The most common term for identifying as both male and female is bigender. A person who is bigender has an internal sense of being two genders, often both masculine and feminine, though the experience varies from person to person. Bigender falls under the broader nonbinary umbrella, meaning it describes a gender identity outside the strict categories of “only male” or “only female.”
What Bigender Means
Being bigender means identifying with two genders. Most often, that means someone feels they are both male and female, but bigender can also involve identifying with a nonbinary gender alongside a binary one. The key feature is the presence of two distinct gender identities within one person.
Bigender is different from simply calling yourself nonbinary. Nonbinary is a broad category that includes anyone whose gender doesn’t fit neatly into “man” or “woman.” Bigender is more specific: it names the experience of holding two genders rather than rejecting the binary altogether or landing somewhere in between. People who are bigender often express both culturally masculine and culturally feminine roles, though how that looks in daily life is entirely individual.
Related Terms You Might Encounter
Bigender is one of several terms that describe multi-gender or non-standard gender identities. Here are the ones most likely to come up:
- Genderfluid: A person whose gender shifts over time or depending on the situation. Someone who is genderfluid might feel male one day and female another, describing the experience as “like a constantly flowing river.” The difference from bigender is that genderfluid emphasizes movement between genders, while bigender can mean holding both simultaneously.
- Nonbinary: The broad umbrella term for any gender identity that isn’t exclusively male or exclusively female. Bigender, genderfluid, and agender all fall under this umbrella.
- Androgynous: This describes outward appearance or expression, not internal identity. A person can look androgynous without being bigender, and a bigender person doesn’t have to look androgynous. The distinction matters: gender identity is how you feel internally, while gender expression is how you present yourself to the world.
- Two-Spirit: A term used by some Indigenous North American communities to describe people who carry both masculine and feminine spirits. This is a culturally specific identity with spiritual and ceremonial significance, not interchangeable with bigender.
Gender Identity vs. Biological Sex
When people search “what is it called when you are both genders,” they sometimes mean biological sex rather than gender identity. These are different things. Gender identity is your internal, psychological sense of who you are. Biological sex refers to physical characteristics like reproductive organs, hormones, and chromosomes.
The biological equivalent is called intersex (sometimes referred to in medical contexts as “differences in sex development”). Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female. This might involve chromosome patterns, hormone levels, or anatomy that differ from what’s expected. Roughly 1 in 100 people are born with some form of intersex variation. Being intersex is a biological reality, not a gender identity, though intersex people may identify as any gender.
A bigender person, by contrast, may have a completely typical male or female body. Their identity as both genders comes from how they experience themselves internally, not from their biology.
How Bigender People Navigate Pronouns
There’s no single set of pronouns that all bigender people use. Some use they/them, which works as a gender-neutral option. Others alternate between he and she, sometimes expressed as “he/she” or “he/they” or “she/they.” Some prefer one set of pronouns in certain contexts and a different set in others. The Trevor Project recommends not assuming anyone’s pronouns and, when someone uses multiple sets, trying to use all of them equally unless they tell you otherwise.
Neopronouns like “ze/zim” are also used by some people with nonbinary identities, though they’re less common. The simplest approach is to ask what someone prefers and follow their lead.
Cultural Recognition Goes Back Thousands of Years
Western societies have only recently developed widespread language for gender identities beyond male and female, but the concept is ancient. In Hindu society, people of non-binary gender expression have held important roles for over 2,000 years. Hindu texts like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata include characters who embody a third gender, including the hero Arjuna.
The most visible example in South Asia is the hijra community. Hijras consider themselves a gender altogether separate from male and female. They perform blessings, dances, and songs at Hindu births and weddings, where their blessings are believed to bring fertility, prosperity, and long life to children. By 2014, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh had all officially recognized third-gender people as citizens with equal legal rights. Hijras themselves come from multiple religious backgrounds, including Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, even though their cultural role is rooted in Hindu tradition.
Muslim rulers of the Mughal Empire from the 15th to 19th centuries were generous patrons of third-gender Indians, showing that recognition and respect for gender diversity has deep historical roots across multiple cultures and religions.
How Common Are Nonbinary Identities
Data from the Williams Institute at UCLA found that about 11% of LGBTQ adults in the United States identify as nonbinary. That makes nonbinary people a significant portion of the broader LGBTQ community. Interestingly, while nonbinary individuals make up about 43% of the transgender population, most nonbinary LGBTQ adults don’t identify as transgender. This reflects how varied the landscape of gender identity really is: many people who don’t fit the male/female binary still don’t see themselves under the transgender label.
Specific data on how many people identify as bigender (rather than nonbinary more broadly) is harder to pin down. The American Psychological Association recognizes a wide range of identity terms, including genderqueer, gender-nonconforming, gender-neutral, agender, and gender-fluid, noting that clinicians increasingly use language like “gender expansiveness” or “gender diversity” rather than framing these identities in terms of nonconformity.
Bigender vs. Genderfluid in Practice
One of the most common points of confusion is the difference between being bigender and being genderfluid. Both involve more than one gender, but the experience can feel quite different. A bigender person may feel like both genders at the same time, as a constant and stable identity. A genderfluid person experiences their gender shifting, sometimes describing it as feeling “some days male, some days female.” Research has described this as a process with “no particular end point,” where identity fluctuates situationally and over time.
Some people identify as both bigender and genderfluid, feeling like they hold two genders but that the balance or prominence between them shifts. Labels in this space aren’t rigid categories with sharp boundaries. They’re tools people use to describe complex internal experiences, and many people try out different terms before finding the one that fits best.