overgenderize

O1V4E1R1G2E1N1D2E1R1I1Z10E1

verb

To genderize too much; to unnecessarily assign masculine or feminine qualities to.

Scrabble 27

Meanings

verbovergenderize (third-person singular simple present overgenderizes, present participle overgenderizing, simple past and past participle overgenderized)

present singular third person overgenderizes · participle present overgenderizing · participle past overgenderized · past overgenderized

  1. rareTo genderize too much; to unnecessarily assign masculine or feminine qualities to.

    Overgenderizing is not merely a response ...

    1990, Sociological Viewpoints
    4 more examples

    ... in cultural assumptions that people accept it without question. A Gilligan, who comes from Harvard, and who expresses views that are consonant with traditional values, is an example of a powerful promulgator of ideas. Of course, she is only one of a long line of scientists who have been affected by bias. Often the scientist is unaware herself or himself. Sometimes the bias is lodged in the method of doing research. Today, for example, we are in danger of overgenderizing everything.

    1990, The Invisible Majority

    The new theorists are "overgenderizing," says Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, a sociologist at City University of New York. "Seeing distinctions and stereotyping are so much a part of our culture."

    1990, Henry Robinson Luce, Time

    Several trans men and women clients told me they had embarrassed themselves (in retrospect) by overdoing their gender expression, overgenderizing via clothing or behavior. What they thought at the time were “typical” male or female behaviors (these clients later decided) were “too much.” Of course, it is common for adolescents to express themselves this way for a few years.

    2018, Joe Kort, LGBTQ Clients in Therapy: Clinical Issues and Treatment Strategies, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN

    However, I would not agree with their dismissal of Freudian theory as completely reducing psychology to anatomy, nor, especially, would I concede to their view of the Künstlerroman as merely 'a pattern of spiritual development in male heroes [...] virtually unavailable to the young woman in the nineteenth-century novel'.16 This kind of feminist reading can dangerously 'overgenderize' genres to the explicit disadvantage of women's Künstlerinromane in order to make the feminist.

    2018, Evy Varsamopoulou, The Poetics of the Kunstlerinroman and the Aesthetics of the Sublime, Routledge, →ISBN

Origin

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

overgenderize. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overgenderize

MLA

“overgenderize.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overgenderize. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “overgenderize,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/overgenderize.

Source: overgenderize on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.