Reaction to “Does everyone ‘have’ a gender?” Medium article

I’m briefly resurfacing from my graduate class work to react to an article by Canton Winer, you can read for yourself here. Basically I know of Canton Winer because he’s formally studying asexuality as an academic and will post insights from his research on Twitter. Since his research is focused on the intersection between gender and asexuality it shouldn’t be too big of a surprise (but I was still pleasantly surprised anyway) that he noticed a quirk in the gender responses. It’s the same thing I threw out a reference to about a year ago on Hottakes:

screen shot of tweet by @aphobehottakes 8:10 PM 5/23/21 “Oh man if you thought sex was a pervasive concept in western society just wait until you hear about romance. and gender. I understand the presumption of gender is usually a safe bet statistically speaking but not 100% and literally no one is ready for that convo”

I had written the orginal tweet in response to aro erasure within the [twitter] ace community (something that is common even though community surveys have repeatedly shown that aromantics make up about a third of the ace community). A lot of ace responses to aphobia (on Twitter especially) tend to throw aros under the bus (so to speak) and amatonormativity is a hard idea for people to unpack and understand. I understood at the time that the “gender thing” was basically shelved for later, but I knew we’d get to it eventually.

What is the “gender thing”?

When I started my research, I planned to compare the gendered experiences of asexual men, women, and “beyond the binary” asexuals. I quickly found that these categories weren’t exhaustive. One major reason: about 1/3 of the people I spoke with felt detached from gender altogether.

(Winer, 2022)

The word “detached” is definitely growing on me. What does it mean to be “detached” from gender? Well for me I didn’t even know gender had a psychological element until I was 25. I knew there was a biological element (specifically in western society and I’ll expand on that train a thought in a minute) and I knew there was a social element, but until I was 25 I thought ALL genders were assigned. The reason I thought this was because of grammatical gender. If you took Spanish, French, German, or Latin (as I did) in for your high school language credit you’ll know what I’m talking about.

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Because I grew up thinking all genders were assigned, I didn’t think the existence of trans people or indigenous gender categories were weird or unnatural or in conflict with my word view. Old English had grammatical gender, but Modern English doesn’t. I figured Indigenous genders existed because their cultures had time to diversify independently before colonization. For every English grammar “rule” there’s an Indigenous language bebopping along just fine doing the exact opposite, so I didn’t think it was weird for a non-wastern cultures to have three, four, or five genders just because.

My “oh, shit, you we’re being literal/that wasn’t a metaphor” moment (my fellow aces and aros are probably very familiar with that experience) came from a diversity training I did for work. Naturally asexuals didn’t get a mention, but the main sticking point is the presenters mentioned that two-spirit people felt like their gender. Wait, what??? That meant that gender wasn’t just assigned because of cultural reasons. That was a scary moment because even then I knew that I didn’t feel like anything, but that wasn’t an exactly a safe place to ask questions. I wouldn’t be able to do a deep dive until I got on tumblr a couple years later. On tumblr I looked at every single possible gender post and description and I talked with trans aces. The response I got was always, “you just know” and I didn’t know, and while a lot of agender/nullgender/etc… folks said the “you just know” answer was super not helpful, it did help me figure out that “none of the above” was it for me.

Ollia, the interviewee quoted in the article, said “My gender is like an empty lot.” For me it’s more like when I ping my brain for “gender.exe” I get a “404 error, gender not found”. I’ve described it in past posts as a “chasm” with me on one side and gender on the other.

I introduce the concept of “gender detachment,” or individually-held feelings that gender presentation/identity is irrelevant, pointless, or even oppressive

(Winer, 2022)

That about sums it up actually. I guess it’s easier to describe as an outside observer because you’re not also dealing with the crippling anxiety that comes with bracing for the presumption of gender. My dysphoria doesn’t come from how I see my body, but how society sees me. It’s sooo frustrating seeing “gender critical” people on Twitter using hastags like “genderfree” because they’re pushing hate instead of liberation. My reaction to Canton Winer’s article is simply relief because this is a conversation starter. Instead of nobody being ready for that conversation, Canton is showing us that at least someone in academia is listening.

