Define and Expound Upon Agender

[Kasseb]

As the title says, I'm requesting those who can, preferably agender people explain to me what it is, what it means and how it works. Definitions, scientific and sociological studies help, too. As some of you may know, I'm writing a book on transgenderism and in my book I talk and explain non-binary, but I don't fully think I understand agender and would like someone to be so kind to expound on the topic for me. 

 

I know people here exist that are agender and I think it would help me to understand it. Not just for my book, but for my personal knowledge and understanding. 

 

Thank you.

[Rynn]

I'd prefer if we could keep this in just the one thread about your book.

I'm going to copy-paste another standard explanation of what it means to be agender to me in here. This is not me giving you permission to quote me in your book.

Spoiler

To me being agender isn't feeling like you don't, or barely, have a gender identity, as in 'I don't care about gender, and I don't really feel like a man or a woman so I guess I'm agender,'  and it's also not simply a dislike of gender roles (who on earth likes gender roles? I mean, they're restrictive, and nobody likes being restricted.) Rather, it's a 'negative' gender identity, as in 'I have a very strong feeling of not being a man and not being a woman.'

 

This feeling is strong enough to give me heaps of both body and social dysphoria ever since I started growing boobs at the age of ten. I was convinced they were tumors and made my parents take me to the doctor for it, and after they'd become larger I wore sweaters every day for over two years, even when I could barely take the heat in summer, just to cover them up. I also didn't wear bras, because wearing those meant admitting that my boobs existed, which wasn't something I was willing to do. (To this day I can't go shopping for bras without tearing up). These. Things. Should. Not. Be. On. My. Body.) At the time I didn't understand why I felt this way, but I knew something was very wrong. I saw a documentary about people with some sort of dysmorphia disorder which made them want to cut off their own arms or legs because they didn't feel like they should be there and I thought I had that, except with boobs. (I have always felt like my boobs are just like lego-blocks attached to my real chest underneath, so even though I logically knew that was nonsense, I've still tried to just plop them off more times than I can count, including one painful but ultimately unsuccessful episode involving a pair of kitchen scissors). My parents made some negative comments about those people in the documentary so I kept silent.

 

This feeling is strong enough to make me feel like I don't really belong either with women or with men, because I don't intuitively understand girltalk or guytalk like I should if I was a girl or a guy. It's a fundamentally alienating experience. Ever since I was eleven I made a point out of it to dislike all that was girly and all that was boy'y (why is that not a word?). That wasn't a conscious decision I made, I just suddenly started hating all of that gendered stuff with a passion, even if I'd loved it before. I guess it was my way of distancing myself from both womanhood and manhood and telling the world not to categorize me as 'girl' or as 'boy' without actually having the vocabulary to do so. Being called a 'girl' or a 'lady' has upset me for as long as I can remember (for some reason 'sister' is fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).  It's sad because I lost a lot of the things I used to like this way. I loved pink, but it's been banished out of my life. I used to adore swimming and the underwater world is still my favorite place to be, but wearing bathing suits in front of people is just about the worst thing I can imagine.

 

The feeling is strong enough for me to not recognize myself in the mirror. I would look in the mirror and think "Who even is that? Shit is that what I look like?!" I've gotten better in the last couple of years, but when I was younger I used to think that I mistakenly lived in someone else's body. I knew it didn't make sense, but I caught myself thinking things like "If the girl who's actually supposed to inhabit this body saw how much I neglected it she'd be pissed!" (because obviously make-up and morning routines were not my thing) I don't tend to have that feeling anymore, thank gosh I recognize my face as my own now, but I still feel a huge disconnect with my body. It's uncomfortable. I wish I could take it off like a piece of clothing, and just exist without it. I want to be able to bike to the train station without constantly thinking of how people see me, without making myself as small and inconspicuous as possible in order to pass unnoticed. I want to stop feeling sick to my stomach whenever I feel my body move in ways it shouldn't be able to according to my inner sense of self whenever I hit a bump in the road. Quite literally, every pothole in the road is a source of dysphoria for me.

