Jay’s Microlabels #1 - Astralgender!
Welcome to this first part of a series I want to do showcasing some microlabels I find interesting and want to spread the word about! A lot of these, maybe most, will be my own labels that I either coined or found to use for myself. But in this blog I want to show a lot of diverse experiences, so I’ll try and showcase more than just my own (And yes, I will take asks about labels you’ve found or want me to find!).
Now let me actually get into the gender label I want to showcase, because it quickly became beloved to me despite only rediscovering it a few days ago. This is Astralgender!
Astralgender is a xenogender (which I will do its own dedicated post about at some point soon!) related to space, the cosmos, stars, galaxies, and all the synonyms and similar concepts of the subject.
How so? Well, it can be either through a deep, gendered connection to the subject itself (as an aesthetigender, or a xenogender based on a certain aesthetic), or through resonating with certain traits space has; feeling as if your gender is vast, awe-inspiring, beautiful, empty, colorful, starry, expanding, or anything else one associates with space.
My personal experience: I only found Astralgender a few days ago, along with many other space-related xenogenders. And so, for my own pronouns.cc page you can find in my intro post, I essentially lumped in all these labels together and to some degree re-coined the label to encompass all relations to space. That included making a revised flag, which I have to say may be my new favorite flag design I’ve made yet!
I very much resonate with Astralgender on both levels, as a metaphor and as an aesthetigender. While I have a deep interest in history, geography, and a lot of other subjects, space, despite not being my absolute favorite subject, has always felt like a special one to me.
As a metaphor, I really feel connected to the concepts of wonder, vastness, the ever-growing universe, and just in general all the traits I associate with space, they all feel like good ways of explaining how I feel my own gender.
But also as an aesthetic, I think just the feelings space give me are ingrained somehow into my gender, in a way that when I say I’m a girl and that I’m non-binary (especially the former), it feels like it’s in a very specifically space-like, astral way. I feel so connected to the awe and wonder it gives me, the expansiveness of it all, the auroras, the twinkling stars, the beauty, and of course the vivid, deep hues of pink, blue, purple, and green, illuminating the contrasting dark void of space… It feels not only magical, but intertwined with my sense of self as a person, and so that is why I use Astralgender!
I hope you all enjoy this little window into the world of smaller labels! I’ve had many journeys on queer and xenogender wikis, and so I felt like showing everyone who follows me a bit of what I know, either for just understanding me and the people around you, or to find some new labels to use yourself! Hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you next time :3
