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Is there a difference between agender and non-binary?


Katto

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I’ve seen that they have different flags and, of course, different names. But do they technically mean the same thing?

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They mean different things, non binary is a gender, not female or male, but something else.

Agender means having no gender, so a lack of feeling gender.

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Non-binary is an umbrella term to describe any gender that doesn't fall into either male or female. Agender is having no gender, and thus falls under this umbrella. So if someone is agender they are non-binary, but if someone is non-binary they only might be agender.

 

I hope that clears things up!

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Taylor Lilith

Binary: male or female 

nonbinary: agender/nuetrois, maverique, bigender, trigender, poligender, pangender, androgynous, gender neutral, demigenders, genderfluid, genderflux etc. 

 

Also depending on who you ask,

genderqueer is under nonbinary or non binary is under genderqueer. 

 

Def not just agender. Agender is nonbinary like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. 

 

TL:DR: No, no it is not. 

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20 hours ago, Falafelphy said:

Non-binary is an umbrella term to describe any gender that doesn't fall into either male or female. Agender is having no gender, and thus falls under this umbrella. So if someone is agender they are non-binary, but if someone is non-binary they only might be agender.

 

I hope that clears things up!

It’s debatable wether agender fits within the umbrella, honestly.

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18 hours ago, Taylor Lilith said:

Binary: male or female 

nonbinary: agender/nuetrois, maverique, bigender, trigender, poligender, pangender, androgynous, gender neutral, demigenders, genderfluid, genderflux etc. 

 

Also depending on who you ask,

genderqueer is under nonbinary or non binary is under genderqueer. 

 

Def not just agender. Agender is nonbinary like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. 

 

TL:DR: No, no it is not. 

Bigender can be binary, actually.

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Taylor Lilith
2 hours ago, Zenzencat104 said:

Bigender can be binary, actually.

I've never met anyone who said that but okay? I think every bigender person I have met has been nonbinary?  I think?  Like if by bigender you mean genderfluid between the binary genders?  I guess?  I've seriously never met a person who said they were binary when they were  bigender.  Do you have an example?

 

I do binary bigender where I was both cis and trans at the same time but I still would have considered that nonbinary.

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Taylor Lilith
2 hours ago, Zenzencat104 said:

It’s debatable wether agender fits within the umbrella, honestly.

Not really at all actually?  If I am agender and say I'm nonbinary which I absolutely am some of the tme.... it isn't up for debate if I choose to id as nonbinary .... like absoltely every agender every person I have ever met.

 

I may have mistook you for being and glib and dismissive and superior out of my own bias but I am a little concerned this is about to turn into gatekeeping which I am absolutely not okay with.

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Enne Kristin

I usually say I am nonbinary, but with an intense fluidity sometimes, sometimes very stable. I tend to feel inbetweenish in different ways, but also masculine or feminine (mostly 10% Masc, 60% inbetweenish/neutral/agender, 30% feminine timewise...) Sometime I use Xirl too, on very feminine "occasions", just like now.

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Anthracite_Impreza

Non binary is to agender as dog is to labrador, ie. agender is a subcategory of NB.

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14 hours ago, Anthracite_Impreza said:

Non binary is to agender as dog is to labrador, ie. agender is a subcategory of NB.

Ok. Thanks!

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On 8/21/2018 at 7:02 PM, Taylor Lilith said:

I've never met anyone who said that but okay? I think every bigender person I have met has been nonbinary?  I think?  Like if by bigender you mean genderfluid between the binary genders?  I guess?  I've seriously never met a person who said they were binary when they were  bigender.  Do you have an example?

 

I do binary bigender where I was both cis and trans at the same time but I still would have considered that nonbinary.

Being both female and male.

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3 hours ago, Zenzencat104 said:

Being both female and male.

The way I see it, in order to be "binary," you are female OR male, not both. That's why there's an identity "androgyne."

