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In a 2016 interview, venture capitalist Cyan Banister described herself as genderqueer and said that, for her, it meant not having a strong gender identity on either side of man or woman. That is her account of her own experience—not a definition that applies to everyone who is genderqueer.
What did Cyan Banister mean by being genderqueer?
Asked by WIRED’s Jessi Hempel what being genderqueer meant to her, Banister answered: “To me, being genderqueer means that you don’t have a strong gender identity on either side of man or woman.” She immediately made clear that she could speak only for herself and her own experience.
Banister said that finding language for gender beyond a binary helped her make sense of a lifelong feeling that she did not belong wholly to either gender. In her account, the label gave her a way to describe that feeling; it was not a claim that everyone else should experience or define gender in the same way. Read the 2016 WIRED interview.
How did she come to understand and share her identity?
Banister described a process of looking for people with experiences like hers and talking with friends. She also discussed the difficulty of deciding whether to speak publicly: she worried about judgment and the possible effect on professional opportunities. Her interview presents coming out as a personal decision made amid those concerns, rather than as a single moment or a universal path.
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Gender identity and sexual identity are not the same thing
In the interview, Banister distinguished gender identity from sexual identity. Her use of “genderqueer” described her relationship to gender; it should not be treated as a synonym for a particular sexual orientation. The account does not offer a universal definition of either identity.
What pronouns did Banister discuss?
In that 2016 interview, Banister said she was comfortable with “she” and with people using pronouns that reflected how they perceived her presentation. Those comments record what she said at that time. They do not establish her current preferences, and her current professional biography is not a first-person update on pronouns or identity.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How does the profile’s career context compare with her current role?
The WIRED profile was published on October 11, 2016. It described Banister as an investing partner at Founders Fund, which she had joined earlier that year as the firm’s first female investing partner. It also recounted earlier career details, including self-taught engineering, management work at IronPort, and founding Zivity. These are details from the profile’s 2016 snapshot.
Long Journey Ventures’ current team page lists Banister as Co-Founder and General Partner and identifies her as previously a partner at Founders Fund. The firm’s “Coming of Age” post, listed as published February 18, 2025, discusses the firm and Fund IV; it is not a new first-person account of Banister’s gender identity.
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