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Neutral

Neutrois is an early online term for a "neutral gender" with an explicit physical program: mastectomy, gonadectomy, sometimes genital nullification. An ideological self-identification translates directly into irreversible interventions on healthy tissue. A profession of faith resulting in an operating table.

Definition according to proponents

An identity without gender, with an explicit desire for a gender-neutral body: breast tissue removed, gonads removed, sometimes vaginectomy, phalloplasty, or nullification procedures. The label combines psychological self-identification with a bodily program — a balancing act characteristic of identity claims that demand direct medical consequences.

Origin: HA Burnham, 1995

Coined by HA Burnham around 1995, distributed via alt.transgendered and Neutrois.com. Small, almost exclusively English-speaking. No demographic censuses; in gender clinics, neutrois is categorized under non-binary or agender without separate registration. Since 2010, the term has appeared in Tumblr and Reddit glossaries — part of the broader proliferation since 2010. Never established in the Netherlands; Dutch-speaking applicants typically use "agender" or "non-binary".

Criticism: from empty label to irreversible intervention

Neutrois directly illustrates what happens once an internal category without an objective basis justifies irreversible medical interventions on healthy tissue. A clinical assessment that links mastectomy and gonadectomy to self-reporting of "a neutral feeling" does not meet evidence-based standards. There is no measurable marker , only self-reporting — a textbook example of circular reasoning and unfalsifiability .

The Cass Review (2024) calls the evidence for such interventions in minors "remarkably weak"; the Swedish SBU (2022) and the British NICE (2020) reach similar conclusions. Hruz (2020) points out that interventions on healthy gonads in persons under 25 cause permanent hormonal and reproductive damage without proven clinical benefit. Levine (2022) places the consideration in a broader ethical framework: without a measurable anchor diagnosis, informed consent cannot classically apply. Anyone who identifies this as a problem is silenced and dismissed as a hater.

The sharpest theoretical objection: neutrois formulates a bodily request based on an inner experience that is not independently verifiable. Blanchard (2005) and Bailey (2003) have argued that some of such desires in adult men correlate more strongly with autogynephilia than with innate gender development. AGP is a paraphilia, not an identity. The fact that the hypothesis is not being investigated at all counts as a signal in itself — criticism has been cast under ideological suspicion.

Damage: gonadectomy, mastectomy, nullification

Research into regret and detransition is lacking for this specific subgroup because the group is small and dropout rates are difficult to track. What is certain, however, is that interventions are irreversible. Gonadectomy causes lifelong hormone dependence, mastectomy eliminates lactation and sensory tissue, and genital nullification precludes reconstruction. Cass explicitly recommends no longer offering such pathways as standard practice for adolescents outside of formal research protocols. Transition does not cure — see detransition research .

Related identities

• Agender — overlap without a physical component.

• Genderless — synonym.

• Non-binary — umbrella.

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