Basically: binary=one gender, male or female, non-binary=anything else

At least from a western POV.

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13 hours ago, Iota Tau said:

The way I see it, in order to be "binary," you are female OR male, not both. That's why there's an identity "androgyne."

Basically: binary=one gender, male or female, non-binary=anything else

At least from a western POV.

I come from a very technical way of understanding definitions, so that’s how I view it.

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9 hours ago, Zenzencat104 said:

I come from a very technical way of understanding definitions, so that’s how I view it.

But a bit (as in 1/8 of a byte) cannot be both a 1 AND a 0, it must be one or the other. When you combine the two in one digit, you've created a third possibility and now it's trinary. 😋

 

And if you mean technical in the pedantic sense, your argument still doesn't work, as the binary system is, at it's core, a way of sorting people into two categories. Being in both breaks that binary system, as the entire point is to tell if someone belongs in the same group as you OR not.

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nerdperson777

Well, I guess it would depend on which definition of non-binary one is referring to.  There's one idea, that it is just literally not binary, so anything that's not binary male or female is non-binary.  So every other identity would be non-binary, including agender.  Then there's also the one where it's on the binary spectrum so that it is "between" male and female, so gender exists in that case.

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On 8/22/2018 at 12:33 AM, Zenzencat104 said:

It’s debatable wether agender fits within the umbrella, honestly.

This is more or less the exact equivalent of saying it's debatable whether asexuality is a sexual orientation or rather the absence of one. To be clear, asexuality research has indeed not provided a clear answer to this, so don't take this as an objection to what you're saying. Personally I'm fine with either view.

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Janus the Fox

Both often feel the same thing to me, being both non-binary and agender means acknowledging there isn't any gender and that within itself is a non-binary gender.

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Yes. Agender is the lack of gender. Meanwhile, nonbinary is not identifying as a girl or a guy. Thus, agender is a subset on nonbinary.

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On 8/23/2018 at 10:37 PM, Iota Tau said:

But a bit (as in 1/8 of a byte) cannot be both a 1 AND a 0, it must be one or the other. When you combine the two in one digit, you've created a third possibility and now it's trinary. 😋

 

And if you mean technical in the pedantic sense, your argument still doesn't work, as the binary system is, at it's core, a way of sorting people into two categories. Being in both breaks that binary system, as the entire point is to tell if someone belongs in the same group as you OR not.

My thought process was that since male and female are both considered binary, a person who is both female and male would be binary.

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10 hours ago, Zenzencat104 said:

My thought process was that since male and female are both considered binary, a person who is both female and male would be binary.

Yes, but most people seem to consider being binary to be an either/or proposition, so being both would be a kind of non-binary (bigender is considered a non-binary identity, for the record)

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  • 9 months later...
BlakeTheNightowl~

Yes I’m agender genderless non binary is something else but isn’t male or female but something else

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anisotrophic
On 8/23/2018 at 11:30 PM, nerdperson777 said:

Well, I guess it would depend on which definition of non-binary one is referring to.  There's one idea, that it is just literally not binary, so anything that's not binary male or female is non-binary.  So every other identity would be non-binary, including agender.  Then there's also the one where it's on the binary spectrum so that it is "between" male and female, so gender exists in that case.

I think I agree with the former, non-binary as everything-else...

 

But there is a phenomen of "cis agender", of people living with and performing their gender at birth, but then say "I'd be happy as either, I don't feel this gender". I'm not sure what to make of it? if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck... tells me it doesn't feel "duck"....??

 

When apparently-cis gender-conforming men do this, I wonder "is this a way of disassociating yourself from recognition of privilege?" It sounds a bit like a white person saying they "don't feel white, don't see race".

 

And I've seen "non-binary" used in more action-oriented ways -- eg when arguing options on government documents.

 

So I think I have very mixed feelings on "agender", even if it might describe me.

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nerdperson777
19 hours ago, anisotrophic said:

I think I agree with the former, non-binary as everything-else...

