This commenter says, “wait, you can be cis or trans or neither? how does neither work? Isn’t it an either/or thing?”

I’m no expert on the philosophy of gender, so this is simply my understanding of things. But my working definition of a transgender person is someone who identifies as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. However, I also believe that being trans is a label that someone needs to self-identify. So I would never call someone trans unless I knew that they identified that way.

With those ideas in mind, I can think of several cases of folks who may not identify with cis or trans.

1. Nonbinary People

A lot of nonbinary people don’t identify as the gender they were assigned at birth but also don’t identify with the word transgender. For instance, I came out as nonbinary about ten years ago but didn’t start using the word trans for myself until a few years later. I would argue that in those early years, I was neither cis nor trans.

2. Questioning People

If a person is questioning their gender, they might not identify with either cis or trans. The liminal state of “questioning” can last a really long time, or forever, which is great and fine. Questioning folks may spend their whole lives not identifying as cis or trans and that’s great too!

3. Gender Creative Children

Children who are not assigned a gender at birth. It’s becoming more common for parents to not gender their child until they are old enough to tell them what they want. When that child chooses, will they then become cis or trans? Will they only be cis if they choose nonbinary and trans if they choose a binary gender? Maybe the concepts of cis and trans will become outdated if this becomes more popular.

As different people arise with different experiences, these are realities we can include in our understanding of gender.