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Are asexual people more likely to question their gender?


Adlena

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For me accepting that I'm asexual,which  I've kind of known for ages but didn't know for a long time that asexual was something that you could be, has led me to think more about my gender identity too..it feels like I've opened a Pandora's box into my whole being..I know this is highly individual and everyone's different. Sexuality and gender are different departments..I don't know that much about this and I've only recently joined this forum so I'm really just wondering is this a very common theme?. Is it something that many or most asexual people grapple with at some point? 

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It does seem to be common among aces but idk.

 

For me it's like 'I don't want to play this sex game, and I don't want to have an assigned role (aka gender)'. That's pretty much how I felt my entire life.

Society's code of conduct have pressured me into thinking otherwise. On top of that I get the mtf fantasies and it all gets too confusing for me to understand.

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Luftschlosseule

I think if you're somehow different than the norm, you're more likely to see more differences. Once you realise one aspect of your identity might differ, you wonder if there might be more. And if you've started to queston, and found an answer, maybe there comes the next question - it was so for me.

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Maybe it's harder to maintain a masculine identity than a feminine one when your asexual due to the way our society has been for a long time..maybe women have more license to be disinterested in sex than men do.. ready willing able and up for sex seems to be a prerequisite for being a real man..it does affect how you feel about yourself when your not interested in sex... realizing that I'm asexual has brought into sharper focus other aspects of myself such as gender

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Galactic Turtle

I was more under the impression that those who do have dysphoric level issues with their body are at least somewhat more likely to not be super into the idea of having sex and that might lead them into asexual spaces thus the overlap you see.

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I don't know much about gender questions. I perceived it in 2 dimensions for me: the first being my intimate gender identity and the second how I was acting on it/how other people saw me. Obviously I immediately doubted the second one at my puberty (along with all the sexist clichés) but I did not really question the first one. I mean I have never felt masculine either and the fact that the agender option did not exist back then did not help.

 

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it might be that asexual people just don't want to be assigned to a "role" in society because it to some extend will kinda give them a stamp of what their sex role should be which they dont want to be related to because society has just taugh of some rules, which are obviously not true, I think myself im a great example of this to some extend, I only know one asexual person really closely and she is not questioning her gender what so ever, she is just a asexual gay girl and she is in a nice relationship with this other girl and they have been together for longer than I have known them (I think they have dated for 8 years) which is very impressive considering they are 24 and 23, its just one of those beautiful cases of first love just happens to be the one and only.

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Am observation among these lines was made by Anthony Bogaert in Understanding Asexuality. For asexual people who are strongly romantically attracted to a specific gender, their own gender might be felt strongly because of that. But aces who are aro, biro, pancakes, etc might not feel like their gender is a part of their lives in the same way. That's how it is for me. I identify with women because of how I'm perceived and treated, but it doesn't impact my personal life because I don't have a partner to bond with over each other's genders. I don't feel like women's spaces are special for me, and I'd feel much better in spaces where the binary is dropped. I don't bond with people based on gender, so that has led me to view mine in a nonbinary way. 

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Galactic Turtle
24 minutes ago, Snao Cone said:

But aces who are aro, biro, pancakes, etc might not feel like their gender is a part of their lives in the same way. That's how it is for me. I identify with women because of how I'm perceived and treated, but it doesn't impact my personal life because I don't have a partner to bond with over each other's genders.

That's interesting! This is also my view on my own gender. I was always under the assumption that you only "have a gender" if you're trans. Like... I'm a woman because I have a female body and that's pretty much it. However a trans woman doesn't have a female body, but will typically go through as many lengths as financially/healthily possible to be perceived like they do and along the way aids this process by dressing in a way that their particular society perceives to be a style that is exclusively female. However for my female friends who aren't asexual and are attracted to the opposite sex specifically, they seem more likely to present themselves in a stereotypically feminine way or aren't very receptive to the idea of wearing clothes that come off as distinctly masculine even if they aren't actively trying to look good for their person of interest. Could I ID as nonbinary? Yes. But to me gender is irrelevant so I default to sex.

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40 minutes ago, Snao Cone said:

I don't bond with people based on gender

Same here.

But while I'm not super feminine as far as gender expression goes (and going through phases where wearing a skirt / dress will make me feel like I'm wearing a costume, or pretending to be something I'm not), I am very definitely female and happy with that. (For the record - been with both males and females, not sure whether or not that has anything to do with anything. If I'm interested in a person it's about the individual in all its complexity, and physical configuration is but one factor and nowhere near the top of the list of Things That Matter To Me.)