 

But there is a phenomen of "cis agender", of people living with and performing their gender at birth, but then say "I'd be happy as either, I don't feel this gender". I'm not sure what to make of it? if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck... tells me it doesn't feel "duck"....??

 

When apparently-cis gender-conforming men do this, I wonder "is this a way of disassociating yourself from recognition of privilege?" It sounds a bit like a white person saying they "don't feel white, don't see race".

 

And I've seen "non-binary" used in more action-oriented ways -- eg when arguing options on government documents.

 

So I think I have very mixed feelings on "agender", even if it might describe me.

I think that is cis-genderless.  But by your duck example, there are trans people who don't pass, no matter what they do, so does that mean that they are all their AGAB?  I just wrote about my college friend in another thread a moment ago.  They are AFAB and are female presenting, but they aren't female.  I know that I still have to rewire my mind at times because I know they don't go by she/her pronouns, or any friend who I have who is AFAB and isn't female.  I have called these friends she/her in my head but I have to tell myself, no, they are they/them or ze/zir, or what other pronoun it is.

 

While the men part can be true, I would want to believe what they have to say.  There is a male presenting agender person who I talk to frequently.  They say that they don't feel gender, which is basically what agender is.  We have talks about how there's no real need to gender things.  They don't mind being called he/him but they/them is better because of the unneeded gendering.  Of course they look and sound male, but I'm not sure they could've done anything about that.  Didn't seem to me that they had any intention for medical transition, although we never talked about it.  They just showed me their driver's license that had the sex as X, since it's allowed here.  As with any gender, I just have to believe them.

There was a discussion I was in about the difference between demigirl/transfeminine and demiboy/transmasculine.  To me, I interpreted demigirl as AFAB and transfeminine as AMAB, vice-versa for the other.  But if an AMAB person decides that they are a demigirl or AFAB person is transfeminine, who am I to say they're wrong?  I may have just read too much into the definitions to get the AGAB requirement but I can't decide that someone's identity is wrong.

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agender is no gender, nonbinary just means you're not male or female xD

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Custard Cream

I have only just come to terms with  being genderflux. I know I'm non-binary (I think I always did, even before I knew  of it as a term), but I haven't yet fully embraced it. It's hard to grasp these things when you finally discover your gender identity aged 50...

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greynonomous
On 6/1/2019 at 8:37 AM, anisotrophic said:

But there is a phenomen of "cis agender", of people living with and performing their gender at birth, but then say "I'd be happy as either, I don't feel this gender". I'm not sure what to make of it? if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck... tells me it doesn't feel "duck"....??

 

 

The whole 'duck' thing is how they used to say for the longest time that Bisexuals didn't really exist as they were either practicing hetero or homo depending on their partner. Gender or sexual attraction is internal, and there is no requirement for someone to adhere to stereotypes or 'look' some way.

 

A lot of aces on here, myself included, are in relationships that may 'look' like regular cis-relationships, but that doesn't change what we are. It's simply that there is a very strong societal benefit to not rock the boat if you don't have to, sooo...

 

Don't want to sound like I am criticizing you, but just wanted to draw the parallel with other times this type of confusion has come up.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I don't think so. Agender is the lack of gender. Nonbinary is where you don't identify as a binary gender. The only binary genders are male, female or both. If you don't identify as either, then you're Nonbinary/Agender. You are neither male, female and both. 

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7 minutes ago, samply said:

I don't think so. Agender is the lack of gender. Nonbinary is where you don't identify as a binary gender. The only binary genders are male, female or both. If you don't identify as either, then you're Nonbinary/Agender. You are neither male, female and both. 

Not really. For example, there are specific genders that aren’t male or female (e.g. aporagender, some neutrois people, maverique etc.)

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BlakeTheNightowl~

Non binary and agender are different I’m agender I lack gender I have no gender without gender which non binary is where you’re not in the binary but something else or another gender 

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