Cousin is a non-gendered expression.

There is a social form which has not only seen the most experimental practice in the history of the species (we still imbibe small portions), but doesn't rely on single-gendered categorisations as a linear criteria or principle of association. Ethnologists called it cognatic social organisation or bilateral kinship reckoning. The focus for provisional affiliation is completely horizontal, out toward siblings and cousins. Without our sort of marriage, blood is not the factor (as such, we're the only ones who consistently produce orphans).

This doesn't mean ancestral or other complicated relations go unrecognised, nor, obviously, that gender is annihilated. It only means that distinctions are unimportant 'til they come up. Like some visitors, they more or less announce themselves. Ancestral stories are important to establish new connections, should one need a quick get-away or a friendly hide-out. Few would like to come to town a total fucking stranger. With clans, there might be signs or totem poles one can consult, and if in part they match your own, you should be welcome. Otherwise it's good to know your ancestors and keeping track of their location. Name-dropping may be the oldest form of greeting.

All age-mates in a crew are siblings, everyone else cousin, at least until one moves over and then the nomenclature either reverses or becomes more inclusive. To call one "no kin of mine!" (despite any genealogy) would be among the worst forms of insult. But as affiliations are free to shift, antagonisms don't endure unless, like marriage contracts reading "until death do they depart" insisting on the vow might be the only form of satisfaction (where backing into corners or up against the wall may be the only route one can safely take – one can only hope a charging goat will settle the affair). It can get complicated, as for hooking up one seeks the place of cousins. Only in relation to a current 'spouse' is the siblingship deconstructed, hence the ceremonial ritual as a rite of transformation, it indicates a party, not a politic.

Should things go bad, it takes no brain or calculator to see just how many angry siblings can arrive to cast you out or bonk you on the head. The point is, for any type of affiliation, one can extend or contract the network as far or near as desired or is necessary. It would seem what's been called "manarchy" could only last the time it takes to get kicked in the ass – it's called self-limiting but only where there's common sense of solidarity. Today it seems that kinship is either a pain in the backside or a total irrelevancy. Yet how familiar is this system when there's no official near to mediate? It's obvious we take kinship too literally. Only without the state or within outsider society, one is free to pick and choose one's relatives, and friends are likely, just a distinction to reduce redundancy. No category can be exclusive when there are no absolutes.