 

Most examples of dysphoria and 'feeling agender' will probably sound petty to most people, and I guess they are, but the thing is, they happen every day, all day long, and that builds up. In the end every little thing hurts. The metaphor I've used to describe this is that every little everyday gendered interaction is like a tiny rock that hits my body. By now my bruises have bruises and every new little thing hits a sore spot. It makes me want to lock myself in my room, close the blinds and crawl under the blankets. Being agender makes me feel helpless because I don't feel there's anything I can do to make the world see me the right way. People will always see me as male or female, no matter what I do, and I don't feel like have the right to get angry about that, or even to feel hurt by that, because it's not their fault, they mean well, they didn't know and they couldn't possibly know. Telling them will just open me up to more rocks thrown my way as they inevitably fail to understand, which I also cannot blame them for. It's a whole lot of hurt that nobody is to blame for. Anything I could do to improve my situation would be interpreted as 'militant' or 'pushy' or 'Oh her again, talking about trans people, we get it by now!' so now I mostly just shut up and take whatever comes at me. I'm sure that's not the best strategy, but I'm clean out of options.

 

At age 16 I started pulling myself out of what I think was probably a depression I'd had since I was 11 (yes, that's the same time at which my dysphoria began, but I also started going to a different school at that time, so I'm not sure what caused it.) and at that point I started actively copying girls because I wanted to finally fit in. Being myself hadn't worked out, so I started living by the motto 'fake it 'till you make it'. Well I faked the hell out of it and successfully developed feminine mannerisms that I now can't get rid of anymore, and it worked! People bought it!

 

I did this until I was about 20 - 21, at which point I had started to feel like I didn't even know who I was anymore because I hadn't acted like myself for so long. I felt like I'd lost my ability to be myself and I didn't know how to fix it, or if I even should, because being myself had never worked out for me anyway. At that point I had been questioning my gender for about a year and I'd given myself the label 'demigirl' (even though identifying myself with something that ended in 'girl' made me want to puke), because I knew I had feminine mannerisms/ ways of talking so I didn't feel justified in claiming a label that said I wasn't feminine at all. Realizing that acting like a girl had been just that, ácting like a girl, freed me up to finally feel justified in taking up the label I had actually, secretly in the back of my mind, been identifying with most closely, 'agender.' And I added AFAB (assigned female at birth) in to let people know that I've been raised/socialized as a girl, because that's what feels most fair to me. That's me.

 

The moment in which I finally allowed myself to say 'I am agender' (to myself) was such a powerful moment that I can't even describe it. I cried and wanted to scream with joy and I could barely contain myself. I guess that's what gender euphoria (opposite of gender dysphoria) feels like. It just felt extremely right. It was a eureka moment for a problem I hadn't been able to solve for over a decade.

 

I am now 23 and still not out of the woods. I'm not out to anyone but my sister and a handful of close friends. Being called 'she' feels as alien to me as 'he' or 'they', to the point that I don't know which I prefer so I've pretty much just given up on the pronoun issue. Call me anything. Whatever.

I know I want these things that are attached to my chest removed, but I also know that gender therapists will probably interrogate the heck out of me to prove I'm trans enough to get that treatment, and I know I'll get tons of shit from the 'I identify as an attack helicopter'-crowd if I do get it and I'm just not ready for any of that.

One point of light is that my Chinese name (I major in Chinese and am called by my Chinese name more often than my real name) is gender neutral and I am loving it to bits. I wish I could use that name all the time, but since it's Chinese and hard to pronounce that's a bit much to ask (Laurann is an approximation of that name, but that's still too feminine for my liking), and as long as I get to be in Chinese class it's good enough for now. We'll see what happens after I graduate from my master's program. It's scary, but I guess I can't hide forever.

