Am I agender??

[Rebecca123]

So I know that it says that I'm agenger in my profile thing, but I actually have no clue as far as this whole gender thing goes. So I kinda just wanted some second opinions to see what yousuns all thought. 

So Im gonna start by saying that I actually don't know what it feels like to be a 'boy' or a 'girl'. Like I was assigned female at birth, but what does that actually mean? Does it mean that I have to act a certain way? Or is it just something that humans have created to segregate people into groups? I also dunno why clothes and toys and stuff are supposed to represent certain groups of people when everyone was created different and all. 

So yeah, opinions on my gender and stuff would be welcome 😀😀 thanks in advance

[Rynn]

11 minutes ago, Rebecca123 said:

Does it mean that I have to act a certain way? Or is it just something that humans have created to segregate people into groups? I also dunno why clothes and toys and stuff are supposed to represent certain groups of people when everyone was created different and all. 

All of that^ is about gender expression and gender roles, not gender identity.

10 minutes ago, Rebecca123 said:

So Im gonna start by saying that I actually don't know what it feels like to be a 'boy' or a 'girl'. Like I was assigned female at birth, but what does that actually mean?

I've tried to answer that question (what does feeling like a gender mean/ what is gender identity?) in a different thread, maybe it'll help you.

 

Spoiler

What is 'transgender' and 'non-binary'?

Basic definitions & explanations

First of all, this is the first definition of transgender that pops up in Google, written by a transgender author:

 

Transgender:

Denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

 

But what is meant by 'sense of personal identity and gender'?

• Sex is whether you’re biologically male, female or intersex.
• Gender is psychological, not biological, and should be separated from sex entirely. From here on, I’m going to leave sex out of the equation.
• Sexual orientation is even less relevant to this conversation. It's who you're attracted to, not who you are. I'm leaving this out of the equation too.

There are a lot of different aspects to gender.

• Gender roles/norms/expectations are unwritten rules society has for how men and women should behave. (Men can't wear make-up. Crying is for girls. Women shouldn't be too assertive.) These are not part of an individual's identity. They are part of a society's culture.
• Gender expression is what your gender appears to be to other people. (Includes gendered things like clothing, colors, make-up, mannerisms, tone of voice, way of walking, gestures while talking, how intensely emotions are expressed etc)
• Gender identity is a very complicated concept and it is the core of what we are talking about when we’re discussing trans issues. Before you can know what ‘transgender’ is, you need to know what ‘gender identity’ is. 

So there are a lot of theories on what gender identity is, and these two here are the most relevant to our discussion:

 

First you've got the (in my opinion outdated) theory put forward by Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir and the like. They resist the idea that any aspect of gender identity can be innate. As de Beauvoir says "One isn't born a woman, one becomes a woman." This basically means that you feel like a woman because it's what you're used to. You behave like a woman because that's what's socially acceptable. In this view people act how they're supposed to act according to the gender roles in their culture. The constant repetition of doing what they're supposed to do gets etched into their brains and becomes their gender identity. For Butler and de Beauvoir, gender identity is the internalization of culturally imposed gender norms and expectations.

 

Then there's a newer theory about gender identity. This one builds on the first one and accepts it as partially correct, but asserts that gender identity is also partially innate. If it wasn't, then it would logically follow that trans people simply can’t exist, because your gender identity would entirely depend on what you were raised to be.

Joan Roughgarden, a transgender evolutionary biologist who wrote a whole book on the science of lgbt identities, is a proponent of this one. According to her, ‘gender identity’ is a deep-seated sense of self that's been established from the time you were born. In her book 'Evolution's Rainbow', she writes:

 

I envision gender identity as a cognitive lens. When a baby opens his or her eyes after birth and looks around, whom will the baby emulate and whom will he or she merely notice? Perhaps a male baby will emulate his father or other men, perhaps not, and a female baby her mother or other women, perhaps not. I imagine that a lens in the brain controls who to focus on as a “tutor.” Transgender identity is then the acceptance of a tutor from the opposite sex. Degrees of transgender identity, and of gender variance generally, reflect different degrees of single-mindedness in the selection of the tutor’s gender. The development of gender identity thus depends on both brain state and early postnatal experience, because brain state indicates what the lens is, and environmental experience supplies the image to be photographed through that lens and ultimately developed immutably into brain circuitry. Once gender identity is set, like other basic aspects of temperament, life proceeds from there.