When I asked this question, nearly all respondents gave a gender identity. But with probing, many said that they basically give a gender identity because they don’t feel they have a choice. This suggests that gender detachment is almost undoubtedly more common than we realize — and that the questions researchers ask can submerge detached experiences of gender.

Winer 2022

Happy #AgenderPrideDay!

I’m going to be honest I didn’t know there was a semi-official official day until the hashtag popped up in my Twitter feed, but sweet! First rule of any pride day hashtag is “do not read the comments”. To my understanding the way pride day/week hashtags work is an LGBTQ+ group will pick a day and a hashtag and try to coordinate and build as much momentum as possible and a bunch of people will get mad like, “whaaaat, why do they get day?”

It seems like Pink News is leading today’s event since they were asking for coming out stories (but I’m not 100% sure since I haven’t gone through all the hashtags yet). The lesbian week event a while back was sponsored by a lesbian and bi women’s magazine. I thought that was a) awesome and b) hilarious that people were complaining about how it was executed because legitimate critique is one thing but complaining about an online event that you put zero effort into organizing because it doesn’t match your ideas another (and that last bit is definately a not so subtle potshot at Scarcella). Anywho! on to the actual post.

I actually have a really, really, really hard time describing and talking about my gender because, as the label suggests, I don’t actually have one. I am firmly on the “404 gender, not found” dot on the agender spectrum. If you thought sexuality and romance were pervasive concepts, try imagining what living life without gender for a day. I don’t mean suddenly picture everyone looking like a the robot from Metropolis (1927). Take a moment to imagine that you woke up tomorrow and everything is the same except gender is not a thing. Imagine if there were no separate men’s and women’s clothing sections in the department store and it was just “clothes”. Actually, other than the clothes thing picturing a world without gender is hard because of how ingrained it is into human culture. If I didn’t live my daily life without gender, I’d have trouble imagining it too.

During my typical day it’s nonstop “hey girl” or “Excuse me, ma’am” and a constant barrage of gender performance cues from everyone, even from nonbinary folks. I know you can’t really tell what somebody’s gender is by looking at them, but there are definitely people who give off “not-cis/binary” vibes. The frustrating thing for me is I don’t really know how to do that. How am I supposed to preform something I don’t have? It’s like when you ask non-asexuals what sexual attraction is like because you get the same really frustrating “oh, you just sort of know” for an answer.

My gender performance is a balancing act of doing what is socially acceptable for paycheck and social currency reasons vs trying not to think too hard about how other people might (incorrectly) perceive my (nonexistent) gender for dysphoria reasons. I mostly dress fem because I don’t exactly have a lot of options given my body type. Also fem clothes are more fun. I love overbust corsets because they have a complicated and misunderstood history and provide amazing back support. …and I can already imagine the Twitter comments accusing me of being a “cis woman who just wants to feel special”.

It took me a ridiculous long time to figure out my gender because I didn’t know gender was a real thing. I was almost 26 before I figured out I was agender. Before that point I assumed all gender was assigned based on culture. I thought the reason different cultures had different genders is they had had more time to diversify. For years I assumed that gender was just an arbitrary weird cultural thing like grammatical gender is just a weird arbitrary language thing (thank you linguistics degree). I had no idea that there was an entire psychological element to gender identity because I don’t have that tiny voice in my head telling me what gender I am.

Cracks in my “all gender is assigned” assumption began to form when I had to take a diversity training for a job and they talked about Two Spirit genders. That was the first time that it started to click that people actually felt like their gender and 23 year old me was sooo freaking confused. I didn’t “feel” like a girl. It wasn’t until two years later that I would have reliable access to internet and access to online ace spaces and chats that I could finally start asking questions. Trans aces in the chat groups were very helpful in directing me to trans and later nonbinary information resources. I basically went all the way down the list and crossed off everything that didn’t sound like me until agender was the only one left.