 

This was written about a year ago. I'm now out to my parents, can't live without my binders, have gotten used to they'/them and love those, am trying to find a new name, and am on the waiting list for the gender team in the Netherlands. I'm less defeatist, but still terrified  

The rest is still accurate.

 

[Kasseb]

1 hour ago, Laurann said:

I'd prefer if we could keep this in just the one thread about your book.

I'm going to copy-paste another standard explanation of what it means to be agender to me in here. This is not me giving you permission to quote me in your book.

  Hide contents

To me being agender isn't feeling like you don't, or barely, have a gender identity, as in 'I don't care about gender, and I don't really feel like a man or a woman so I guess I'm agender,'  and it's also not simply a dislike of gender roles (who on earth likes gender roles? I mean, they're restrictive, and nobody likes being restricted.) Rather, it's a 'negative' gender identity, as in 'I have a very strong feeling of not being a man and not being a woman.'

 

This feeling is strong enough to give me heaps of both body and social dysphoria ever since I started growing boobs at the age of ten. I was convinced they were tumors and made my parents take me to the doctor for it, and after they'd become larger I wore sweaters every day for over two years, even when I could barely take the heat in summer, just to cover them up. I also didn't wear bras, because wearing those meant admitting that my boobs existed, which wasn't something I was willing to do. (To this day I can't go shopping for bras without tearing up). These. Things. Should. Not. Be. On. My. Body.) At the time I didn't understand why I felt this way, but I knew something was very wrong. I saw a documentary about people with some sort of dysmorphia disorder which made them want to cut off their own arms or legs because they didn't feel like they should be there and I thought I had that, except with boobs. (I have always felt like my boobs are just like lego-blocks attached to my real chest underneath, so even though I logically knew that was nonsense, I've still tried to just plop them off more times than I can count, including one painful but ultimately unsuccessful episode involving a pair of kitchen scissors). My parents made some negative comments about those people in the documentary so I kept silent.

 

This feeling is strong enough to make me feel like I don't really belong either with women or with men, because I don't intuitively understand girltalk or guytalk like I should if I was a girl or a guy. It's a fundamentally alienating experience. Ever since I was eleven I made a point out of it to dislike all that was girly and all that was boy'y (why is that not a word?). That wasn't a conscious decision I made, I just suddenly started hating all of that gendered stuff with a passion, even if I'd loved it before. I guess it was my way of distancing myself from both womanhood and manhood and telling the world not to categorize me as 'girl' or as 'boy' without actually having the vocabulary to do so. Being called a 'girl' or a 'lady' has upset me for as long as I can remember (for some reason 'sister' is fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).  It's sad because I lost a lot of the things I used to like this way. I loved pink, but it's been banished out of my life. I used to adore swimming and the underwater world is still my favorite place to be, but wearing bathing suits in front of people is just about the worst thing I can imagine.

 

The feeling is strong enough for me to not recognize myself in the mirror. I would look in the mirror and think "Who even is that? Shit is that what I look like?!" I've gotten better in the last couple of years, but when I was younger I used to think that I mistakenly lived in someone else's body. I knew it didn't make sense, but I caught myself thinking things like "If the girl who's actually supposed to inhabit this body saw how much I neglected it she'd be pissed!" (because obviously make-up and morning routines were not my thing) I don't tend to have that feeling anymore, thank gosh I recognize my face as my own now, but I still feel a huge disconnect with my body. It's uncomfortable. I wish I could take it off like a piece of clothing, and just exist without it. I want to be able to bike to the train station without constantly thinking of how people see me, without making myself as small and inconspicuous as possible in order to pass unnoticed. I want to stop feeling sick to my stomach whenever I feel my body move in ways it shouldn't be able to according to my inner sense of self whenever I hit a bump in the road. Quite literally, every pothole in the road is a source of dysphoria for me.