 

So a cisgender female baby instinctively emulates women, a transgender baby with a female body instinctively emulates men, and a non-binary baby instinctively emulates both. Simple. 

 

The innate part of gender identity is the part that decides which of the two genders (or both or neither) you will instinctively emulate during your life. The behavior of that group of people then supplies you with the learned aspect of your gender identity. So the innate part tells you which gender(s) to imitate and the learned part is what kind of behavior you're actually imitating and internalizing.  

 

Gender identity as Roughgarden describes it, is a deep-seated, immutable sense of belonging or kinship to a gender (either to the social construct or to the group of people). A sense of "I belong with those people, or the other group, or maybe both or not really with either."

 

You can't change this sense of belonging by raising someone differently. There have been cases where a doctor made a mistake while circumcising a baby boy and accidentally cut of the entire penis. For example, there’s David Reimer. That boy was raised as a girl instead, from birth, but still always felt like a boy. They had to tell him when he was 14 because it was just not working.

 

Gender identity is at least partially innate and biological, not just cultural, so the argument that your gender identity can't be anything but 'man' or 'woman' because that's the only two genders that exist in our culture is not applicable. Gender identity =/= gender as a social construct. Gender identity is to which degree you instinctively identify with those two culturally established genders.

 

 

My guess is agender people don't feel at home in either group, genderfluid babies could emulate their dad during some activities (like boxing) and their mom in other situations (like socializing), and neutrois people sort of feel stuck in between the two groups, but I don't know. The only way to know is to ask them. Our neurobiology science skills aren't advanced enough to read people's minds yet.

Gender Identity versus Gender Expression

Yes, of course everyone has a feminine and a masculine side, but that's not what we're talking about here. For example, a man can be feminine, he can like wearing make-up and dresses, talk in a stereotypically feminine way, and still identify as a man. Is his feminine side a 'deep-seated sense of identity', 'a cognitive lens that determines which gender(s) a baby will emulate from the minute they're born'? I doubt it. I think it's gender expression, not gender identity. For a nonbinary person, that's different.

 

A nonbinary person is not someone who simply dislikes the gender role they're put into. A guy who likes to break gendered expectations by wearing dresses is a crossdresser, a drag queen or a gender-nonconforming person, not a nonbinary person. Those are terms for people who have non-standard gender expressions. A nonbinary person is a person who has this innate, deep-seated, unchangeable sense of belonging to both genders, or to neither. If their body or the social role people ascribe to them doesn't line up with their inner sense of what they are, this leads to dysphoria. Dysphoria is an integrally important sign of ‘transgenderness’. Its opposite is gender euphoria.

 

Gender dysphoria is either a feeling of discomfort/distress with gendered aspects of your body (meaning you'd feel a need to change your body = transition) or a feeling of discomfort/distress because of what gender people perceive you to be (meaning you'd want to take steps in order to be perceived differently = transition).

Gender expression includes gendered things like clothing, make-up, mannerisms, tone of voice, way of walking, gestures while talking etc.

The innate part of gender identity doesn't have anything to do with any of those things.

Are NB’s trans?

(NB = Non-binary, also called enby)

 

                                                                Trans people

                                                       ↙                                  ↘

                                    binary trans people                nonbinary trans people

They're all trans.

 

Nonbinary people can transition, so even if you were (in my opinion incorrectly) basing your definition of ‘transgender’ on whether or not transition is possible, you still wouldn’t have a reason to say NB’s aren’t trans. NB’s can transition medically (through hormone treatment and surgery) as well as socially. Social transition isn't easy. It should be taken seriously. http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Transition

 

An NB transitions for the same reasons a binary trans person transitions, in order to have their body reflect their inner selves more, and in order to be perceived differently. It's true that in this culture NB's won't 'pass' as their true gender, because not enough people know that nonbinary identities exist, so they won't automatically recognize someone as 'Oh, that person doesn't look quite male or female, they're probably nonbinary,' as they would (most of the time) correctly recognize a woman to be a woman and a man to be a man. However, that's a problem with our culture, not with nonbinary people.

