Frankly, I’m bad at all sorts of this stuff - married names (made worse because some people switch and other people don’t) - people who used to be Jenny and now want to be Jennifer - and on the internet, misgendering is easy to do - even when someone has consistently id’d as a gender - their username doesn’t necessarily imply or match gender - and guessing someone’s gender by their posts is a losing game of stereotyping. I will say that it seems to be genetic - I kept my maiden name when I married, and my mother addresses checks and Christmas cards to Dangerosa HisLastName - and she still will talk about my friends from high school using completely random names so I have to tease out who she is referring to from context. Since I’m bad at it and grew up with it as a fact of life, I am more than willing to not get temperamental about it myself - but I also wish people would be more understanding - obviously they themselves have never confused Jeremy and Jeff or forgotten that Chrissy now wants to be known as Christine and I am envious of their perfection in this.
Lets say a college scholarship opens up but its only for women. Do you think a person like yourself should take it?
Also how would you feel if a trans man wanted to compete in a womans sport?
Was this ever answered? This is really the biggest thing I don’t understand here: the advantage of labeling one’s self “agender” rather than acknowledging that your behavior and the way you present yourself is not limited to the confines of gender stereotypes.
I too would like to know this.
Hapax, people’s dress and attire has a purely functional side ( to be warm, comfortable, and to comply with the bare minimum of being neutrally dresses. But, dress also can have a social function; to look appealing, attractive, professional, or to express something about yourself you want to express.
How would you -objectively-characterize your way of dressing and grooming in this sense? You say you wear men’s clothes and a chest band; how is your hair cut, do you have a feminine face, make-up, groomed eyebrows, nails, do you wear any jewellery?
Do you think your way of dressing and grooming gives people the impression of you you want them to have? Or is there a constant little “gap” so that people have to think about how your attire differs from the standard attire and how they should act accordingly?
In my professional life, I occasionally meet another professional who may have presented as agender. The last time that happened, in a bigger meeting, this person captured my interest, a bit more then I would have liked. My eyes kept returning to him/her, wondering if it was a lesbian woman dressing butch, or a man with a soft/high voice, who was either gay or a clueless dresser… or an agender person. I can’t remember as much as I would have liked about what he/she said about the topic of the meeting; I was too distracted. I resented the person just a bit for not being more “clear” in just settling the issue for me, in dress or grooming.
Intellectually, I know that this annoyance is my problem, not theirs; that is why I’m very interested in this thread and thank you for starting it.
Not speaking for OP, but I think this is a fairly personal decision that can go either way and is, to a degree, dependent on the communities you’re closest to.
One notable thing is that people who are assigned both male and female at birth may identify as nonbinary, and that is something that matters to some folks. They may prefer the implicit connection and community with other nonbinary people regardless of assigned-sex-at-birth.
This is kinda similar to why some folks prefer “queer” over terms like “gay,” “bi,” or “pansexual,” as it offers a bigger community where folks may bond over shared “outsider” experience. I consider it somewhat noteworthy that “genderqueer” was a term that was used pretty heavily for a while to describe essentially the same thing, but that “nonbinary” has largely superceded it in the past couple years.
I’ll also say that, for instance, “I’m a non-traditional woman” is also a bit of a mouthful, DOES still identify a person as cisgender in ways they may not feel comfortable broadcasting, and is also…extremely vague. I’ve heard very traditional, conservative women describe themselves as “non-traditional” because they kinda like football.
Yes, conciously. I’ve found women tend to want to Be Friends right away, so I try to act a little chillier and am more careful not to share personal information with women. Which is not to say I infodump on men; it’s a very subtle difference. I treat men and owmen the same in casual encounters where they’re not trying to have a personal conversation with me.
Good point. I would feel closer to a self-described “non traditional woman” then to a “nonbinary” person, for exactly this reason. So… that is kind of an intended effect?
(Sorry for the delay on these; I’ve been answering from work and work’s been busy.)
The short version is, I believe that gender is a real thing and that it happens in the mind; therefore referring to myself as a ‘woman’ when I don’t have a woman’s mind would be a lie, and grandfathering myself in as ‘woman’ on the basis of anatomy would be invalidating the existence of every trans man.
Let me turn that question around: Given that gender sterotypes will lead the vast majority of people to make false and possibly harmful assumptions, and given that I don’t feel any desire to join in gender-segregated parts of society, why should I invite the false assumptions by lying about my gender? Because that’s what it would be - lying. As long as you accept the idea that gender identity exists, seperate from anatomical sex or sociaization, then claiming to be a “non-traditional” member of a gender while actually feeling no particular connection to that gender is a lie.