 

Most examples of dysphoria and 'feeling agender' will probably sound petty to most people, and I guess they are, but the thing is, they happen every day, all day long, and that builds up. In the end every little thing hurts. The metaphor I've used to describe this is that every little everyday gendered interaction is like a tiny rock that hits my body. By now my bruises have bruises and every new little thing hits a sore spot. It makes me want to lock myself in my room, close the blinds and crawl under the blankets. Being agender makes me feel helpless because I don't feel there's anything I can do to make the world see me the right way. People will always see me as male or female, no matter what I do, and I don't feel like have the right to get angry about that, or even to feel hurt by that, because it's not their fault, they mean well, they didn't know and they couldn't possibly know. Telling them will just open me up to more rocks thrown my way as they inevitably fail to understand, which I also cannot blame them for. It's a whole lot of hurt that nobody is to blame for. Anything I could do to improve my situation would be interpreted as 'militant' or 'pushy' or 'Oh her again, talking about trans people, we get it by now!' so now I mostly just shut up and take whatever comes at me. I'm sure that's not the best strategy, but I'm clean out of options.

 

At age 16 I started pulling myself out of what I think was probably a depression I'd had since I was 11 (yes, that's the same time at which my dysphoria began, but I also started going to a different school at that time, so I'm not sure what caused it.) and at that point I started actively copying girls because I wanted to finally fit in. Being myself hadn't worked out, so I started living by the motto 'fake it 'till you make it'. Well I faked the hell out of it and successfully developed feminine mannerisms that I now can't get rid of anymore, and it worked! People bought it!

 

I did this until I was about 20 - 21, at which point I had started to feel like I didn't even know who I was anymore because I hadn't acted like myself for so long. I felt like I'd lost my ability to be myself and I didn't know how to fix it, or if I even should, because being myself had never worked out for me anyway. At that point I had been questioning my gender for about a year and I'd given myself the label 'demigirl' (even though identifying myself with something that ended in 'girl' made me want to puke), because I knew I had feminine mannerisms/ ways of talking so I didn't feel justified in claiming a label that said I wasn't feminine at all. Realizing that acting like a girl had been just that, ácting like a girl, freed me up to finally feel justified in taking up the label I had actually, secretly in the back of my mind, been identifying with most closely, 'agender.' And I added AFAB (assigned female at birth) in to let people know that I've been raised/socialized as a girl, because that's what feels most fair to me. That's me.

 

The moment in which I finally allowed myself to say 'I am agender' (to myself) was such a powerful moment that I can't even describe it. I cried and wanted to scream with joy and I could barely contain myself. I guess that's what gender euphoria (opposite of gender dysphoria) feels like. It just felt extremely right. It was a eureka moment for a problem I hadn't been able to solve for over a decade.

 

I am now 23 and still not out of the woods. I'm not out to anyone but my sister and a handful of close friends. Being called 'she' feels as alien to me as 'he' or 'they', to the point that I don't know which I prefer so I've pretty much just given up on the pronoun issue. Call me anything. Whatever.

I know I want these things that are attached to my chest removed, but I also know that gender therapists will probably interrogate the heck out of me to prove I'm trans enough to get that treatment, and I know I'll get tons of shit from the 'I identify as an attack helicopter'-crowd if I do get it and I'm just not ready for any of that.

One point of light is that my Chinese name (I major in Chinese and am called by my Chinese name more often than my real name) is gender neutral and I am loving it to bits. I wish I could use that name all the time, but since it's Chinese and hard to pronounce that's a bit much to ask (Laurann is an approximation of that name, but that's still too feminine for my liking), and as long as I get to be in Chinese class it's good enough for now. We'll see what happens after I graduate from my master's program. It's scary, but I guess I can't hide forever.

 

This was written about a year ago. I'm now out to my parents, can't live without my binders, have gotten used to they'/them and love those, am trying to find a new name, and am on the waiting list for the gender team in the Netherlands. I'm less defeatist, but still terrified  

The rest is still accurate.

