#binary alignment

There are a lot of terms thrown around in discussions about gender, and a lot of them get conflated or misrepresented and end up with conflicting or overlapping definitions. So I’m going to be a bit prescriptivist here and define these terms by how I think they should be used, as well as how they often are used.

Gender: I loosely define this as internal feeling one feels is their gender; it’s confusing and no one really understands it, so it’s not well-defined. But I think this covers the gist of how people actually use it. Sometimes conflated with how I define gender identity.

Gender Identity: I define this as how one thinks of their gender and the words one uses to describe it. Sometimes conflated with how I define gender, especially since in a lot of cases they are the same thing. However, there are people who are unable to define their gender, or who haven’t come to realize it yet, and the way we name our gender often shows what aspects of it are most important to us, and that we identify with. The use of “gender identity” vs “gender” is also sometimes used to invalidate non-cis people by implying that while they identify as one thing, their gender is really one that would make them cis.

Presentation: This is used both as how one expresses one’s gender via clothing, hairstyle, makeup, intentional voice inflection, movements, etc., and as how all of that is perceived in a gendered way. Unfortunately for many trans and iso people, these are not the same thing. I would define presentation as the former; therefore if a maverique person wears a dress as a way to express their gender, their presentation is maverique, not female. This definition is synonymous with gender expression.

Masculine and Feminine: These are the loosest-defined terms on this list, and the reason I made this post. They’re often used as a catch-all for “male/female-like,” “associated with male/female,” or just male/female as an adjective. They are sometimes used differently, as independent concepts that are adjacent to or often associated with maleness and femaleness, but separate. This is the definition I like to use, since it is the only one that doesn’t apply to a different set of words. This concept is similar to gender, though more of a qualifier than a noun; if your gender is a ball, masculine and feminine are possible colors or flavors of that ball. Using this definition, a cis man with a traditional male presentation and actions could still be feminine.

AFAB/AMAB and variations thereof: Literally means “assigned female/male at birth,” but is often conflated with current physical appearance or sex. These concepts are all important in different situations and in different ways, so it’s important not to conflate them. If you mean to talk about someone’s current physical appearance, the terms perceived as male/female are more appropriate, and given the wide range of possibilities regarding sex, it’s usually more helpful to name the specific trait you’re talking about than naming categories based on multiple traits.

Male/Female Aligned and the Galactian Alignment system: This is just a huge mess. People use it for anything from “my gender is partly male so I’m solarian/male-aligned” to “I’m AFAB and agender so I’m lunarian/female-aligned.” The lack of consistent definition makes these essentially useless as terms unless the definition used has been stated in the discussion they’re used in. I would define it as the binary gender group or lack thereof one chooses to align oneself with, regardless of gender; this often changes from topic to topic, which is why I don’t think these terms are very useful as identities.

Some examples of correct usage (according to me):

wishing to be perceived as male just like a trans man despite being nonbinary, and so identifying as solarian in discussions about misgendering, in order to group your identity with trans men’s but still identify yourself as separate on account of being nonbinary

having experienced misdirected misogyny as a nonbinary person, and so identifying as lunarian in discussions about misogyny, in order to group your experiences with women’s but still identify yourself as separate on account of being nonbinary

having experienced misdirected misogyny as a nonbinary person, and identifying as stellarian in discussions about misogyny in order to separate your experiences as a nonbinary person from the experiences of women

A nonbinary person who doesn’t identify as male- or female- aligned. Some people identify as binary aligned because of experiences they share that are common for that binary gender or because they’re partially male or female.

They’re replacements for those terms. In meaning, solarian and lunarian mean male and female aligned in the way nonbinary people use those terms to describe our own experiences - identifying with a binary gender in some ways, but still being nonbinary. The terms reject the meanings cis people put into male/female aligned, which amount to “basically male/female”.

There are lots of ways, I put a few below.

Say you identify as male-aligned because you present masculinely and dislike being misgendered as a girl more than being misgendered as a guy, but you’re a demigirl and feel like your relationships with women are sapphic because you feel similar to a woman in the context of dating.

Say you identify as male-aligned because you’re genderfluid, and you’re a guy like 90% of the time, but your gender changes to girl whenever you’re around someone you’re dating.

Say you identify as male-aligned because you reject womanhood to the point that you’d rather align yourself with the other binary gender, but you’re not actually a guy, you’re maverique or something. But you identified as a butch lesbian for 20 years and you’re still very tied to the sapphic community, and you as a person haven’t changed so you don’t want to change that label either.

Say you identify as male-aligned and female-aligned because you’re m/f bigender, and you’re sapphic because you’re partially female and like girls.

Identity is complicated and binary alignment almost never applies to all aspects of a person’s life, but rather one or several significant aspects. It’s also important to keep in mind that nonbinary people, being non-binary, are not going to fit into just one of the binary boxes, and sometimes weird things happen as a result.

Hope this helps!

Identifying with a binary gender, as opposed to identifying as a binary gender.

Like you can be 0% female and still be lunarian because you feel a connection to womanhood and women. I go between male and female but I’m male more often than female, and rejected my agab hard, so I’m solarian much more often than I am lunarian. Most of the time I’m stellarian, because my experience being both binary genders feels so far removed from the experience of being just one or the other.

Yes absolutely! Any gender can use any pronouns, and binary alignment doesn’t have to correlate with your gender at all.

I’d like to clarify since there’s some misinterpretation of my and other’s critical stance about the way binary alignment terminology is used.

Some people have came to me and others who share my views, being defensive about gender alignment and I can understand why. I used to be a mod on a tumblr blog called “demigenders” a few years back. We made a lot of posts in support of AFAB demigirls and AMAB demiboys, because transphobes and exorsexists were telling them that they were “basically just cis!”, which they aren’t. So now, if you’re a non-binary person who feels close to/mostly a binary gender, I can understand why you might misinterpret our stance.

But this is NOT about being against non-binary people who feel close to a binary gender. You are a VALID NON-BINARY PERSON. You are NOT ‘basically cis’. You are just as non-binary as any non-aligned non-binary person. 

This is instead being critical of the way binary alignment is being used to CALL people who are closer to a binary gender, or relate to a binary gender socially etc, “women” and “men” without their consent, or group people into binary-alignment without their consent either because of their AGAB, what gender they feel closest to, their presentation and other factors.Basically, it’s being critical of misgendering and treating you as if you’re just a binary person, or just a cis person.