Gender & Sexuality dictionary

gynesexual

[gahy-nuh-sek-shoo-uhl]

What does gynesexual mean?

Someone who is gynesexual identifies as being attracted to femininity or the female anatomy, regardless of whether the object of one’s affection identifies as a woman.

Related words

genderflux, gender-fluid, nonbinary gender, omnisexual, polysexual, holosexual, demisexual, queer

Where does gynesexual come from?

Healthy Is the New Skinny

With the prefix gyne- coming from the Greek for “woman,” gynesexual is a sexual orientation that describes someone who is attracted to females or female body parts, regardless of whether that person identifies as female. Examples include someone who is transgender or a cisgender male who presents as feminine. That means that heterosexual men and lesbians are gynesexuals, but the term is especially meant for when a person is attracted femininity in nonbinary or genderqueer persons.

Gynesexual flag / MOGAI Encyclopedia

The term is mentioned in Nancy Chodorow’s best-selling 1978 book The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender in a discussion of Freud’s theory of sexuality (i.e., children’s original attraction to mothers). It also appeared in 1997 Usenet forums on transgenderism and sex reassignment, discussed as sexual attraction to femaleness. By 2014, it was defined on Urban Dictionary amid the growth of greater gender and sexuality inclusion online.

Examples of gynesexual

nb people: if you're only attracted to women, u can call urself gynesexual, + if you're only attracted to men, u can call urself androsexual
@TransBoyPosts, July 2016
If the Brawny man kinda-sorta turns you on, you might be androsexual. Andro-what? The term basically means you’re turned on by masculinity. More into Kim K’s super-femme vibe? You could be a gynesexual—someone who’s turned on by femininity.
Macaela Mckenzie, Women's Health, February 2018
sometimes I think abt how my allocishet bf who probs doesn’t know what intersectionality means had no problem accepting me and calling me a good boy but my progressive friend decided she didn’t have a crush on me anymore bc she’s a True Lesbian & not a “gynesexual” into afab nbs
@sqiouyilu, September 2018
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Who uses gynesexual?

Gynesexual is also referred to as gynephilia-philia, a suffix meaning “love of,” although it’s often simply shortened to gyne. Its counterpart is androsexual, or attraction to masculinity regardless of gender identification.

The term sees use as a self-identifier for one’s sexual orientation…

…as well as wide-ranging discussions of gender and sexuality more generally.

Gynesexual a useful term to discuss attraction to constructions of femininity without labeling persons as female or as of binary gender, though some in the LGBTQ may challenge the concept.

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Note

This is not meant to be a formal definition of gynesexual like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of gynesexual that will help our users expand their word mastery.

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