 

That could work, I'm not sure if it would deviate off-topic at all and I really wanted an answer. Thank you for the response. From what  read from outlets like Them and other sources online, they define it but don't really explain it very well as to what it means to ave no gender and how you can have not gender.

[Janus the Fox]

I feel as though Agender is rather still new to get down into words.  For me it’s the lack of any particular gender either way.  The absence of any sway of any gender in particular.  There’s perhaps better but limited resources off AVEN while AVEN has its own definition in its own resource on top of this forums page.

[Kasseb]

1 minute ago, Janus DarkFox said:

I feel as though Agender is rather still new to get down into words.  For me it’s the lack of any particular gender either way.  The absence of any sway of any gender in particular.  There’s perhaps better but limited resources off AVEN while AVEN has its own definition in its own resource on top of this forums page.

Thank you for explaining. Can you, if possibly, explain what gender means to you as clear as possible and how you can have "no gender" or sway on gender?

[Janus the Fox]

Just now, Autumn McJavabean said:

Thank you for explaining. Can you, if possibly, explain what gender means to you as clear as possible and how you can have "no gender" or sway on gender?

This is the Gender Masterpost quote, mind it could be separated from genderless or potentially expanded on in future once it’s out on the wild longer over time.

 

Spoiler

Genderless or Agender: A state of not identifying with any gender; a person with no conscious gender identity. Such an individual may or may not experience dysphoria about their body, or a desire to transition or express their gender in a non-binary way.

Gender is hard to explain even for me though the master post helps to achieve some acceptance of my own gender.

 

In simplest terms i don’t wish to be either male or female, desire to express less male more feminine to achieve a more neutral non-binary identity.  I’d rather have no or feminine physical body and genital preferably without experiencing the mild dysphoria any longer.  I’ve already partially transitioned in small ways and in future soon to have the gender question answered more properly to see if there is any medical transition to be achieved with the goal of neutralising my male body.   

[Kasseb]

How does one not identify with a gender? I guess that may be what confuses me. I'll read the other user's reply, too.

[Kasseb]

2 hours ago, Laurann said:

I'd prefer if we could keep this in just the one thread about your book.

I'm going to copy-paste another standard explanation of what it means to be agender to me in here. This is not me giving you permission to quote me in your book.

  Hide contents

To me being agender isn't feeling like you don't, or barely, have a gender identity, as in 'I don't care about gender, and I don't really feel like a man or a woman so I guess I'm agender,'  and it's also not simply a dislike of gender roles (who on earth likes gender roles? I mean, they're restrictive, and nobody likes being restricted.) Rather, it's a 'negative' gender identity, as in 'I have a very strong feeling of not being a man and not being a woman.'

 

This feeling is strong enough to give me heaps of both body and social dysphoria ever since I started growing boobs at the age of ten. I was convinced they were tumors and made my parents take me to the doctor for it, and after they'd become larger I wore sweaters every day for over two years, even when I could barely take the heat in summer, just to cover them up. I also didn't wear bras, because wearing those meant admitting that my boobs existed, which wasn't something I was willing to do. (To this day I can't go shopping for bras without tearing up). These. Things. Should. Not. Be. On. My. Body.) At the time I didn't understand why I felt this way, but I knew something was very wrong. I saw a documentary about people with some sort of dysmorphia disorder which made them want to cut off their own arms or legs because they didn't feel like they should be there and I thought I had that, except with boobs. (I have always felt like my boobs are just like lego-blocks attached to my real chest underneath, so even though I logically knew that was nonsense, I've still tried to just plop them off more times than I can count, including one painful but ultimately unsuccessful episode involving a pair of kitchen scissors). My parents made some negative comments about those people in the documentary so I kept silent.

