that the gender novarity helps people. i hope it helps people understand their own genders better and question the gender binary itself. some people i know have already added some novaritine genders to their hoards which is very exciting to see. i hope more people continue to see its potential.