There is a topic I see frequently debated among oumen, that being the concept of a gender trinary. It’s really no wonder it’s such a hot topic; after all, for a good while, atrinary anthrogenders was the major definition of outherine genders, and many outherinities still mention a gender trinary (and their exclusion from it) in their definitions. When I write about outherinity, I often include a disclaimer when mentioning ‘atrinary’, but I admit I haven’t much expanded on its controversy. As invested as I am in binary abolition, I feel it is necessary for me to do so. At its core, the gender trinary is said to be male (masculine), female (feminine), and a third gender and quality, often debated between neutrois (neutrality) or androgyne (androgyny). Even the individual who introduced ‘atrinary’ does not clarify whether this third quality is neutral or androgynous (or something else entirely). The main argument against it, of which I find myself strongly agreeing with, is that the idea implies there exists a third gender or quality that is as accepted and legitimized as male and female. As Delta, owner of the blog themaveriqueagenda, stated
[The] thing is that there is no such thing as a gender trinary. [A] gender trinary implies that there is a third gender that is legitimated the same way [as] (binary) male and (binary) female. [This] gender however does not exist, because nonbinary gender identities simply are not recognized that way.
In Part I of my series What’s Outherine?, I created a diagram to help visualize outherinity. I wasn’t the first to make a diagram, however; Oltiel actually included one in the post introducing the word ‘outherine’. Although I found its representation of outherine fine, I felt its visualization of androgyny and neutrality as bubbles alongside masculinity and femininity to be flawed. I personally believe that these two genders — androgyne and neutrois — could not be a ‘third’ point in the gender binary. Androgyne is itself either both or between male and female. Neutrois, while neither male nor female, is often described as just that; neither male nor female. While androgyny and neutrality are both whole and entire qualities in their own right (this is in no way meant to diminish that), they are often defined by their relationship to masculinity and femininity. Compare this to daen, a gender explicitly described as “the third point in a triangle with male and female”, and altraeninity, the quality of daen that is opposing and matching masculinity and femininity. Yet, the gender trinary is not male-female-daen. Furthermore, daen is generally accepted as an outherine gender, and therefore, if we accept the idea of a gender trinary, atrinary. Some may argue that ‘atrinary’ is an important term for gender discussions, but I disagree. In fact, the language to describe what ‘atrinary’ tries to describe is already here. Anonbinary, also called anodiean, exists to describe qualities outside of both binary and non-binary. Recently, your-bigender-big-brother (YB3) coined the terms ordinous and exordinous to describe masculinity, femininity, androgyny, and neutrality (ordinous) and everything outside of those (exordinous). In conclusion, binary abolition does not include trinary abolition because there is no trinary to be abolished, and we must stop trying to ratify one. Validating a gender trinary is not a step toward liberation, but a step backwards. For those of us invested in binary abolition, our goal is to dismantle the hierarchical structure itself, not to merely add another room to the prison. The path forward lies not in creating new, rigid boxes, but in embracing what exists entirely outside of them.