Cassgender... gender, don't matter.

[Anny]

So people I discover a few week ago the term cassgender and that is basically: a gender identity where one feels that their gender is unimportant or is indifferent to the idea of gender. So I want to know if anyone else here is cass?

[Chardog]

From what I've seen, there's plenty of "gender indifferent" people on here.

[Guest]

Not caring about your gender almost always just means cis.

[Pi(e)]

I feel like gender means absolutely nothing about who you are as a person. I identify as a girl only because it's easier than changing pronouns and stuff, but I feel like my gender really just means nothing about me. I think gender is just a human construct anyway, and one that would not exist at all in an ideal world. I guess that would count as cassgender.

[Chardog]

Not caring about your gender almost always just means cis.

Thanks Skulls.. My sentiments exactly. But they keep showing up on here and wanting a label.. That, to me who very much cares, is just special snowflake territory.

[Anny]

Chardog: Don't star with the special snowflake BS. This is not the kind of place that those kind of comment will be welcome.

cis·gen·der

sisˈjendər/

adjective

1. 
   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex; not transgender.

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   
   
   
   

[Lady Norgard]

Correct me if I'm wrong but what you've said sounds like you just don't care about your gender, not that you have a different one.

[Chardog]

Anny- You have the right to your opinion.. I have the right to mine. While being indifferent doesn't mean your gender aligns with your birth sex, it also doesn't mean that it does.. You couldn't care either way.

For a myriad of reasons, I can't/won't transition. I VERY MUCH care about my identity and have the privilege of being misgendered and sexually harassed on a daily basis. Those who are indifferent aren't affected by such things. You have the right to your indifference, but you try to put yourselves on par with those of us who actively have dysphoria and you don't have that "privilege".

[dissolved]

My mind is at odds with my body, therefore I am transgender. But there's also a gaping hole in my identity where a lot of people seem to have a mental sentence that says "I am a guy/girl/frog/etc", therefore I understand where the agender folks are coming from. If you're not bothered, there's no mismatch, no sense of being uncomfortable in your own body, happy with pronouns etc, isn't that indifference also a part of being cis? In my opinion, which is based on mostly stuff away from the internet, there's either a problem (trans), or everything is peachy (cis).

[Heart]

I actually thought more "agender" when I first read the label definition rather than "cisgender", but maybe I'm just thinking differently.

Anywho, I have heard many agender people (though not all of course) describe gender as being somehow irrelevant to them, much like the OP.

*shrug* My attitude has always been that labels exist as a convenient shorthand for communication. If they are useful linguistic tools, then use them, and invent them if you need more. But what is useful to one person may not be to another, and that's ok too.

[Anny]

Is not because am cass (gender indifferent) that you get to call me by other name.

[Chardog]

It's one thing if you're using labels to describe yourself.. But you can just say "I'm gender indifferent" which people would likely understand better than cassgender, cisgenderless, etc.. It's another thing when you want a label to make yourself "different"- that you are "oppressed" in some way and want special treatment..

I'm not even out.. It would be harder than hell to get people to understand- the world feels ass backwards to me but I still present as my birth sex and don't intend on transitioning.

[littlepersonparadox]

So people I discover a few week ago the term cassgender and that is basically: a gender identity where one feels that their gender is unimportant or is indifferent to the idea of gender. So I want to know if anyone else here is cass?[/size]

Depends on what's you mean not caring about your gender. This could be a umbrella term.

Not caring about your gender almost always just means cis.

Key word here is almost. Many people who are agemder or genderless people don't care about their gender because gender dosent play a big part or mean a lot to them because they don't feel a huge connection to gender identities, hence agender (although being agender or genderless can mean a lot to them and as a result their gender is important.) some other types of trans people feel that their gender identity is irrelevant and don't care. They just want to be themselves and don't care what that identity is so long as they get to be themselves. The identity itself is unimportant to them. Then there are cis people who care a lot about what their gender identity is and take pride in being the cis-man or cis-women that they are. If someone says they don't care about the gender identity and it's unimportant that Dosen't tell you if they are cis or not. Just tells you their idea and feelings about the importance of their own gender identity. If anything. The term cassgender is in reference to a ideology not a identity per say. But I can be wrong.

