According to sex therapist Aliyah Moore, Ph.D., a common misconception about bigender people is that they necessarily must have two genders which are somehow “opposites” on the gender spectrum, but this is not the case for everyone. Bigender is a transgender identity, in that it describes someone whose gender does not align with the one that they were assigned at birth. A bigender person is also, more specifically, nonbinary. This means that their gender identity does not fit neatly into one of the two binary genders of man or woman. Today, bigender is offered as one of the gender options on Facebook, and there are a small handful of notable, out bigender people in the public eye, including the writers R.B. Lemberg and James-Beth Merritt, the latter of whom wrote a memoir about living life as a bigender person. You might have very strong feelings of womanhood for a while, which then switch over to equally strong feelings of manhood, and then back again. You might even find that your feelings of womanhood are weaker or less frequent than your feelings of manhood, or vice versa, which can further confuse you. This could be a sign of being bigender. You may even feel periods when you have no strong sense of gender identity, while sometimes you feel very connected with being a man, woman, or another gender identity. Like a bigender person, a genderfluid person may also feel that they can experience their different gender identities alternately or simultaneously. However, while a genderfluid person may identify with a new gender regularly, a bigender person feels statically attached specifically to their two genders. Someone can be nonbinary and not be bigender, however. People who are nonbinary can describe themselves as having a gender identity that is “beyond” the categories of man and woman, or as being “between” or a mix of the categories of man and woman. They may not see themselves as having two distinct genders, as a bigender person might. A little education on your own can go a long way when used in conjunction with respectful and pertinent questions. (Think “Would you like me to correct people when they misgender you?” instead of “So, does this mean you’re going to get genital surgery?”) Whether you think you might be bigender or want to support someone who is, the best thing to remember is that everyone’s gender identities are important and deserve respect and space to be explored.