 

This feeling is strong enough to make me feel like I don't really belong either with women or with men, because I don't intuitively understand girltalk or guytalk like I should if I was a girl or a guy. It's a fundamentally alienating experience. Ever since I was eleven I made a point out of it to dislike all that was girly and all that was boy'y (why is that not a word?). That wasn't a conscious decision I made, I just suddenly started hating all of that gendered stuff with a passion, even if I'd loved it before. I guess it was my way of distancing myself from both womanhood and manhood and telling the world not to categorize me as 'girl' or as 'boy' without actually having the vocabulary to do so. Being called a 'girl' or a 'lady' has upset me for as long as I can remember (for some reason 'sister' is fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).  It's sad because I lost a lot of the things I used to like this way. I loved pink, but it's been banished out of my life. I used to adore swimming and the underwater world is still my favorite place to be, but wearing bathing suits in front of people is just about the worst thing I can imagine.

 

The feeling is strong enough for me to not recognize myself in the mirror. I would look in the mirror and think "Who even is that? Shit is that what I look like?!" I've gotten better in the last couple of years, but when I was younger I used to think that I mistakenly lived in someone else's body. I knew it didn't make sense, but I caught myself thinking things like "If the girl who's actually supposed to inhabit this body saw how much I neglected it she'd be pissed!" (because obviously make-up and morning routines were not my thing) I don't tend to have that feeling anymore, thank gosh I recognize my face as my own now, but I still feel a huge disconnect with my body. It's uncomfortable. I wish I could take it off like a piece of clothing, and just exist without it. I want to be able to bike to the train station without constantly thinking of how people see me, without making myself as small and inconspicuous as possible in order to pass unnoticed. I want to stop feeling sick to my stomach whenever I feel my body move in ways it shouldn't be able to according to my inner sense of self whenever I hit a bump in the road. Quite literally, every pothole in the road is a source of dysphoria for me.

 

Most examples of dysphoria and 'feeling agender' will probably sound petty to most people, and I guess they are, but the thing is, they happen every day, all day long, and that builds up. In the end every little thing hurts. The metaphor I've used to describe this is that every little everyday gendered interaction is like a tiny rock that hits my body. By now my bruises have bruises and every new little thing hits a sore spot. It makes me want to lock myself in my room, close the blinds and crawl under the blankets. Being agender makes me feel helpless because I don't feel there's anything I can do to make the world see me the right way. People will always see me as male or female, no matter what I do, and I don't feel like have the right to get angry about that, or even to feel hurt by that, because it's not their fault, they mean well, they didn't know and they couldn't possibly know. Telling them will just open me up to more rocks thrown my way as they inevitably fail to understand, which I also cannot blame them for. It's a whole lot of hurt that nobody is to blame for. Anything I could do to improve my situation would be interpreted as 'militant' or 'pushy' or 'Oh her again, talking about trans people, we get it by now!' so now I mostly just shut up and take whatever comes at me. I'm sure that's not the best strategy, but I'm clean out of options.

 

At age 16 I started pulling myself out of what I think was probably a depression I'd had since I was 11 (yes, that's the same time at which my dysphoria began, but I also started going to a different school at that time, so I'm not sure what caused it.) and at that point I started actively copying girls because I wanted to finally fit in. Being myself hadn't worked out, so I started living by the motto 'fake it 'till you make it'. Well I faked the hell out of it and successfully developed feminine mannerisms that I now can't get rid of anymore, and it worked! People bought it!

 

I did this until I was about 20 - 21, at which point I had started to feel like I didn't even know who I was anymore because I hadn't acted like myself for so long. I felt like I'd lost my ability to be myself and I didn't know how to fix it, or if I even should, because being myself had never worked out for me anyway. At that point I had been questioning my gender for about a year and I'd given myself the label 'demigirl' (even though identifying myself with something that ended in 'girl' made me want to puke), because I knew I had feminine mannerisms/ ways of talking so I didn't feel justified in claiming a label that said I wasn't feminine at all. Realizing that acting like a girl had been just that, ácting like a girl, freed me up to finally feel justified in taking up the label I had actually, secretly in the back of my mind, been identifying with most closely, 'agender.' And I added AFAB (assigned female at birth) in to let people know that I've been raised/socialized as a girl, because that's what feels most fair to me. That's me.

