I feel like I should point out here that being asexual and being agender don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other. Someone can be a man or a woman and completely happy in that role and not want to have sex with anyone ever; someone can be neither and still eager to jump into bed with both, although physical dysphoria can get in the way in practice. For me personally, I think the connection went the other way - being asexual meant I didn’t feel obliged to keep performing a gender to improve my chances in the relationship market.
Sex drive and sexual attraction are also very different things, and sex drive is weird when you don’t feel sexual attraction, but I do have one. Thankfully, it’s not much of one. About once a month I’ll get a sense of ‘Oh, an orgasm would feel really nice right now!’, but it’s not an overwhelming urge - it’s more akin to a food craving like ‘Oh, potato chips would taste really good right now!’.
I do masturbate; it’s the fastest way to get rid of the ‘Oh, an orgasm would feel really nice right now!’ urge. I don’t fantasize, just use pure physical sensation.
For a while at university I was involved with a (cisgender, bisexual) woman. In retrospect it was a bad idea, but, well, had to try it once. Sex felt kind of icky and weird and I was never sure I was doing it right. It just emphasized how much my body felt like it didn’t fit.
A goodly number of my online acquaintences are. I don’t know about offline acquaintences; I don’t ask and nobodoy has volunteered it to me.
I’m not disgusted by the idea of other people having a sex drive, as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Someone telling me about celebrities they find hot, eh, some people have weird hobbies, like rating the attactiveness of people they’ll never meet. Someone telling me they thought I was hot, I’d ask them never to mention it again and if they did, that would end the friendship.
Well, by some people’s interpretations of the term “transgender”, I am one. (By others, ‘trans’ implies a change between binary genders.)
What I have in common with L, G, B, and binary T people is mostly the sense of being ‘other’. People think that people like me don’t exist, or shouldn’t be allowed to exist, or are deluded and mentally ill; even more sympathetic people have said things like ‘But why? Can’t you just be happy being a non-traditional woman?’. The gradual slide (at least in some countries) to the idea that being attracted to your own gender is just a thing some people are, of no moral or mental-health significance, makes me hopeful that being genderqueer will end up the same way - nothing worth worrying about, life is a rich tapestry.
You say you find the female body more aesthetically pleasing but you bound your chest and had surgery. Do you just mean that visually you find it more pleasing but you don’t feel comfortable in your own body, I guess specifically your breasts or did blinding them and whatnot just prevent people from viewing you as a sexual object? I don’t understand.
Also you implied that other people’s sexual lust makes you uncomfortable or anxious in some way at least it sounded that way to me. Do you have a low disgust threshold in general, do a lot of stimuli make you viscerally uncomfortable or anxious that are largely benign to most people?
How do you feel about your own emotions? Does your temper flare, do you get depressed or do you feel like you’re always unemotional or at least on an even keel? Is it difficult for you to explain your own feelings to people in a way they understand?
This is just fascinating to me! I have always struggled with not really feeling female and a few years ago I was diagnosed with autism. I don’t feel male or female. I don’t have interests that are generally seen as masculine or feminine. I dress mostly in men’s clothes, just plain cotton Walmart tees and cotton pants or shorts. I’m not very well endowed, probably an A/B cup so I rarely wear a bra and when I do it’s loose cotton sports vest. I can’t stand anything that compresses my chest so bras are a nightmare anyway. I just wear huge shirts, sometimes two at a time, and if I have to go out I’d rather wear a big loose jacket or shawl than a bra.
I’m asexual. I’ve had several relationships but they’re always doomed because of my complete lack of interest in sex. I can get in to it at first, because I know it’s pleasing my partner, but after a while in a relationship it just becomes a chore. Sex makes me uncomfortable. I don’t enjoy porn. I really don’t care to see people kissing with open mouths. I mean it doesn’t freak me out, I just think of tongues sloshing about and especially on a show where I know they’re actors who are being paid to slosh tongues with people they may not even like. I think of stuff like that instead of the normal “oh how romantic they’re in love!” feelings I guess most people experience. When I was young sex was basically a form of barter in my mind. I knew what to do to get what I needed, like I’d do it to get someone to like me, or I’d do it to get weed, or I’d do it if I needed some money fast. I was easily able to detach while it was happening anyway. I am also more attracted to the female form. I find male reproductive parts to be icky, and yet I’ve only had relationships with males.
Recently my autistic 14 year old who was born female has expressed the desire to be known as a male, has chosen a new name, and wants to have a coming out party at some point this year. I’m mostly worried about bullies. Just today there was an incident in my city where a trans student was bullied and threatened by over a dozen males students. It’s scary to think of my baby struggling like that but I’m 100% supportive because I totally get it. I mean I’d prefer to not be known as a gender at all myself but my kid ain’t me.
Also ooh I didn’t know there was a place to document gender here. Now there’s five! I don’t talk about any of this in real life, mostly because I don’t talk to many people about anything. It’s good to finally be able to “come out” somewhere at least.
What led you suspect ASD kept you from developing a gender identity? Do you think you noticed or cared less about gender expectations and that kept you from developing a (false) gender identity? Or are you seeing a causal link between ASD and being agender?
Thanks for your generosity in doing this and for your gracious and informative replies.
