Happy demigender awareness day! ☆ why being a demiboy relates to me

hii, today (Dec 15) is demigender day and I thought I'd share some info about it and also a little of my experience being a demiboy / what it means to me c:

before getting into it I wanna add a quick disclaimer that terms like these exist to help better understand oneself and accept the way they are, and to not be forced to be perceived a certain way by the social expectations of their binary gender, having a label to express & represent how they feel.

what is demigender?

Demigender is an identity under the Nonbinary umbrella, a term thats been around since at least 2010 to describe someone who is only partially / not fully a given gender; or someone who feels a slight connection to a gender, but not enough to fully identify as such; or partly one gender and partly another or more together. there are multiple sublabels, but demiboy, demigirl, and deminonbinary are the most popular / well known, though any gender can have a demi version of it.

   

my identity & brief personal definitions

I am a 21yo nonbinary guy (amab), specifically a Demiboy, but can also go by Demienboy or maybe Demifemboy, and my pronouns are he/they. My orientation falls under Bisexual/Biromantic, in particular Femsexual; and I'm still learning about these, but I think the way I experience attraction is probably through Aesthetisexual and Demiromantic/spike.

Demiboys are partially, but not fully, a boy, man or otherwise not fully masculine. They may or may not identify as another gender in addition to being partially a boy. The other part of one's gender can be any gender or combination of genders, including a lack of gender. 

Demienboy is a subtype of Enboy and can refer to a few different things, such as someone who is partly but not entirely an Enboy / Nonbinary boy; a multigender individual who is both Demiboy and Deminonbinary (and more if they wish); plus more. 

Demifemboy is an identity that is partially femboy, but not fully femboy; a demifeminine demiboy; demifem boy; or feminine demiguy.

These are chosen as my specific gender identities, which I prefer just demiboy but am honestly fine with either seeming they're very similar, just slightly variant and either more specific or broad. The reason I feel these fit me is solely the main reason I even began this journey at the end of 2023 at age 19, when I felt depressed & stuck trying to become a 'grown man' & finally felt a reconnection to my softer & shy side after learning about femboys, which while not completely relating to, made me embrace who I really am. Around Sep 2024 was when I started using 'male/nb' terms publicly online since I felt a mix between a guy & nonbinary, and finally in May 2025 I learnt of demiboy / demienboy which fit me perfectlyy :D

If I had to connect any identity to majority of my life it would definitely be some variant of demiboy, and having this label makes me more myself and comfortable in trying more androgynous or feminine things without feeling as judged, and feel free from societal norms and even my own standpoints of what a 'man' is and how I should be.

why I relate to being a demiboy

(growing into adulthood & re-finding myself)

As I was reaching my final year(s) of highschool, being back on the older side again for the last time in grade 12, I felt compelled to start growing into a man during those 2 senior years. I started having my hair cut a bit shorter, had just a stubble, regularly cut my nails, tried embracing my masculinity, and at first I thought I was doing okay, but I put way too much pressure on myself with this change as well as feeling super lonely, and my anxiety quickly took over during one of the worst 4 months of my life where I stopped going to school and barely even left the house. This masc expectation I felt I needed to follow only depressed me even further, and for the first time I actually hated how shy I was, the way people infantilized me when speaking to me, when before those were things I did like and found cute (by certain ppl at least) and I used to accept that's just who I was.

Once I slowly returned to school I did start making small connections with a couple ppl, fairly regularly quietly joining in with a group of girls, however it made me feel I had to keep trying to be more of a man, so I tried balancing it out with having my hair longer again but also grew back my beard to the point I actual just looked like a homeless caveman lol, and those friendships faded by the beginning of my 2nd senior year, so feeling I had lost them or done something wrong made me absent from school for 1-2 months once more. It was a very conflicting and confusing time for me, for the rest of the year I tried shutting out a lot of my emotions since I knew I couldn't do anything to solve them but did go back to maintaining my looks again.

In the December of finishing highschool at age 19, I've since been taking time to explore my identity since I was intrigued by discovering the normalisation of like softer guys & femboys, which being super naturally shy my whole life I felt connected to some of the aesthetics and realised how much I hate the stereotype around men that I had felt forced to become for the previous 2 years; I genuinely didn't feel like I fitted in with other guys and I couldn't handle dealing with this social stigma anymore. Learning about certain labels enlightened me and I felt I really was rediscovering myself, and relearnt to be content with myself again, focusing on myself over craving friendship & connection, and being grateful for what & who I do have.

Over the past 2 years whilst taking a break from everything I've gotten a better vision of how I want to present myself, which I was too overwhelmed by the thought of during a lot of late highschool to fully grasp and maintain properly. I've let my hair grow out a little more and take better care and even cut it myself now (going to the hairdressers is actual so stressful bro I meltdown afterwards evry single time, last time was in Nov 2023) and have been shaving my face regularly as well as my body, something I honestly didn't realise I had this control over until mid 2024, now I don't need to be embarrassed of my werewolf legs xd, have long nails again, and can wear things like womens jeans, short shorts, use eyebrow pens, light eyeliner, etc. 

Discovering and relating to variants of nonbinary, and identifying as a demiboy is so freeing to me, allowing me to feel more myself and comfortable trying these androgynous or feminine things without feeling the shame or guilt that comes with being a 'man', even if I'm still not fully confident in everything I want to try and still prefer dark casual clothing. It's just fun and helps me understand myself more.

But yeah, maybe it's easy for me to talk about all this since the only friends I rly have are pretty much just online anyway, and I personally don't mind nor feel the need to tell outside family even if I know they'd likely be understanding, and I don't view this as an identity change but rather just that I've found the right labels that imo are representative of throughout my life and esp the last while, and also since I'm fine still being referred to as a guy (but pls not a man tho haha). Plus I'm super lucky to have a supportive sister who I can talk about these things casually, openly and discuss or understand and joke whenever <3

Sometimes I wish I knew about all these terms and stuff earlier (esp in year 10-11 when I really liked oversized hoodies, skinny jeans, and was inspired by fem hairstyles, avatars, etc), so that way I would've accepted me for who I was way sooner and maybe wouldn't have had such a difficult experience trying to become someone I'm not, and be more comfortable with things if I started this when I was younger. But at least because I went through that I really do know what I am not, and can continue to work on and improve myself forward without wondering what if.

ik my story is nothing crazy at all and ik it's different for everyone but ig a reminder that whatever your journey is it's never too late and it is okay to go through ups n downs in discovering yourself and take your time to process things, and you shouldn't hide yourself but also don't feel compelled to tell anyone until you're ready, which will all come naturally over time, and coming out doesn't need to be a huge deal if you don't want it to be, maybe that's contradictory with the fact I'm writing all this lmao but it's not out of feeling bound to, it's just simply casually for myself because I enjoy talking about it plus these are lesser known terms, and just for anyone who may be interested to read

💛🤍💜🖤   🖤💛🤍💛🖤   🖤💙🤍💙🖤   🖤💗🤍💗🖤

thx sm for reading! I kinda rambled but I hope this was mostly comprehensible enough hehe, at least for the definitions which I tried my best to keep brief but still informative, and include more of my own perspective.

feel free to ask any questions or share your experience (or maybe even post your own blog if you'd like to help spread demigender day around too if u wish :), and also lastly below are some spacehey groups that may interest you. take care!

☆ The demigenders of spacehey! ☆ The demiboys of spacehey! ☆ The demigirls of spacehey! ☆ 

☆ LGBT+ Group ☆ Nonbinary Nest ☆