I’m going to finish this post off with how I found my pronoun. Before recently I didn’t particularly care for pronouns at all because like gender labels none of them really feel like me. I chose a really short name for myself (Lib) and I tried to gently encourage people to use that instead of pronouns, but I didn’t really care (and still don’t honestly) what people call me because my linguistics training says “I knew what you meant, so it’s fine”. I’m still not going to bite anyone’s head off for calling me the the “wrong” pronoun. It’s just a matter of “meh” vs “oh! that’s me!” My pronoun is thon/thon’s and it apparently has been around for a while and I’m very happy to have finally found it…in the dictionary of all places.

Agender Fashion Problems

CW// gender dysphoria mentioned, dieting very briefly mentioned

I started writing this post last November and for some reason writing about my gender issues is always a challenge because 1) I don’t actually have a gender and 2) most of my issues are external things that I have no control over.

Why I’m an “Inclusionist” Part 2

Last time I was rambling about “ace discourse” on Twitter and now I’m going to ramble about “bi-lesbian discourse”. Those of us in the ace and aro communities probably wouldn’t bat an eye if someone told us they were a “bi-lesbian”. Most ace and/or aro folks probably have had a crash course in the Split Attraction Model (SAM). We know it, we love it, we use it regularly. We know that by “bi-lesbian” they probably mean that they’re either “romantically attracted to two or more genders and lesbian” or “sexually attracted to two or more genders and homoromantic”. Bi-lesbian just rolls of the tongue in comparison and Twitter only allows for 140 characters. Easy, peasy, we got it.

Bisensuality (or That Little Nuance I like to Ignore)

I’m very, aromantic. Out of all of my identities that one is the loudest. My asexuality and agenderness are barely more than a whisper most days while my aroness is constantly shouting into a megaphone. In between those two extremes is my sensual attraction. It’s there, but I ignore it because without romantic or sexual attraction to give it some oomph I can usually tune it out. It’s just this weirdness that pops up and makes things awkward because I can’t act on it and still exist within the bounds of social niceties. I’m aromantic, asexual, agender, and bisensual and it’s just there to be weird. For me sensual attraction makes me want to get all up in your business, proximity is important, as more than platonic touching, but not quite sexual and definitely not romantic. It’s weird, it’s nuanced, and not something I generally trust people to understand. It just gives me a tiny view into the world of attraction.

I think I’ve mentioned it before when I was thinking back to puberty and I was getting flashes of sensual attraction towards my classmates, but without the romantic or sexual attraction to give it context it would just freak me out because I sort of knew it wasn’t “normal”. Learning about sensual attraction as an adult finally gave me the context and was a sigh of relief because it meant there wasn’t anything wrong with me, it just meant that my identity had a nuance to it. It’s weird, it’s there, and honestly I’m not sure what to do about it so I just accept it and ignore it. I do wish more people would talk about these little nuances, though.

Sooo, about being Agender

This post has literally been sitting in my drafts since last June. For months I’ve been trying to think about how to explain what it’s like to be agender. I understand that not feeling romantic or sexual attraction is a tough concept for people to wrap their heads around and I understand that genders outside the binary are basically a totally alien idea to most people, but not having a gender at all? This obviously took some thinking.

I first realized I might not be connecting all the dots when I had to take a diversity training for work. The topic of two-spirit genders came up and I was very confused because the phrasing they used suggested that two-spirit wasn’t an assigned gender. Wait, what? Up until that point I assumed that all genders were assigned. I assumed gender was a cultural construct and so logically different cultures had different gender roles and gender types. I was very confused and kept thinking, “….wait… how do you feel two-spirited???” I was a “girl” because people in my Western culture told me I was, so I couldn’t understand how people “just knew” they were two-spirit. I didn’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already had and ask the seminar presenters more questions when the odds of it being relevant for my job were very slim, so I just let the matter go unanswered for about three years.

It wasn’t until I was able to talk to transgender aces in online chats that I was able to figure out that I didn’t have a gender. I’m not fully comfortable using “transgender” as a label and prefer “Nonbinary” when I’m not being specific. I also prefer to use “PFaB” (presumed female at birth) instead of AFaB (assumed/assigned female at birth).

