How it works
This random gender generator picks a gender for a character you are making up: a game NPC, a name on a cast list, a newborn in a life sim. Choose Male or female in the All genders menu for a straight two-way draw, or leave the menu alone and draw from all nine entries. Each comes with a one-line meaning worded after the GLAAD media reference guide.
Read the full guide
A two-way draw or the wider list
Open the All genders menu under the button and choose Male or female. Two entries are left, so every press of Pick another gender is a fair 50/50, the same odds as a coin. On All genders all nine entries have an equal chance, which means Male and Female together come up only 2 times in 9. Outside the binary draws from the other seven, from Nonbinary to Genderqueer. Every result is a fresh draw, so the same one can land three times running.
Setting your own odds with number bands
An even draw is rarely what a story needs, so decide the split first and let a number make the draw. Roll 1 to 100 and call 1 to 48 Male, 49 to 96 Female, and 97 to 100 a second draw here with Outside the binary chosen. Move the bands to fit the world you are building. A convent, a pirate crew and a generation ship will not share a split.
What the list leaves out, and why
Wording follows the GLAAD guide, which treats nonbinary as an umbrella and names agender, bigender, demigender and pangender as words some nonbinary people use to be more exact. Identities that belong to one culture, such as Two-Spirit, are left out, because a random draw cannot hand you the culture that goes with them. Intersex is not here either: it describes a body, not a gender, and most intersex people identify as men or women.
- For a big cast, choose Male or female and press once per name on your list, before you read the names.
- A gender does not choose pronouns. Pick those yourself: they and them are the most common among nonbinary people, but some use he or she, and some use more than one set.
- For a probability lesson, choose Male or female, press 20 times and tally. A 12 to 8 split is ordinary. Ask the class how many draws it takes to settle near half.
- Running a game? When the players stop an unplanned shopkeeper, draw before you speak. It keeps your side characters from all being the same.
Questions and answers
Is a gender randomizer really 50/50?
With Male or female chosen, yes: two entries, equal chances, and each draw ignores the one before. That means runs happen: any four draws in a row come out all the same 1 time in 8. Real births are close to even but not exact. About 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, and a 2019 study in PNAS put the natural range at 103 to 106.
Can I change the odds?
Only by choosing a group. Every entry in the group has the same chance, so the All genders menu is the quick control: two entries, seven, or all nine. For any other split, use number bands. A 20-sided die works when you want round figures: 1 to 9 Male, 10 to 18 Female, 19 and 20 from the wider list gives 45, 45 and 10 percent.
What is the difference between nonbinary and genderqueer?
They overlap almost completely: both mean a gender outside the male and female binary. Genderqueer is the older word. It grew out of queer zines of the 1980s and 1990s and carries a political edge. Nonbinary became the usual umbrella word in the early 2010s and sounds more neutral. For a character, pick the word that fits their age.
Why is transgender not one of the results?
Because it is not a separate gender. Transgender is an adjective for someone whose gender is not the sex recorded for them at birth, and cisgender is its opposite. A transgender man is a man, so on this list he is drawn as Male. Whether a character is trans is part of their history, so decide it on its own.
Can I use this to pick a gender for a real person?
No. It is built for invented characters, and a draw cannot tell you anything about someone who exists. A real person's gender is theirs to say. People do use the two-way draw for a guess at a baby shower, which is fine as a game, but it is a coin flip with a label on it and predicts nothing.