Glossary /
Yinyangren (阴阳人)
Derogatoryyinyangren · yin-yang person
A note before reading
This word causes harm. This page exists to explain — to anyone who searched for it — why it hurts, where it came from, and what to say instead.
Say instead: intersex person (间性人)
"Yin-yang person" — a slur for intersex people, also flung at anyone gender-nonconforming. The right word is intersex.
Yinyangren (阴阳人) — literally “yin-yang person,” a body supposedly split between the female and male principles — gets used two ways in spoken Chinese, and both do damage.
The first points at real people: intersex people, born with sex characteristics (chromosomes, gonads, or genitals) that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female bodies. Intersex variation is natural human diversity, not an omen and not a punchline. Calling it yinyangren turns someone’s body and medical privacy into tabloid material. The old clinical label 两性畸形 (“hermaphroditic deformity”) has likewise been abandoned — “deformity” presumes the body is a mistake. The accurate, community-accepted Chinese term today is 间性人 (jianxingren, intersex person).
The second use is a scattershot insult against anyone whose look or manner reads as gender-atypical — the same logic as bu nan bu nü, treating “off-template” as an offense. This usage adds a second layer of harm: it recruits actual intersex people as raw material for an insult.
Register note: there is no neutral context for this word. For the bodily reality, say “intersex”; for someone’s style or manner, the politest description is none at all.
Common confusion: conflating intersex with transgender. Intersex is about innate physical sex characteristics; transgender is about gender identity differing from the sex assigned at birth. They are separate things, and a person can be one without the other. See Intersex explained.