[Chardog]

So people I discover a few week ago the term cassgender and that is basically: a gender identity where one feels that their gender is unimportant or is indifferent to the idea of gender. So I want to know if anyone else here is cass?[/size]

Depends on what's you mean not caring about your gender. This could be a umbrella term.

Not caring about your gender almost always just means cis.

Key word here is almost. Many people who are agemder or genderless people don't care about their gender because gender dosent play a big part or mean a lot to them because they don't feel a huge connection to gender identities, hence agender (although being agender or genderless can mean a lot to them and as a result their gender is important.) some other types of trans people feel that their gender identity is irrelevant and don't care. They just want to be themselves and don't care what that identity is so long as they get to be themselves. The identity itself is unimportant to them. Then there are cis people who care a lot about what their gender identity is and take pride in being the cis-man or cis-women that they are. If someone says they don't care about the gender identity and it's unimportant that Dosen't tell you if they are cis or not. Just tells you their idea and feelings about the importance of their own gender identity. If anything. The term cassgender is in reference to a ideology not a identity per say. But I can be wrong.

I see agender people and genderless people as distinct from "don't care about gender". They generally do care about gender and fall outside of it. Gender indifferent and "looking for a label" is trying to make an identity out of a description- it's like the difference between an adjective and a noun metaphorically.

[warrigan]

i also would not consider it to be the same as cis. many cis people would get bothered by other people using the "wrong" pronoun, or treating them as the "wrong" gender. i mean, if you also feel pretty ambivalent about your gender and you id as cis, then more power to you, but i think it's wrong to say that everyone who doesn't give a fuck about gender is cis.

though i do not identify as cassgender, i don't feel like either the conception of masculinity or, in particular, femininity particularly applies to me, so i just kinda be myself and screw everyone else. i mean, you could call me cis for feeling that way, but you'd be wrong.

[Chardog]

The likelihood of cis people being treated as the wrong gender or having the wrong pronoun used is fairly small.. And usually when it happens it's genuinely an accident. Some make a big deal out of it, some don't.

[warrigan]

The likelihood of cis people being treated as the wrong gender or having the wrong pronoun used is fairly small.. And usually when it happens it's genuinely an accident. Some make a big deal out of it, some don't.

but when it happens, they recognize that they're being misgendered. they feel that the "wrong" pronoun was used.

[S.Kobold]

I can understand the waryness of special snowflakes.... but at the same time, if someone has felt the need to identify as something other, chances are there's something behind it.

I don't think the OP ever claimed to suffer as much as others because of his identity. And suffering should not be a magical gateway into the trans community. Yes, many trans people suffer an inconceivable amount, but that is not the thing that should bring them together.

In an ideal world I expect trans people will exist (thinking here of a socially ideal world, that is conceivably achievable), but they would not suffer as a result.

[Chardog]

If there is "something behind it" they aren't indifferent to gender... They don't not care- they care on some level, hence invalidating their "please call me X, I don't care about gender".

While labels help describe people, they also set them apart from the norm- indicating they are "special" and either deserve to be treated different or are being treated such in an unfair way. As I said before, much easier to describe yourself as "gender indifferent" than saying I am X (which most people don't/won't understand)...

Should trans people be accepted as just people? Hell yes.. Now that LGB are mostly accepted and understood, T is the next frontier of the rights battle. As I stated in another thread, it's a "head case" thing the same as denial of mental illness being a true illness. The belief is that if its "in your head" you can control it- no you can't. Perhaps it's also metaphoric of the separation between sexual and romantic attraction- most of society thinks they're one and the same- along the same lines of understanding that one's mind and body exist separately (but for cis people they align, so they never feel that separation).

