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Out of curiosity (about agender identity)

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by Steve712, Sep 7, 2013.

  1. Steve712

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    What indicates that someone is agender?

    I ask this because I've wondered whether this identification might apply to me, as I'm not exactly married to either the concept of masculinity and femininity ... but then those concepts are incredibly naive descriptions of cisgender identity, so that might not be a reliable indicator.
     
  2. Steve712

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    I hope bumping is okay. I'd really like to hear from someone who can help clarify this for me.
     
  3. Rozey

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    This thing about gender, is that it is subjective; so two people with identical behaviour characteristics, may still perceive their gender differently.

    Instead of asking whether you are this, that or neither gender, ask whether it matters that you know the correct label for yourself. Identifying who you are can become a bit of an obsession - at least it does for me, so often I just try to be natural, and if that is masculine or feminine, then that is what I am.

    There is a very good gender personality test, on the BBC website. I used it and found myself someone in the middle.

    BBC - Science & Nature - Sex ID

    Best wishes for your attempts to be you. :slight_smile:
     
  4. Steve712

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    Thanks for responding. I'm slightly confused, though; agender must correspond to something, otherwise it's all connotation ("oh, this word feels good!"). What is it that agender denotes?
     
  5. Owen

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    I identify as agender, and the way I usually explain how it feels is to liken it to asexuality. When someone is asexual, they don't feel sexual attraction for anyone. Some of us have preferences for men or women, or muscular people or skinny people or chubby people, or short people or tall people, and we usually use those preferences to define our sexuality. But asexual people (assumedly, seeing as I can't speak for them myself) don't feel any of that, because they don't feel sexual attraction in the first place.

    Being agender is like that. Gender is, among other things, a feeling of how you would like others to perceive you, which gender's outfits feel the best, and so on. And being agender means you don't really have a preference for any of that. It's defined as not having a gender identity, like atheism is not believing in any deity.

    Now, just as there's a spectrum of asexuality (asexual, grey-A, sexual, and all the variations between), there's a spectrum of agender-ness. You have people who do feel their gender (men, women, non-binary folks with a gender identity), people who don't feel any kind of reaction to the social institution of gender, and people who fall in the middle or lean one way or another. So you could sometimes feel a preference for masculine, feminine, or androgynous things, or you could sometimes feel a preference for being perceived as masculine, feminine, or androgynous, in which case you might be grey-agender (I made that term up just now).

    There is a certain element of connotation to it, though. I used to wonder if I could honestly call myself agender when I don't like having masculine concepts/expectations forced on me, and when wearing a kilt (which is often perceived as a skirt) feels so much truer to myself than wearing pants. I thought maybe I was some shade of genderqueer, but it didn't feel right calling myself that. Then one of the people on here said in another agender thread, "One of the staff here, Owen, identifies as agender." And it felt so right! That was when I knew it was the right label for me.
     
  6. Saint Otaku

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    I just don't really think of things in terms of gender, I think in terms of sex. I've never adhered strictly to gender roles and gender-stereotypes, the only real use of gender to me is in pronouns. This makes me slightly confused as to the topic of gender; since I don't care yet use male pronouns, I don't know if I'd be cisgender or agender.

    @Owen, though you are a male sexually, I am curious as to what pronouns you prefer.
     
  7. Steve712

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    Ah! Thanks. This particular passage went a long way to clarifying my confusion. Part of my problem was that I could see what, for instance, asexual denoted (a lack of sexual arousal), but could not quite put my finger on what agender was supposed to mean. Not having any particular gender expression preferences makes sense, though. In which case I would not really be agender, but male.
     
  8. Rabbit in a Tie

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    I identify as agender. For me, it went like this: I figured out that when I look in the mirror, I feel better about myself if I don't think of myself as a woman. Then I considered that I might be a man, and I quickly determined that I don't feel like a man, either.
     
  9. Zac

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    I think I'm agender too....
     
  10. Ettina

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    I found myself wondering that too. I'm fine with identifying as female (my birth gender), but I don't feel the strong sense of a female identity that most people feel. If I'd been born with the same personality but with boy bits, I'd feel fine being a guy too.

    However, I eventually decided that I'm not agender, because it seems to me that agender people, rather than not feeling strongly about gender in general, tend to describe having a clear feeling of not being male or female. I don't have that. I'm just fine with being called a girl.