Hapax, I don’t know how involved you are with the wider community, but have you noticed a correlation between agenderness (and to a lesser degree, non-binaryness) and having autism? I’ve noticed most agender identifying people I know IRL have some form of autism, plus you, and maybe (I can’t quite tell from the post) Rushgeekgirl.
I’m not sure what my question exactly is, or what I’m getting at, I guess I’m just kind of wondering if I have some confirmation bias or if you have an opinion of why they may be correlated (if they indeed are).
I just wanted to jump in with some info about “gender” and autism. Many autistics do not present in culturally gender normative ways for the same reason they don’t internalize other social norms.
This really has nothing to do with being LGBQ, etc. but is a known side effect of autism. 90+% of “gender” as it is used today is social indoctrination and not anything innate to the individual. Because autistic folks don’t experience the social cues that NT people do they never get the social indoctrination into what is or isn’t appropriate for one gender or the other.
This often results in a feeling that you are not “really” a man or woman because you don’t exhibit the socially acceptable attitudes and behaviors of either.
This idea of pushing everyone into a new and ever more finely diced collection of pidgin holes actually somewhat infuriates me. I’m a full-on feminist and a huge number of women have given their blood, sweat, tears and sometimes their whole lives to get us to the point where we could tear down the “Shoulds” for women.
I thought we were getting near the point when we could say that any woman can present or think or act or love in any way they wanted and still be accepted. Now there seems to be a great effort to reassert the old patriarchal gender roles and say anyone who strays outside them should no longer be considered a real female, or male for that matter.
I am very confused about why the trans community is so invested in the patriarchal definitions of what is allowed to be considered masculine and feminine.
This is just… not true. The media likes to focus on really stereotypically femme trans women, often to an exaggerated degree. A lot of truscummy trans people also get really up in gender norms. But this doesn’t reflect the wider trans community’s view of gender, I know plenty of trans women who are butch lesbians or gender non-conforming, and plenty of trans men with femme interests (my best friend wears crop tops and wants to be a drag queen after he transitions more). My ex (a trans man) did makeup as a profession. Yes, some trans women and trans men more firmly present within gender norms for their identified gender, but I think you’ll find that the trans community (especially among younger trans people, under 30-35 or so), on average, have a much more subversive view of gender and patriarchal roles than cis people do.
Gender identification has more to do with an internal sense of self and feeling, not necessarily gender roles (though societal views of gender of course inform how this is expressed among trans people).
I’d also note that for binary trans people, a lot of the “stereotypical” stuff stems from either undergoing a sort of “second adolescence” and trying to find their identity immediately after coming out, or a desperate bid to pass. Femming/mascing it up is often a desperate attempt to scream to the world I’M insert gender PLEASE NOTICE THAT AND TREAT ME APPROPRIATELY. Oftentimes you’ll hear them express things like “man, I wish I could wear baggy clothes and dress down and not get misgendered, but the only time anyone ever calls me ‘ma’am’ is when I wear makeup and a dress.” Every binary trans person makes a choice about how much they value passing vs dressing and acting the way they want, except for the few who are lucky enough to pass without trying very hard, or confident enough to not give a fuck. (As well as those whose preferred mode of dress also helps them pass, I guess)
I’d add stuff in defense of nonbinary people as well, but I’ll leave the nonbinary stuff to Hapax as it’s sort of a thread they made about that topic and I don’t want to step on any toes.
How can gender identification being based on internal sense of self and feeling not be related to patriarchal norms of gender? What else are they using as a base template to differentiate themselves?
And if female or male can mean anything, as regards presenting or thinking or acting or loving, why would anyone need an alternate designation for their gender?
In other words, what’s the big deal? Why does applying a new and different label to a woman or man matter. Why can’t we just agree that either can do or be anything they want and chuck the labels out the window?
Count me in on any campaign to allow every person to express themselves in any way they want. Count me out for erecting new ways to divide ourselves.
To be clear, there are multiple views of what “gender” is. Performativism relies a bit more on social norms as a statement of intent, but it should be noted that the gender performativist notion also doesn’t really assert somebody can “do their gender” incorrectly. There’s also the experiential theory, which is more of a phenomenalogical, internal definition that relies on inner self. Essentially “how you feel”. The philosophy of gender is really, really complex and disagreed upon even among the most entrenched in the field (trans or cis). Julia Serano, biologist and author of Whipping Girl also has an interesting conception of “subconscious sex” and the intrinsic inclination model which I can’t do justice right now.
This is a good primer on the subject:
A good addendum is his transphobia video which touches on these issues a tad, but is largely about a different topic:
(For the record/further data points, I am autistic, and asexual. Gender-wise, I pretty much am the “happy being a non-traditional woman” person people bug Hapax about, which is why I have trouble understanding the alternative).
If you don’t mind, I would also like you to expound more on this. What was it about having breasts that you didn’t like? I think I can better understand biologically assigned females from birth who identify as male wanting to remove their breasts. But you don’t feel that you’re male; you are neither male or female. But you definitely feel that you should not have breasts? Is it because you feel breasts make you appear female and being flat chested is more androgynous as opposed to more masculine?
Does having a vulva and female sex organs bother you as well? I can understand not wanting to go through surgery. But if you could magically–without expense, risk, pain or discomfort–change your sexual organs, would you? If so, then to what? Not a penis, I’m sure. But would you prefer to just be smooth down there with no exterior sex organs? Or was it just the breasts that bothered you?
