How Asexuality affects someone’s views on gender

[Possums and Pangolins]

Recently I’ve been questioning my gender identity as a woman but by extension have kinda started questioning what it means to even be a woman for me personally. I feel like it’s too easy to just say I’m not a girl anymore, or at least not a girl all the time, but so much of the stuff I generated associate with being a woman doesn’t apply to me, and i feel like my asexuality has had an effect on my view of gender in that way.
 

Obviously i don’t want to have sex with somebody(and don’t have/am not looking for a romantic partner), but i don't want kids either and am heavily considering getting my breasts removed in the future. I view how I dress as very gender neutral and heavily dislike being ascribed to traditional gender roles, ESPECIALLY when it relates to doing things for other people. My clothes are baggy and hide my figure a lot but I don’t dislike any part of my body except for my boobs (inconvenient and serve no purpose to me, both aesthetically and functionally). Yet i still find it important when discussing my life experience that i was born and raised female.

 

It may be due to how i was socialized in regards to femininity and womanhood but I just don’t feel that much like a girl anymore, sometimes not at all like one, but I’m also unsure on what I AM if not a girl. I’m just kinda in gender limbo rn ig, and i thought getting insight from people with a similar perspective on sexuality could better understand my struggle with gender or smthn.

 

 

Also please don’t take this as disrespect or “doubt” for enby or trans people, they’re awesome and a trans friend has actually been helping me with this kinda stuff. Me bein unsure about my own shit doesn’t invalidate other people’s identities or experiences with gender. Ik that’s weird to say as someone who may be enby but I dont want some asshole using my personal experience out of context as a way to say all enby/trans people are just “confused”

[Guest]

I link this not to toot my own horn, but to suggest you read some responses there for your own information and also I want to reference a couple things people said there.

 

Many people in that thread have a similar experience to yours, saying asexuality caused them to view their femininity differently or that it became unimportant to them once they realized their aspec identity.

 

I am similar. I was born AFAB, but realized my sexuality and my gender are intimately related because gender norms are factored into attraction labels and vice-versa, and if either or both were absent or divergent, and I never felt very attached to my AGAB anyway, I didn't really see the use in considering myself female. I have nothing against gender as a concept and am not out irl, so being perceived female or identifying with some aspects of femininity does not bother me due to my socialization. But I don't care about being female. And for some people, that doesn't change they still consider themselves their assigned gender at birth. For me, it meant that I didn't want being female to be a part of my personal identity anymore. I see my sister, who loves being a woman, and trans women, who find peace in their womanhood, and I neither connected to that feeling nor desired a similar experience.

 

I have a sense of style that people can instantly clock as gender non-conforming, even when I dress femininely, and to an certain extent, changing my view to that of being nonbinary helped me become more comfortable with the feminine parts of my identity that I felt didn't fit right before. Being feminine now isn't about what this means about following gender norms, or what this means about how people may find me attractive, it just became another way of expressing myself as a person who doesn't think inside those boxes anymore. Asexuality helped me see how arbitrary social rules governing attraction, behavior, and gender performance are, and being gender non-conforming also helped me understand how my asexuality factors into my worldview.

 

1 hour ago, Possums and Pangolins said:

It may be due to how i was socialized in regards to femininity and womanhood but I just don’t feel that much like a girl anymore, sometimes not at all like one, but I’m also unsure on what I AM if not a girl. I’m just kinda in gender limbo rn ig, and i thought getting insight from people with a similar perspective on sexuality could better understand my struggle with gender or smthn.

People often ask: AM I this certain gender? And I think it's the wrong one to ask. It assumes people can be wholly one thing, or have to be a certain way in order to be that one thing. When if you think about it, no one is truly completely normative in how they practice their gender, and no one can BE a total woman or total man. That might be confusing to say, but essentially, how many women have you met that ever met all the requirements of womanhood in her society? How many men? What about women or men in a society totally different from yours? Would you say that woman or man is not a woman or man because they don't act like a woman or man from your own society?

 

What matters is the practice, the action, of those gendered traits, the behaviors a person exhibits and how that causes people in their society to treat them. If those practices indicate that a person is aligned with womanhood or manhood or neither or both, that will cause other people to treat them accordingly. Those behaviors are not an aspect of /being/ - they are an aspect of /doing/. (Shout out to philosopher Judith Butler, we love you!)

 

So the right question to me would be, what do I want to do about how I feel about my gender? Will doing things with the intention of acting nonbinary make me feel like I am fulfilling a more comfortable role in my society? Will doing things that cause me to continue to be perceived as female deeply bother me? And regardless of yes or no to these questions, will it matter to me in the end to say I AM female, or I AM nonbinary, if all my actions lead people to assume things about my gender that don't match what I feel internally? If it does matter to you, then I think you have your answer about what identity would be more comfortable for you to view yourself as. I know many of my actions are female actions in the societies I am a part of - and I don't care, because I ultimately feel more comfortable still as saying I am nonbinary.