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I don't even know what gender is supposed to be to begin with.

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I think it might also be a matter of exposure to certain ideas like nonbinary identities and the like. Because I got that through the asexual community. I was questioning my sexuality and went looking for that and AVEN was the first place where I was exposed to ideas like nonbinary genders and the idea of a gender identity (I knew before that that trans people exist but I'd never really thought about it properly). I have since realised that I likely don't experience gender in myself at all, but for that to be possible I first needed to be aware that other people really do experience their gender strongly and I was made aware of that through finding the asexual community. Now if I wasn't asexual and had never gone looking for identities outside the mainstream, I'm not sure if I'd ever realised that and thereby started questioning my gender. So for me at least my asexuality was sort of the catalyst that made me question my gender identity, even though I don't believe the two are related for me. 

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Yes I can identify with that. You describe it as a catalyst for further thought or exploration and that's how I think of it. It's like I found out that the earth isn't flat and that knowledge brings with it more questions than answers

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I became exposed to asexuality via my transgender status – while I'm not asexual, the concept became more visible because there is a lot of overlap in these spaces!

It's probably going both ways. Not wanting sex → disconnect from gender identity; gender dysphoria → discomfort with sex.

My partner identifies as ace but... idk, biromantic maybe? I think he's a typical cis agender… "this is the body & role I was given and I'm okay with it". He doesn't do a lot of masculine gender role stuff. The asexuality has been disappointing but I guess this atypical gender role stuff is what drew us together & I feel really lucky to have it.

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Calligraphette_Coe

In my experiences and the trans people I met back in the 90s, I'd have to answer no. I always felt like an anomaly within a community of anomalies back then. But, I think things may have changed. Keep in mind, back then, everyone who questioned their gender was usually dysphoric and surgery tracked. As far as I knew, no one I knew was asexual except for me. And people thought I was odd for being asexual. They'd call me 'demure'.

 

Add to that, the gatekeepers biased a lot of their diagnostic outlook on sexuality. AMAB transpeople seeking surgery were grouped into three categories: homosexual, heterosexual and non-sexual. The homosexual category (M>F who had physical relations with men) was most likely to get you ' the letter' for surgery. Google up 'Jurassic Clarke gender' to read up on the on what used to be the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto for some of their theories.

 

I almost hesitate to write any of this, knowing how controversial it is, but there is still the theory out there that the most likely successful candidates for surgery are the ones who were homosexual to begin with. I'd bet most of the people promulgating this are hetereosexuals themselves, so what better way to 'cure' a homosexual than to make them a heterosexual in their minds.

 

I know-- it's like ancient history, but that's the way things used to be. They almost never talked about FTMs back then, either.

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I’ve never questioned the fact that my body is female, and I don’t have any problems. I do hate the gender roles and how people are supposed to think/feel/act feminine/masculine. I’m terrible at “being feminine” and have no intention of changing that. My gender isn’t an important part of my identity.

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Just Somebody

4% of transgender people in a survey identified as asexual while other data states that around only 1% of total world human population identifies as asexual (let's also remember that nor everybody in the world is openly "out of the closet" so that's why queer population studies aren't 100% accurate).

 

Transgender-Sexual-Orientation-NTDS-hori

 

 

A lot about femininity in many cultures of many different societies from different places and across the history of the world was built in regards to serving and pleasing men.

 

So it's common for asexual, aromantic and gay women to not have feminine gender expressions, like fitting gender stereotypes and conforming to gender norms and roles when they are not forced nor care about pleasing or serving men.

 

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2 hours ago, Calligraphette_Coe said:

In my experiences and the trans people I met back in the 90s, I'd have to answer no. I always felt like an anomaly within a community of anomalies back then. But, I think things may have changed. Keep in mind, back then, everyone who questioned their gender was usually dysphoric and surgery tracked. As far as I knew, no one I knew was asexual except for me. And people thought I was odd for being asexual. They'd call me 'demure'.

 

Add to that, the gatekeepers biased a lot of their diagnostic outlook on sexuality. AMAB transpeople seeking surgery were grouped into three categories: homosexual, heterosexual and non-sexual. The homosexual category (M>F who had physical relations with men) was most likely to get you ' the letter' for surgery. Google up 'Jurassic Clarke gender' to read up on the on what used to be the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto for some of their theories.

