In late 2018, a third legal gender category (called divers ‘diverse’) was established in German legislation. The legal recognition of a nonbinary gender in Germany is juxtaposed against a non-existent linguistic inventory for speaking to or about nonbinary individuals: there are currently neither established formal forms of address nor a gender-neutral third person pronoun that is suitable for human referents and in wider use, despite German having a grammatical three-gender system (masculine, feminine, neuter). Although it could be assumed that the third grammatical gender not tied to masculinity or femininity might serve as a gender-neutral alternative, this is not the case as it is largely used for inanimate objects and can be utilised in practices of denigration towards women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people. With people outside the gender binary gaining more rights and becoming more visible in society and media, they also increasingly become targets in hateful online discourse. This paper investigates online hate speech targeted at nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people in German social media, analysing it for denigrating and othering patterns of language use. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of neuter gender reference to these groups and individuals in order to gain more insight into the discourse semantics of the irregular – i.e. not triggered by regular noun gender – assignment of neuter gender to humans. Analysing the comment sections of articles on the introduction of a third gender option, gender-neutral language use, and nonbinary individuals posted on the Facebook pages of major German newspapers, this study aims to shed light on the linguistic practices employed in hateful discourse on people who do not comply with hegemonic gender norms. The analysis shows that the cognitive link of neuter grammatical gender with inanimate objects is used as a mental frame in the dehumanisation of nonbinary individuals, which in combination with lexical forms of othering and denigration places people outside the gender binary outside of and below humankind.