 

The moment in which I finally allowed myself to say 'I am agender' (to myself) was such a powerful moment that I can't even describe it. I cried and wanted to scream with joy and I could barely contain myself. I guess that's what gender euphoria (opposite of gender dysphoria) feels like. It just felt extremely right. It was a eureka moment for a problem I hadn't been able to solve for over a decade.

 

I am now 23 and still not out of the woods. I'm not out to anyone but my sister and a handful of close friends. Being called 'she' feels as alien to me as 'he' or 'they', to the point that I don't know which I prefer so I've pretty much just given up on the pronoun issue. Call me anything. Whatever.

I know I want these things that are attached to my chest removed, but I also know that gender therapists will probably interrogate the heck out of me to prove I'm trans enough to get that treatment, and I know I'll get tons of shit from the 'I identify as an attack helicopter'-crowd if I do get it and I'm just not ready for any of that.

One point of light is that my Chinese name (I major in Chinese and am called by my Chinese name more often than my real name) is gender neutral and I am loving it to bits. I wish I could use that name all the time, but since it's Chinese and hard to pronounce that's a bit much to ask (Laurann is an approximation of that name, but that's still too feminine for my liking), and as long as I get to be in Chinese class it's good enough for now. We'll see what happens after I graduate from my master's program. It's scary, but I guess I can't hide forever.

 

This was written about a year ago. I'm now out to my parents, can't live without my binders, have gotten used to they'/them and love those, am trying to find a new name, and am on the waiting list for the gender team in the Netherlands. I'm less defeatist, but still terrified  

The rest is still accurate.

 

I'm not sure I completely understand. I mean, I do, but it doesn't. Does that make sense? As asked below, could you explain those if you haven't already?

[R_1]

If by agender you mean, not feeling gender, you could point that there are already cis-people that id as what their body say in the same manner people say they have blue eyes. I do not know what it means to feel like a male despite having a penis, and iding as a male. Some find that their feeling is more relevant.

[IrishArcher]

I have recently started identifying as genderflux, meaning that the intensity of my gender varies from moment to moment on a scale from female to agender. For me, what this feels like is basically this: on days when I "feel" female, all this means is that I can call myself a woman and feel comfortable with that label because it applies to me. On days when I don't feel female, it's like whatever association I had with that gender vanished, and calling myself a woman feels like a false statement. I have never identified at all with the male gender, so I don't believe I'm in any way transmasculine or a combination of male and female. My gender doesn't lie anywhere on a scale from feminine to masculine, so I wouldn't consider myself androgyne or neutrois. My femininity isn't replaced by anything else when I lose it, there's just nothing there anymore.

[Winged Whisperer]

On 11/11/2019 at 4:55 PM, Autumn McJavabean said:

How does one not identify with a gender? I guess that may be what confuses me. I'll read the other user's reply, too.

I'm not agender, but my question is quite the reverse. Despite now discovering my gender, I still have a hard time identifying as any gender. Consider reading this article which really convinced me of the genuineness of my gender feelings as it explains it more in depth https://medium.com/@kemenatan/gender-desire-vs-gender-identity-a334cb4eeec5

The specifically relevant bit here is:

Spoiler

In the years before realizing I was trans, my therapist and I would often debate the meaning of gender identity. I insisted I didn’t have one. She strongly suspected otherwise. Sure, I’d researched the effects of feminizing hormone therapy and loved everything about it, but that didn’t mean I was a woman. Yes, I’d been using a female persona online ever since the days of dial-up chat rooms, but again, that didn’t mean I was one. It was just a fantasy. Cross-dressing was just a fantasy. Wanting to be a woman does not make you a woman, I insisted. Trans women believe they are women; I believed I was a man. Therefore, I could not be trans.

In retrospect, refusing to begin a gender transition because I didn’t already feel like a woman was like refusing to take flying lessons because I didn’t already feel like a pilot.