It would also have the bad effect of encouraging sex-essentialism - after all, if someone can be “a man” when the only thing that makes “him” “a man” is “his” genitalia, what does that say about women who have the same kind of genitalia? Pointing to their taking estrogen just kicks the can down the road to transwomen who can’t access hormones or have medical reasons for not taking them, and if you respond by claiming transwomen not on hormones are really men, that leaves the ugly conclusion that transwomen didn’t exist for most of human history - a conclusion contradicted by the spaces carved out for “third genders” in dozens of cultures.
I believe that gender identity exists, distinct from anatomical sex or socialization. I beleive that at some point in time with sufficiently advanced technology and understanding - which we are nowhere close to, mind - it would be possible to give someone a brain scan and say “this person is a man” or “this person is a woman” with as much certainty as we can now say “this person’s somatosensory cortex is activated”. There are real differences between men and women (on average, in a way that says absolutely nothing whatsoever about the abilties or interests of any particular man or woman,) and it’s worth acknowledging that “man” and “woman” are different cluster ins thingspace, so to speak. I also think that in that hypothetical future with enough understanding of how gender works, a brain scan on me would turn up “???”. Gender is a neurotype, and my neurotype is ‘autistic’.
If, on the other hand, you don’t think gender identity is a thing and that binary trans people are just deluded, then claiming the label of “a man” or “a woman” is equivalent to broadcasting your private medical information to the world. And given that sterotypes exist and a lot of people make false assumptions based on sex, why subject yourself to the abuse?
Because by insisting someone who’s not quite comfortable with the label put themselves in the category “man” or “woman” regardless, you’re making the categories into a bigger deal than they should be.
There’s an interesting essay by Douglas Hofstader (writing as “William Satire”), “A Person Paper On Purity In Language”, which imagines a world where different races, instead of genders, use different pronouns and honorifics. He was making a point about the use of ‘man’ instead of ‘person’ as a generic term, nothing to do with genderqueer people. I’m going to recommend it anyway to people trying to wrap their heads around the idea of genderqueer because it’s so disconcerting. Racism is still a bitter and deep-seated problem in most of the English-speaking world, but at it’s possible to talk about a person and get to know them every way but face-to-face without knowing, or caring, what race they are. If race is important - if, for example, you’re trying to explain to a child why America has a Martin Luther King Day holiday - you can point it out with an adjective. Gender, meanwhile, is pervasive. Talk about a person with ‘he’ or ‘she’ pronouns, and you’re hammering in their gender multiple times a sentence.
I can imagine a genderless society with no gendered pronouns, where names were picked purely because parents liked the sound and all types of clothing were available tailored to all body types, where it was taboo to mention a person’s anatomical sex except in relevant contexts like medical treatment or ‘penis fetishist seeks person with penis for casual sex’ - but until we actually do chuck the labels out the window, sticking them on people they don’t fit just makes them less and less likely to actually mean something, while the human instict for categorization means that nothing short of chucking the labels out the window completely will eliminate gendered sterotypes.
It’s important to many people, for whatever reason, to be seen and accepted as “a man” or “a woman”. I don’t quite understand why - probably something to do with tribalism - but for their sake I think it’s a bad idea to eliminate the social categories completely. That said, if there are categories they ought to mean something. “Has a penis” or “has a vagina” is a bad thing for them to mean, since most of the time that’s irrelevant to social interaction. “Has a man-type mind and wants to be treated as a man”, or “has a woman-type mind and wants to be treated like a woman”, is more useful to know.
I don’t have a man-type or a woman-type mind and I don’t want to be treated as a man or a woman.
This, plus the fact that so many people do identify as male of female against the assumptions of anatomy and socializtion, is why I’m convinced that there are, in fact, mental and emotional differences between genders.
Thanks. I see from your Dimo icon you share it.
I find female bodies more aesthetically pleasing, but ‘aesthetically pleasing’ is not something I aspire to be. Comfort was more important. Plenty of women find that having breasts is more psychologically comfortable - transwomen will talk about how good it felt once they were on hormones to have them come in, and some women who need masectomies for cancer find it’s very important to them to get implants. I never liked having breasts; they got in the way and I didn’t have that psychological Rightness to compensate. Basically, I think the same way about female bodies that a straight guy would: nice to look at, not nice to wear.
My disgust threshold is actually higher than most people’s! On the visceral level, I’ll do things like eat food that’s been dropped on the floor (once I rinse it off), or is ‘expired’ (as long as it doesn’t actually stink). I’m not disgusted by sex as long as it’s not directed at me, so to speak; I can watch weird porn without feeling anything but amusement. The things that make me viscerally anxious tend to be staight-up sensory overload - for example, the noise of a vacuum cleaner.
Emotionally, I tended to be on an even keel of low mood. I rarely get periods of pleasant good feeling, even more rarely get simmering resentment that fades in a day or two, and never explode with anger. I don’t know how much of this is innate and how much of it is self-training because of my disinclination to deal with people reacting to noticable emotions. As for explaining things to people, generally I don’t try; I figure my emotions are nobody’s business. Getting top surgery hyas been a mood-booster for the past few months. Metaphorical as well as literal weight off my chest, I guess - one little daily stress gone for good.
