Quoigender

**Quoigender**, or **whatgender**, is a gender that can have many different meanings. It is an umbrella term for anyone who doesn't quite understand their gender or doesn't want to define their gender. Some definitions of quoigender include:

* Being unsure what gender is, and therefore being unsure if one has experienced it or not.
* Finding the concept of gender identity to be personally inaccessible, non-nonsensical, or inapplicable.
* Finding the experience of gender confusing.
* Disidentifying with the concept of gender- either as a social construct or as something potentially applicable to oneself.
* An alternative to questioning to express exhaustion or frustration with searching for a better gender identity term.
* Questioning one's gender for such a long time that the questioning itself becomes the identity, rather than a path toward any other more stable identity.

## History

The term quoigender was introduced in 2014 by Tumblr user epochryphal (Cor). It was intended as a close parallel to quoiromantic, which was introduced in 2012 as an alternative to the humorously-intended wtfromantic. The "quoi" in quoigender comes from the French word *quoi,* meaning "what."

## Symbolism

A number of flag designs and symbols have been proposed for quoigender.

In 2015, Cor proposed cos own flag design for quoi identities, including quoigender, quoisexual, and quoiromantic: four lavender question marks, rotated in a ring to share a single dot, as if spinning in a circle. This design was overlaid on a cool grey background in a house-shape, instead of the traditional rectangular flag. The choice of question marks as a symbol references the questioning basis of quoi as an identity term.

Another quoigender flag design was posted to the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account, although its original source remains unknown. It features horizontal stripes in the colors of black, lime green, and pale blue.

More recently, some simplified designs have been proposed inspired by the nontraditional flag shape idea, using a triangular flag shape instead, with the intent of being easier to physically reproduce. Like Cor's design, these designs exhibit a ring of question mark symbols sharing a single dot, except that the number of question marks is three instead of four. These designs have been proposed in both a green and a lavender version, in reference to previous designs. The lavender version is intended for quoi identities as a whole, as with Cor's design, "to honor its intentional vagueness."

Another quoigender flag was posted by tumblr user hghrules. Like Cor's design, it was intended to represent all the quoi identities. The two lines are an optical illusion; the brain struggles to understand whether they are the same color or not due to the color surrounding them. It is purple because "there are so many names for purple" that it just gets confusing and is hard to identify at all.

## References

1. ↑ Introduction of quoigender
2. ↑ A Note on Quoi-
3. ↑ Quoiro/WTFromantic: a brief timeline of disidentification with & personal rejection of romantic orientation
4. ↑ Cor's Quoi Flag Proposal
5. ↑ Quoigender Flag posted by Pride-Flags
6. ↑ Quoigender Flags
7. ↑ Simplified Quoi Flag Proposals
8. ↑ https://hghrules.tumblr.com/day/2022/09/15