So… what’s it like not having a gender? I’m not sure actuality since it’s not like I actually have a gender to compare it to. My gender dysphoria is (thankfully) fairly minor and I only get an occasional “WTF?”-out-of-body-experience feeling when I look in the mirror or my skin crawls when people call me a “girl” or “lady”. I’ve actually had dysphoria since I was a teenager, but I thought it was “normal” to have body dysphoria during puberty and I just ignored it until I realized I never “grew out of it” like I thought I would. It gets worse if I’m suffering from fatigue so it was easy for me to write it off for a long time. It wasn’t until I started reading about gender dysphoria and my reaction was, “oooooh, that’s what that is.”

My dysphoria basically feels like there’s a delay in my brain; when I look in the mirror it takes my brain longer to process that it’s my reflection that it’s looking at, which is trippy as hell and why I thought it was just a symptom of fatigue for a long time. Wearing my hair in my favorite hair style, making funny faces to distort the image, or wearing particular clothing styles or my unisex work uniform helps my brain to click faster that it’s “me” I’m looking at. 

I really don’t feel comfortable being called a “girl” anymore, but that might actually have more to do with me being 29 years old than my gender experience. My body type doesn’t really allow for me to look androgynous and looking more masculine wouldn’t really make me feel any better. 

There’s a lot of support for transitioning in the non-binary and transgender online communities as the best treatment for dysphoria, but what do I transition to? I hate that androgyny has such a skinny stereotype because I’m not going to be able to lose any weight anytime soon and my genetics really doesn’t allow for skinny. As my mom likes to put it, “We’re famine ready” Actually, the idea of being skinny freaks me out more than having a feminine body. I look at pictures of myself as a kid and my brain goes, “Jeepers, that kid needs a cheeseburger.”

So, if transitioning isn’t an effective treatment, what’s my next best option? For me it’s accepting that, yes, I’m going to feel uncomfortable about my body because of my perceived gender. People are still going to presume I’m a woman even though that’s definitely not the case. What’s really cool though is seeing how every so slowly people around me are becoming more and more aware of gender nuances and it’s totally possible that one day I’ll be able to put “nonbinary” or even “agender” on my DL and medical forms. Someday my coworkers will be comfortable calling me “Mx. Lib” instead of “Miss Lib.” Thinking about a hopeful future like that is what helps me get through the rough parts of looking in the mirror and knowing something just isn’t quite right. Basically, I’ve accepted that my dysphoria has very little to actually do with me and it’s mostly western culture’s fault for presuming I was a “girl” in the first place. 

Escaping Reality, Expensive but Worth it?

So, I’ve been playing two mobile games non-stop (and boy does my paycheck know it). The games are Choices by Pixelberry and The Arcana by NixHydra. You can play for free, but it costs money to unlock extra scenes that reveal more of the story. But it’s not like I have any other major expenses or hobbies right now so I’m willing to accept this as my one vice.

I’m going to start with Choices. The stories I enjoyed the most were “Perfect Match” and “Most Eligible”. I’m willing to accept this as my guilty pleasure as an aromantic because actual dating squicks me out, but playing a totally censored PG13 game is absolutely fine. “Most Eligible” was probably the most fun because the storyline is your character is put on a trashy Reality TV show (based off Big Brother I think?) and the point of the game is to basically hook up with everyone. The bonus scenes are romantic dates and extra info to help your character win the challenges. At the end you have the option of buying an extra scene that you need to win, but if you lose you still win the audience vote if you stay in character during the interviews and get the consolation prize.

“Perfect Match” is the cheesiest scifi plot that I have no excuse for liking. Your character signs up for a dating service and surprise! Your perfect match is actually a super realistic android and the corporation that makes them is evil and you have to stop the evil corporation from taking over the world. Seriously uninspired villains. If that were a TV series synopsis I wouldn’t watch it, but the game turned out to be super fun because you get to choose how your character responds. I loved the ending I got and because it’s scifi, polyamorous relationships are perfectly fine (which thank goodness because I didn’t want to choose between the private detective and the android) and everyone is bi/pan/wtf-sexual. This one is fun to play even without the bonus scenes.