 

I almost hesitate to write any of this, knowing how controversial it is, but there is still the theory out there that the most likely successful candidates for surgery are the ones who were homosexual to begin with. I'd bet most of the people promulgating this are hetereosexuals themselves, so what better way to 'cure' a homosexual than to make them a heterosexual in their minds.

 

I know-- it's like ancient history, but that's the way things used to be. They almost never talked about FTMs back then, either.

Hopefully, things have moved forward since the 90s? Terms like Non-binary and Agender certainly weren't mentioned often back then.

Sweden had a quite strict law surrouning sex-changes as recently as 2013 when at least parts of it were thrown in the trash-can. I feel a lot have changed in the few years since.

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DuranDuranfan
12 hours ago, Luftschlosseule said:

I think if you're somehow different than the norm, you're more likely to see more differences. Once you realise one aspect of your identity might differ, you wonder if there might be more. And if you've started to queston, and found an answer, maybe there comes the next question - it was so for me.

Yep, same here.

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I think it is more of a general modern era and LGBTQ+ thing to question gender roles than it is an asexual thing. The interesting thing is seeing non-binary people tending to represent asexuality.

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Janus the Fox

It feels like that in some way, I do see posts about both gender and sexuality questioning from the same members but that’s just observation.  Forums do have a habit of ‘collecting’ the same ideas in one place, even if proportionality against the general population of aces in general.

 

Ive definitely questioned both, I put it in a way that they’re somewhat related, lack of any attractions of any kind, lack of any personal gender image or sex in general as well.  Even if both are unconnected, having no gender makes the hetro/homo attraction dynamic, rather difficult.

 

Im also autistic, there’s some similarities with the lack of sociality and communication difference that’s fairly common in the autistic spectrum.

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On 1/25/2020 at 12:18 PM, Luftschlosseule said:

I think if you're somehow different than the norm, you're more likely to see more differences. Once you realise one aspect of your identity might differ, you wonder if there might be more. And if you've started to queston, and found an answer, maybe there comes the next question - it was so for me.

For me accepting that I am not straight lead to questioning my gender.

 

On 1/25/2020 at 12:57 PM, Galactic Turtle said:

I was more under the impression that those who do have dysphoric level issues with their body are at least somewhat more likely to not be super into the idea of having sex and that might lead them into asexual spaces thus the overlap you see.

Having dysphoria is a huge part of me being gray Ace. I can't say that I won't be gray ace without dysphoria. Maybe I'll find out later when I get to manage my dysphoria better.

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DarkStormyKnight

I have wondered this! It kinda seems like if you're ace/pan/don't take gender of your partners into account that you're more likely to question your own as well. But yeah, it's hard to find stats on that.

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I think there are a couple of things at work here.

 

For some people - myself included - realizing that there's one big, obvious thing about oneself that isn't 'normal' (being asexual) can lead to the thought that if that's so, then perhaps it's not the case only for sexuality, and thus to re-examing other assumptions that one has been making about oneself. Perhaps especially true of people who, like me, have trouble figuring out that whatever they experience isn't relatively normal, because realizing that's not true for one thing definitely led to accepting that maybe it's also not true for other things, like gender.

 

Then I know that there are people who are trans and not actually asexual, but feel that they might be before they completely realize that they're trans or begin transitioning. There have definitely been some people in this category around here, and there are probably more.

 

And then there's the third thing, which is that this forum is pretty obviously accepting of trans and gender questioning people (with this big ol' Gender Discussion forum and the place to put gender and pronouns in the profile and all), and that probably attracts some people to this site - subconsciously or not - and also makes it a lot more obvious looking at a topic how many people are trans/nonbinary. Even having to fill those things in the profile might cause some people to get thinking about it, and certainly after being on here for a while nobody is going to not know about nonbinary identities - and not really knowing about that possibility is I think what tends to take nonbinary people the longest to come to that conclusion (well, certainly for me it was; I may be making that faulty assumption that I'm relatively normal again).

 

So I'd hesitate to say that asexual people - especially those who are heteromantic, I think Snao's got a good point there - are necessarily more likely to question their gender than anyone else, but it probably does set off a line of questioning for a decent number of people, and one has to take into account that the userbase of this specific site may be skewed one way or another.

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I wish there were some more good stats or studies on the hypothetical correlation between asexuality and non-binary-ness. 

I agree with most of the above, notably that questioning one identity aspect often leads to questioning others; and also that this forum, which is accepting of all, lets non-binary voices be heard quite a bit, so we have a bias here. 

And yeah, of course, gendered things (especially physical) tend to also be sexualised things, so there's that. 

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