[butterflydreams]

My mind is at odds with my body, therefore I am transgender. But there's also a gaping hole in my identity where a lot of people seem to have a mental sentence that says "I am a guy/girl/frog/etc", therefore I understand where the agender folks are coming from. If you're not bothered, there's no mismatch, no sense of being uncomfortable in your own body, happy with pronouns etc, isn't that indifference also a part of being cis? In my opinion, which is based on mostly stuff away from the internet, there's either a problem (trans), or everything is peachy (cis).

I think this is almost there. I wouldn't discount that there are potentially other possibilities out there, but generally speaking, it's that disconnect and dissonance that's the calling card of trans.

That said, I'm willing to listen to others who want to label certain things that we might just consider cis. They're labeling it, I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume there's a reason if they sought a label (I don't subscribe to special snowflake-dom be default).

That said, I would really expect that people with new labels respect the gravity of the area they're entering when they do so. Feeling indifferent about your gender is fine, but please respect that I don't feel that way. And that means I might never be able to live a normal life. I might never get to have normal relationships. It's caused me years of depression, self harm, and lots of suicidal ideation. I'm not saying that my experience is worse, or that my struggles are a prerequisite to being trans, but it's affected my life in a severe and permanently noticeable way. I just ask that my experience be respected by people entering the same ballpark. If I'm respected, I'm happy to offer respect in return.

[ChillaKilla]

Maybe cassgender = cisgenderless?

[S.Kobold]

Maybe we're reading "indifferent to gender" differently?

I understood from the OP that they were indifferent to which gender terms were used to apply to them... which is not the same as being indifferent to gender as a topic?

Again, this is from my reading, so I hope I'm corrected if I've misunderstood... but it seems to me that if you live in a world where people "get" gender, feel that whatever term applies to them and has meaning, and yet to you it makes no sense and you feel no attachment to any gendering terms... you'll notice a difference. Maybe Heart and Chilla are right... Casgender would be closest to agender or cisgenderless...

TBH the dismissal of Casgender here sounds very simillar to the dismissal of asexuals by sexuals. We so often read that asexual discrimination is nothing, that they have no need to come out to live their lives and so don't need a label.... IDK, it just doesn't sit well with me.

[aZombieGoast]

throwing in my two cents, I personally haven't found a gender identity that fits me yet beyond nonbinary and don't really care to, I would say I identify with the sentiment but having a whole separate word for it in my opinion is kind of unnecessary. there are a lot of people out there who probably feel this exact thing but it doesn't need its own separate category is pointless since if someone asks I'll often just leave it at nb or "I don't really care/it doesn't matter to me here's my pronouns thx"

[cethmistmyk]

I do think there is a point where the idea of labels becomes so fractured that each person has their own unique label, and that is the point where I feel like the labels aren't helping, because, to me at least, labels are for finding community, and finding people with similar experiences to yourself.

tbh, I was fine identifying as bi/pan 5 years ago before I can across asexual and went "that describes me so much better than anything else before this". I don't think that makes me any less ace than people who've known what they are for years before they come across that term.

So yeah, we can start using labels for smaller and smaller groups until each label only applies to one person, but I don't think we're there yet, and I think that cassgender is a valid experience. It might not be a gender all on it's own, but it's a way for you to find someone with similar experiences to you.

For example, I identify / feel like my gender is irrelevant. I've never felt a sense of wrongness coming from being labeled female, and my gender expression is mostly female (more to do with body type than anything else) but if I woke up tomorrow without any secondary sex characteristics (boobs, deep voice, facial hair, hips, etc), and even maybe without primary sex characteristics (genitalia), I would be fine, I would have to get all new clothes, but whatever, I would identify with my new body's "gender" rather than my old body's. To me that is indifference to gender, and probably more in line with cassgender than agender.