The Arcana is absolutely gorgeous. Rather than unlocking the bonus scenes it’s better to go ahead and just buy the individual chapters because it unlocks all the content and means you don’t need a key to replay the chapters. The individual chapters cost about ten dollars, but you’d be spending more than that if you kept refilling keys and paid to unlock all the bonus scenes individually (and the bonus scenes are basically just romantic fluff anyway soooo you don’t re~ally need it unless that’s your thing).

Not all of the chapters are out yet so it’s going to be a while until we see how the whole story ends. There are several story line choices and each story line has a different suitor and the plot is slightly different in each one too. There’s also a super cute mini-game that I enjoy playing daily. Best feature? You get to chose between she/her, he/him, and they/their pronouns. Asra, one of the characters, is also nonbinary according to the creators. I also happen to really like the story too. If this were a series I would totally watch it, but it’s definitely a perk of the format to have that reader-insert feeling.

The nice thing about both of these mobile games is it gives me a break from reality. The ban on transpersons in the military is definitely a low-point this past month, but on top of that my grandmother, my last living grandparent, is having some serious health problems lately so my mom is going to have to fly up somehow despite the government shutdown and all that mess. Having something fun, easy, and low-stress to do on my downtime is very beneficial to my mental health right now, so while my paycheck is definitely weeping, a little escapism right now is definitely worth it.

I Read the Texas GOP Political Platform (and I am Terrified)

Fun Fact! The individual parts of the GOP political platform are called “planks”. Haha! Cute, right? And, yup, that is all the fun we’re going to be having this evening. Because oh, my fucking God, I’m probably going to need to breath into a paper bag just to get through this. Fuck, um, read at your own discretion. And, no, I’m not just being dramatic.

Carnival of Aces May 2018: “Filling In the Blanks”

This is my Carnival of Aces submission for May 2018 hosted this month by Prismatic Entanglements under the topic of “Nuance and Complexity“. For more in formation about the CoA, to see past topics, or to volunteer to be a future host see the master post on The Asexual Agenda

“figuring out you’re asexual is like trying to find a nonexistent needle in a very large haystack except people keep trying to convince you that you’re just not looking hard enough or you’ll find the right needle eventually but the needle just isn’t there and yet everyone else’s is and then you wonder whether or not you actually have a needle and then you spot something that might be a needle but nope it’s just another hay strand and everything is confusing and now the haystack is on fire”
Source: simplydaisys

One thing I don’t like about identifying as asexual (and aromantic and agender) is I feel like my identity is defined by blank space. Other identities can say things like, “I like girls and I’m mostly a girl, so I’m lesbian” or “I’m pan, I like who I like regardless of gender.” My explanations feel like a fill-in-the-blank question on a test you didn’t study for. I am who I am based on attractions that aren’t there and more often than not that’s met with skepticism or lack of comprehension.

Secret Misogyny (Misogyny from a Nonbinary Perspective)

A while back I took one of the Harvard tests to see how sexist I was. Actually my mom had all of my family take the test to see how sexist we were and (not to my surprise) I scored the lowest (meaning I was the least sexist according to their leading questions). This didn’t surprise me because I’m agender therefore my answers don’t really fall in line with what they were testing for. The two kinds of sexism they were testing for was basically micro-agression towards women and putting women on a pedestal. So I got to flaunt my low score on both accounts (my mom was surprise by her own score in the latter category) and go on my merry way.

I haven’t completely given up on my dream to be a science fiction writer, but it’s definitely on the back burner until I get my life together. In the meantime I keep watching YouTube videos that analyze films and talk about story techniques. One video that popped up on my feed was an apology to Stephanie Meyer by Lindsay Ellis (formally known as the Nostalgia Chick) addressing whether or not the Twilight series deserved all the hate it got 10 years ago.

Spoiler alert: it did not.