 

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Also please don’t take this as disrespect or “doubt” for enby or trans people, they’re awesome and a trans friend has actually been helping me with this kinda stuff. Me bein unsure about my own shit doesn’t invalidate other people’s identities or experiences with gender. Ik that’s weird to say as someone who may be enby but I dont want some asshole using my personal experience out of context as a way to say all enby/trans people are just “confused”

Don't worry about it. You clearly were speaking only for yourself, and this thread is about you getting more info from other people who may have experienced the same things.

 

Confusion is a natural aspect of living in the world. Cis people get confused, nonbinary people get confused, trans people get confused. Gender is confusing. People act like being confused about gender is a bad thing or like to judge people who are confused about their own gender, but if they thought for one second, they'd pinpoint multiple moments in their own life where they were confused about it too. Why as I girl do I have to wear a dress to this party? Why as a boy I can't cry? Etc. etc. You being confused about your own gender is extremely common.

[Possums and Pangolins]

OMG thanks! I wasn’t expecting such a comprehensive answer so quickly. I’ll definitely check out that discussion you linked, it looks very informative and insightful to my experiences thus far and i can see more perspectives! 
 

Love the stuff about “doing” gender rather than “being” gebder, I’d never really thought of that aspect within my own identity, kinda reminds me of my socy professor bringing up a part of gender studies with the idea that gender itself is a performance. (Sociology is funky fresh like that i love it) 

 

I think i share that same thought of not really caring about being female, or at minimum I care much less about it than i used to. I’ve identified as ace for a few years now and over time my perspective on gender in regards to myself and others has changed heavily. Initially I thought it was more just being a chill ally and pointing out the weirdness of gendered practices/assignment in general but it’s definitely become more of a personal journey alongside the structural critique. Like at first it was more “why do you care so much about colors and dressing a certain way and stuff? Its just cloth/toys/etc., let people like what they like and be what they wanna be” but then it became that AND “gee being a girl is like, weird, smthn doesn’t feel right, am not girl enough maybe??”

 

(Ironic that Ive been putting so much worry into whether i fit into fem roles or not but tell other people that they should just do what they wanna do and be who they wanna be and not worry about how people perceive them)

 

also being raised in a conservative homophobic household didnt/doesnt do me any favors lol

 

Anyway thanks so much!!!!!!♥️ It’s so helpful to hear from other ace people on the topic (i dont really have any ace friends as far as im aware) and your explication was really cool and well worded!!!!!!! If i seemed weird/clunky/formal in this reply it’s because  I’m very nervous and not well versed in talking to strangers on the internet!!! 

[Geekykitty]

 

9 hours ago, Possums and Pangolins said:

being a woman doesn’t apply to me, and i feel like my asexuality has had an effect on my view of gender in that way.

 

9 hours ago, Possums and Pangolins said:

view how I dress as very gender neutral and heavily dislike being ascribed to traditional gender roles, ESPECIALLY when it relates to doing things for other people

I have to say I also really dislike gender roles. It annoys me when certain clothes, or jobs, or behaviour are described as "feminine" or "masculine." Clothes for example are just pieces of material, they have no gender, yet our society assigns certain genders to them. Or when men are expected to act a certain way - be confident, not show any weakness, be strong and tough etc.. while women are expected to be kind and motherly, or sexy, and not display anger... It really frustrates me.  We should be able to wear and behave however we want without having to label it as some gender. 

To me your sex is just what your body is - like what genitals you have and chromosomes etc... But I think we are all souls just residing in these bodies while we are in this physical world. The real us on the inside doesn't have a gender, although maybe some people feel more comfortable expressing themselves on the outside through a particular gender. I can understand why you don't identify strongly with being a woman. I am proud in some ways to be female. I suppose as a feminist I do appreciate the struggle that many women have for equality and respect in this world and believe in supporting fellow females to achieve this.  At the same time I don't have really strong love for the female aspects of my body eg I don't like wearing sexy kinda clothing revealing my cleavage, I don't like the idea of being pregnant ... I tend to prefer to be seen and treated in a more gender neutral type way, but then that is probably just because I don't like all the female gender stereotypes. If the gender stereotypes didnt exist and nothing we did was labelled as masculine or feminine I think it would feel much more comfortable being in my female body.

[Shoro]

@Possums and Pangolins I feel exactly the same as you.
 

