The Label For the Unlabelable — Libregender
Update June 15th 2021: Typo correction
In my previous article I basically impulse-spilled a crude description of my gender experience and it seems to have had quite a bit of positive reception. I’ve done some more detailed research and it seems that what I am experiencing is, described in existing terms, a blurry mix of a large amount of what falls under the genderfree, non-binary and binary umbrellas. All at the same time. So I decided to coin the term “libregender”, which has literally only once before been spoken online (as the hashtag on the Tumblr post that coined the genderfree identity) but never been discussed or defined. In order to explain this better, I will have to delve into something a bit deeper about myself than just gender. I will then describe my experience as a libregender person, and at the end define what it means to be libregender.
I, since I can remember, have always been internally floating in a weird space. Think of it as a liminal space, but in my mind, and the border between it and the real world blurring like the image on the screen of a camera shifting in and out of focus. The “secondary domain” I occasionally mention in discussions about my spiritual beliefs is kinda part of this, just thought I’d mention it since some of you may have read my other content around the net. It’s a place from which I see anything and everything in life, and understand it, on a level that transcends that of the thoughts of most people. Every detail of everything in existence, visible, clear important. Every memory mysterious and beautiful. Nothing unclear, no rules/restrictions, no limits to what can and cannot be. Just purely being able to be myself, spared of the burdens of established societal labels and judgement. I never tolerated conformity, I never liked fixed properties and definitions assigned to anything, and especially hated the definition of existence as portrayed by more typical people. I can see through everything and everyone, break loose of the visible and freely/confidently in the shadows of the unjustly forbidden/feared that only those like me know how to navigate and understand. Yeah, all the classic signs of an extremely high level of neurodivergence (at least that is the “human” term closest to the description). This is a heavily watered down version of how I generally go through life, but there will come a time when I will publicly write about some other personal rabbit holes. Having solved the gender side of things, that has been plaguing me in the background since long before I realized that I am a libregender trans woman, has freed up considerable mental resources, which means I can finally in the future move on to exploring the rest with a higher level of concentration. One piece of the puzzle down, but many more to go. For now in this article, let’s stick to the gender side of things.
It’s tough to explain how I feel. I feel like I am in some sort of gender void, an empty space where the gender-transcending “core me” floats in bliss, no authority controlling it. I can see/feel various types of gender and above-gender feelings and other manifestations. I can see it all, down to a gazillion pride flags that apply to me just melting and blending, and feel it all. I identify with both the binary and the non-binary. I consider and call myself a woman, want a female body because it will actually be comfortable and truly “me”, yet internally I only sometimes feel like the traditional definition of a woman. “Woman” is most of the time no more than merely just the label for the first few layers of who I am, and I am so much more on the inside. It’s like there is a genderless and completely above-all-gender “core me”, “internal gendered genderfluid/non-binary me” and “external and internal binary female me”, sharing a body, along with many levels in between each pair of the three, and all mixed into one unified persona that floats and fluctuates between states of gender and above-gender. I proudly break the locked-down binary versus non-binary designation, which is a painfully restrictive binary construct of its own, like a thin wine glass angrily flung onto a concrete sidewalk… One moment I can feel like a woman, an agender person, one of the many non-binary identities I vibe with, “generally” non-binary, above all gender-related stuff, any combination of anything or something else entirely. I also from time to time will be in a state where I feel the pure core me, enjoying the bliss of identity/feeling freedom while expressing and identifying itself (or just desiring to do so when it is unsafe to actually do so) in whatever way it feels comfortable and true to itself… I slip into this on and off, randomly, mostly beyond my control. It’s beautiful, and reminds me just how deeply I understand myself and gender (and other personal things) in general. To put it simply, my mere existence has blurred the non-binary, binary and genderfree umbrellas into one thing… I’m LIBREGENDER!
Enough rambling on my feelings, now onto the formal definition of “libregender”:
“Libregender is defined as a freedom-based state which consists of one being in a blissful liberated void where they can feel and identify with, express themselves as and feel like anything and everything that suits them with no restrictions, and also simultaneously be in a world above all gender, identities and other restrictive constructs. It is the common area of the Venn diagram between the non-binary, binary and above-all-gender domains.”
Also, anyone who thinks that one can only be either non-binary or binary, and not both and beyond, is in my humble opinion completely wrong to say the least (I have alot more I could say but I am too nice of a person to want to incite a flame war over something so deeply defined by each and every unique gender non-conforming individual). Things can and will blur together like paint mixed in a mixing plate (I’d actually do this paint thing if I had paints in the colors of various pride flags).
And finally, the pride flag. The background is a smeared, noised and scanlined version of the non-binary flag. It symbolizes the blurring together of all the non-binary gender identities a libregender person might feel at any given moment, along with the melting/blurring away of the binary versus non-binary designation/separation. The rectangular windows are in the colors of the genderfluid flag. The blue, pink and purple overlapping windows in the center show the overlap between and shifting between feminine feelings, masculine feelings and feelings that are a mix of those two. The white window around those symbolizes the non-binary domain, and the mix of it with the previously mentioned three windows. Around that is a black window, a portal to the world outside of and above all gender and other constructs (aka the above-all-gender “void”) and it’s blurring with what I described in the previous two sentences.
~Lilith Edith Celest, May 5th 2021
