Trans Otherness: My Rejection of Gendered Categories
Since the discovery of my transmaverine identity - a transgender identity that is not masculine, feminine, androgynous, or neutral but is defined by a strong inner conviction of gender that is ungoverned by external influence - I’ve had the time to truly explore the label in deeper and deeper ways the more I sat with it. It is maverine in nature, with a quality similar to that of maveriquehood - outherine, unambiguous, and autonomous. There is a distinct “otherness” to the identity, though some might describe it as abinary, aporine, or outherine if they could categorize it. However, my transmaverine identity does not feel outherine at all, or that it fits any kind of category.
This introspection started one day when I decided to archive a ton of information on outherinities and all their subset qualities, based on the three categories of outherine identities laid out in the original definition of the term. I found that my maverine identity didn’t really fit in with any of the categories - not in Category One which were the “entirely new and apart from” masculine, feminine, androgynous, and neutral, not in Category Two which can be compared to those four, and not in Category Three which is dedicated to “uncommon combinations.” It seemed my maverinity didn’t fit in anywhere, which made me think that maybe this term wasn’t for me after all because isn’t maverine considered an outherine identity? It seemed to fall right into Category One.
I was always obsessed with categorizing my genders in specific ways, sorting them into all these labeled boxes just so I could keep track of where they lie within the enormous galaxy of existing genders. To me, maverinity needed to fit into this system in order for it to feel like a tangible part of my identity - everything needed a name. For the maverine part of my identity, I viewed it as: Nonbinary, then abinary, then aporine, then outherine - broader terms into more specific terms. I needed to make sure my maverine identity was nested into a larger umbrella term which itself had an umbrella term of its own, and so on, just to solidify this part of me the same way I did with my aporagender identity. I knew my manhood was nonbinary, I knew my aporagender was neutral, so I needed to know where maverinity was supposed to be.
Over time, it was clear that I was creating stringencies for a gender quality that is meant to represent freedom from governance, that isn’t meant to be forced into all these different categories. Maverinity is beautiful in that it often defines itself by redefining existing concepts, which is something I’d forgotten along the way. It reframes what already exists as part of my identity - in this case, my trans malehood. My malehood is being reframed to fit a better model than “masculine”, “feminine”, and “neutral” - I’ve never felt like I fit any of these parameters no matter which direction my transgender experience was moving.
Part of the maverine experience is also disidentification (also known as the para-maverinities.) This means that even if something technically falls within a certain category, it doesn’t have to. It’s similar to my being a transgender man, but not transmasculine - I deny the technical category of transmasculine because it simply doesn’t fit me. Maverinity never has to fall under the outherine umbrella if the person using the label doesn’t view it in that way. Maverinity can and should be allowed to exist on its own in a way that doesn’t into all these different categories, because its autonomous nature is an important part of what defines it. Both disidentification and recontextualization are part of that autonomous experience.
Now, what I had failed to realize from the start was that on this list of outherinities that I was archiving, at the very bottom of the original post, maverinity is included. But, it’s included as something separate because while it can be outherine, it doesn’t have to be. Maverinity can be its own identity and just because there seems to be a place it might fit, some who use the label might find it more helpful to keep it out of all those categories and let it stand alone.
Maverinity, to me, is “other” but not “outher.” The only other way that I might describe it is aporine, which is something that I also view as “other” - in this context, I mean “other than the binary.” Because of this, otherness doesn’t feel so much like a category, and so it makes more sense to describe my gender and my transness as such - something other than the binary, something other than convention, something other than all these restrictive options I’ve been given. My transgender identity, tied to maverinity, carries the same kind of otherness that doesn’t fit in anywhere besides aporinity (and that’s only based on my personal view of what aporinity is - not a category, but a descriptor.)
My transness doesn’t feel like it needs a category. I can do what I want with it - whatever surgeries or hormones I want, whatever names I want to give it - but in the end, I define it in my own way rather than how other people expect me to define it. “Can’t be categorized” feels more fitting to me than “falls into a ton of these brand-new abinary categories.” I’m a transgender man, but that’s the gender that I am in the scope of transness - the quality of my transness doesn’t fall anywhere near the binary because of how autonomy pulls it far away from existing categories. Overall, I’m still nonbinary and I’m still a transgender man - those just happen to involve a lot of complex, interlocking layers that influence one another in very specific, maverine-leaning ways.
“Otherness” is not a bad concept when it is viewed as a loose way to opt out of categories. Plenty of people might feel like their gender is other and are comfortable there because there are no expectations of performance or conformity. I feel comfortable here in the othersphere because it’s a space I’ve carved out for myself that is shaped to fit my exact transgender experience, and I think a lot of nonbinary folks might benefit from seeing their gender in much the same way.