 

'Binary trans' and 'nonbinary trans' are two different types of being trans. If individual nonbinary people don’t identify as trans, then there's probably a personal story for why they don't, or maybe they just aren’t aware that nb’s are trans, or maybe they’ve made the common mistake to confuse gender expression with gender identity and they’re actually gender-nonconforming. You won't know until you ask them.

 

NB's not identifying as trans is kind of like black feminists not identifying as feminists. Some black feminists don't identify as feminists because they don't feel represented by white feminism. They feel white feminists aren't committed enough to ending all forms of oppression, instead of just to ending sexism. I believe they call themselves womanists. They're feminists, but refuse to identify as such for personal or political reasons.

 

That's what it's like with nb's too. They're trans, but some refuse to identify as trans for personal or political reasons. These reasons are very diverse.

 

[Rebecca123]

Okay cheers

[LeChat]

Hello, and welcome, your majesty! (i.e. your listed pronoun profile)

 

15 minutes ago, Rebecca123 said:

...I actually don't know what it feels like to be a 'boy' or a 'girl'....

I've heard other agender people say this, too. It's about how you feel. Does calling yourself agender feel right to you, make you feel happy or positive about yourself, etc? 

 

I hope that's helpful.

[All the little Lights]

Only you can know your gender;-)

It's usually described as a feeling. You can maybe "test" how it feels to be described as a man, a woman, a non-binary person or anything else. Could one be more right? Does it even matter?

 

You are certainly "supposed to" do some certain things if you're assigned female at birth. But I'd advise you not to blindly follow them. It's better to just do the things you like! And this doesn't determine your gender. I mean, girls can play football and boys can like pink, and that doesn't "change" their gender (under the assumption they're not genderfluid).

 

So, take some time to figure this out:-)

[Rynn]

Sorry, while typing I realized I was getting too heated over this issue, so I needed to add a disclaimer here: This misconception is a pet peeve of mine. Don't take it personally, it's just that being agender has caused years of pain in my life and having people throw the word around like it's nothing and spreading misconceptions about it really hurts. That's not your problem though, it's mine.

 

17 minutes ago, InquisitivePhilosopher said:

I've heard other agender people say this, too.

No, not knowing what gender identity as a concept means doesn't mean you're agender, it just means you have some reading up to do.

 

I'm agender and it's not about not knowing stuff or about just not caring about gender or about not identifying strongly with femininity or masculinity and going "Fuck it". Being agender is a very strong feeling of "I am not a man and I am not a woman." It's not the absence of a gender identity, it's the presence of a negative gender identity. My gender identity is defined by what I am not.

 

If gender isn't a major issue in your life, you're most likely to be cisgender or cisgenderless (people who don't feel strongly about their gender. They say stuff like: I'm fine the way I am now, I'm not uncomfortable and I don't have dysphoria, but if I woke up in the body of the opposite sex tomorrow that would be fine as well). Agender people do face gender dysphoria. They fall under the transgender umbrella. It really is not about just feeling 'meh' about your gender.

 

17 minutes ago, InquisitivePhilosopher said:

It's about how you feel. Does calling yourself agender feel right to you, make you feel happy or positive about yourself, etc? 

This^, I agree with wholeheartedly though  .

[LeDeer]

I realized I was agender by mainly analazing how I felt when people consider/call me a boy or a girl. "Girl" is kinda fine since I'm AFAB, it feels a bit weird sometimes but it's not a major issue for me. However stuff like being called "woman" or "cute", gender roles, my body (I have top dysphoria) and other things make me really uncomfortable and dysphoric. On the other hand, "boy" isn't an issue at all, and not because I feel like I'm a boy and/or I enjoy being considered one, but just because it feels like they're not talking to me and so it doesn't have any effect nor it does hurt. So, neither sounds "right" to me, and on certain days I really wish people would just consider us as people, and didn't need to specify our gender.