It’s hilarious.
This is really weird. I just want to know how to adress you ( you being the agender person). Not to label you, but to prevent a social faux pas. If only you gave a clue, like in your choice of clothing, I would be grateful. Precisely because language forces me to make that distinction several times a sentence. That means several times in a sentence that I’m afraid of making a faux pas.
Do you at least introduce yourself with a hint to your preferrd pronoun? Or do you leave all the awkwardness with your conversation partners , and then it is domehow their fault if they act awkwardly? Do you have some scripts by which you ease such awkwardnees if it arises?
I still dont see why you cant choose a gender and then choose what that means for you. I can’t choose to live at 14,5 Main Street either, and let the poor mailman figure out what that means. For my mailmans sake, I have to let people adress me as living on Main Street 14, or 15, or 14a, but I have to choose, right? And if my adress in 14a, then I have to make a clear sign that indicates where and what 14a is. I cant just abolish house numbers, starting with those on 14-15.
I don’t wear makeup, groom my eyebrows, do anything with my nails but clip them short, or wear flashy jewelry. (I do sometimes wear bracelets, in ‘androgynous’ styles like a single leather braid or a flat copper cuff.) I wear my hair long and unstyled, in a single tail. I used to wear it short, but decided the single tail was easier to keep neat and professional-looking. I ususally wear loafers, jeans and a button-front collared shirt, with a cardigan or casual jacket in cool weather. No more binder since I got surgery - it’s a lot more comfrotable without. my face is pretty feminine in its bone structure, but that’s not something I can do anything about short of taking testosterone, and that would create the inconvenience of shaving - actual beard is more masculine than I’m interested in, and would itch.
The area I live tends to ‘casual’ attire in public anyway, so there’s actually nothing I could wear that would be masculine enough to create that gap. So, no, I can’t give as androgynous an impression as I’d like. I can go for ‘professional and neat’, so that’s what I go for. I don’t want people to pay my clothing any mind.
Ideally, a college scholarship ‘for women’ should go to a woman - however, I can understand why a genderqueer afab person would take it. The point of those scholarships is usually to encourage women to go into fields traditionally dominated by men, or to to support women specifically because they’ve faced discrimination. A female-assigned nonbinary person will have faced that same discrimination, and their presence in a male-dominated field will still cause it to be less male-dominated.
I think gender segreation in sports is stupid: if the idea is to divide competitors into similar ability groupings to make the competition more even and thus exciting to watch, the people in charge of sports should find some objectively measurable phsyical characteristic to divide on (like, for example, weight classes in wrestling), and accept that women will dominate the sport in some groupings and men in others. In that case, it woudn’t be an issue; a trans man would probably end up competing with women just because he’s, say, short, on an even basis. As long as gender-segregated sports are the only sports available, the unpleasant compromise of allowing trans people to compete with their correct gender once they’ve been on hormones for a while is probably the best we’re going to get, by which standard there should be no problem with a trans man not yet on hormones competing with women - after all, he doesn’t have the extra strength testosterone is supposed to give you. Once he has the strength advantage of testosterone, it seems fairer for him to compete with other men.
On the whole, I think I’m lucky to have wound up nonbinary. It might be different if I were enough of an extrovert that automatically having a gender-tribe helped me connect to people, but being weird and solitary anyway, it’s a relief not have to have to live up to gendered expectations or perform a gender even in my own head.
I can’t choose a gender and then choose what that menas for me, because society has already decided what gender means and their defintions don’t fit me. So I go without. It’s no different in principle from not having a caste or a moeity. To use your analogy, I actually live in a trailer parked in the vacant lot across the street from #14 and #15, and the post office claims it can only deliver to fixed addresses, so I’m getting my mail poste restante. The people who want to live at #14 or #15 are free to keep on doing so.
There’s no such thing as a ‘nonbinary’ mode of dress, but I do try to avoid giving false signals of gender, such as wearing slinky dresses. I’ve never met a nonbinary person who objects to the pronouns “they” and “them”. In general, pronouns are only as awkward as a conversational partner makes them. If someone doesn’t care and accepts they might be wrong, it’s as simple as correcting the wrong nickname. “It’s actually they”. “Sorry, they would like some more popcorn.” It’s going to get easier with more visibility. As recently as the 1980s, respectable major newspapers were scratching their heads over how to refer to a married female politician who went by her maiden name, because Mrs. is only supposed to be used with a husband’s name, but Miss implies an unmarried woman. She had to choose, right? She didn’t. Eventually, the papers accepted that ‘Ms.’ was a useful honorific and went with it.