Gender alignment is a term used by some non-binary individuals to describe the way their experiences and/or gender may intersect with the gender binary. Related terms include woman-aligned and man-aligned, and sometimes also unaligned, neutral-aligned, and xeno-aligned. People may identify with multiple alignments at the same time or one's alignment may might change over time.
The terms feminine aligned and masculine aligned are also sometimes used but these are not interchangeable with woman aligned and man aligned. Someone with a feminine gender is not necessarily a woman or related to women, and someone with a masculine gender is not necessarily a man or related to men. Additionally some people may be women/men but their gender does not feel feminine/masculine.
There is no consistent definition of gender alignment. The term is intentionally vague and it can be used to describe several different things. Possible meanings can include:
- Someone who is partially a man/woman (demigender).
- Someone who is a man/woman in addition to other genders (bigender, trigender, or otherwise multigender.)
- Someone with a vague or partial connection to manhood/womanhood without being a man/woman.
- A genderfluid or genderflux person who is only sometimes sometimes a man/woman or sometimes partially a man/woman.
- Someone who connects to manhood/womanhood through experiencing man/woman specific attraction. For example, someone may be woman aligned because they are a lesbian / feel attraction to women as a woman.
- Someone with a gender similar to, but not the same as a man/woman (proxvir/juxera).
- Someone with a vague or partial connection to masculinity/femininity without being a man/woman.
- A non-binary person who presents masculinely/femininely (regardless of their actual gender).
- Someone who has experiences similar to that of a man/woman.
- Someone who is treated as/seen as a man/woman in society, or someone who interacts with society in a way similar to men/women. This includes interacting with the patriarchy as a man/woman.
- Someone who is man-related/woman-related.
- Someone who is cis/trans/cisn't/iso/ipso/ulter. See gender modality.
- Someone who is cross-aligned, having a gender identity different from their gender alignment (solarian woman, woman-aligned man...).
Gender alignment is something that one may identify as, but not all non-binary people use gender alignment. Just because someone identifies themself as a certain alignment doesn't mean that someone with a similar gender and/or experience will also identify with the same alignment or even identify with alignment at all.
Terms such as masculine aligned and feminine aligned as often misused and misunderstood by people who are not non-binary, and are sometimes use to imply that non-binary people are actually men or women. They are also misused as a way to try and associate or categorize non-binary people using the gender binary. The galactian alignment system was created as less easily misunderstood alternative to alignments based language.