[everywhere and nowhere]

I have in fact very similar feelings: I can't relate to most ways in which femininity is conceptualised because I'm asexual, celibate and queer. But it still doesn't lead me to actually question my gender. I have found one way in which femininity is very important to me: feminism, and because of this I consider my gender a political identity.

[Milque Toast]

13 hours ago, Possums and Pangolins said:

Yet i still find it important when discussing my life experience that i was born and raised female.

hey I feel the same way! I was born, raised/socialised, and still seen as female. And because of that I still have a lot in common with cis women besides anatomy. In English at school, we've been discussing feminism a lot, as well as especially the transition from girlhood to womanhood (enbyhood?), and although I don't identify as a girl anymore, I still have that experience of being a tween girl, I still want to discuss it, and I guess especially acknowledge that even though I'm not a woman, misogyny/women's oppression is still something that affects me, and want to actively fight against.

[stardust628]

I think in a small way my asexuality has affected my gender, if only because I don't want people sexualizing me at all. But I can still point to experiences before puberty where I exhibited gender-neutral characteristics, so I know that's not the whole picture. Sometimes I oscillate between wanting to fit in somewhere but knowing I don't, and just saying F* gender I'm forging my own path. Either way, I don't feel comfortable being called a woman, so it doesn't really matter how I define female. The same for man/male.

 

To your other point, being raised female is definitely a part of me that will never change, and greatly influences how I view the world.

[EmeraldIce]

My gender hasn't changed, but to some extent, I do think asexuality has affected the way that I think of gender.

 

Gender and sexuality are both experiences that are hard to describe and hard to envision for those not living them. How do you decide your gender? How do you decide your sexuality? For people who know, these are practically non-questions. But the thing is, I didn't know, at least not on the sexuality front. I could never understand how people just seemed to "know" their sexuality. The idea is simply unfathomable. When everyone seems to be coming out and making such major life decisions around their sexuality, I kept wondering when that click would come for me, that would tell me whether I'm straight or gay. How do I know if I were straight or gay? I didn't. When would I know? My teenage years passed me by, my twenties rolled around and I was close to thirty and still waiting for that click that never came...

 

In comparison, I didn't think about gender much, and that fact itself is quite telling. The idea of "feeling" a gender is just as unfathomable as "feeling" a sexuality. So why have I not been grappling to figure out my gender the same way I've been grappling to figure out my sexuality? Why have I not been waiting for that click to tell me my gender the same way I did for my sexuality? There are a lot of ways I don't fit into the stereotypes of a woman. And yet, I didn't question it. Sure, gender stereotypes are weird and annoying, and the idea of calling myself a woman is a bit strange because I just feel like me. What other ways are there to feel?  And yet, I still didn't question it. While a "click" never came, I didn't feel the need to wait, because there was no similar disconnect between me and my gender the same way there was between me and my sexuality. So in a sense, discovering and relating to asexuality has made me more confident that I'm just that old boring gender I was born with.

[ALobster]

Before coming to realize I was asexual, I spent some time questioning my gender. I spent about a month or so toying with the non-binary label, trying different pronouns, trying to appear more GNC (even though I appeared pretty GNC before, and I still do today). But after a while, I went back to identifying as a cis woman. 
 

I do think my asexuality played a role in this whole phase. I wasn't uncomfortable with being perceived as a woman, but I was uncomfortable with all the baggage that came along with being a woman - including the sexualization aspect. But at the same time, I didn't feel so disconnected from womanhood that I wanted to change my gender. I'm comfortable as a woman, just a bit disillusioned by a lot of aspects of it. I certainly don't "feel" like a woman, but I don't "feel like anything else, so here I am. 
 

I hope this makes sense lol, I can try to clarify a bit more if needed.

[Sister Mercurial]

When I was a kid, gender was simply a more polite word to use instead of sex.  Now, gender is a nuisance because all the outdated roles attached to it are coming back with a vengeance.  Looking back, I was lucky to have grown up in a short interval where not conforming to gender roles wasn't met with attempts at medicalisation.  Yes, it's annoying that I have a body that bleeds every month (for no good reason, because I've never wanted to have kids), but getting my tubes tied is enough operations for me.  

[Geekykitty]

3 hours ago, ALobster said:

do think my asexuality played a role in this whole phase. I wasn't uncomfortable with being perceived as a woman, but I was uncomfortable with all the baggage that came along with being a woman - including the sexualization aspect. But at the same time, I didn't feel so disconnected from womanhood that I wanted to change my gender. I'm comfortable as a woman, just a bit disillusioned by a lot of aspects of it. I certainly don't "feel" like a woman, but I don't "feel like anything else, so here I am. 
 

I hope this makes sense lol, I can try to clarify a bit more if needed.

Yes I get what you mean. I am happy to be seen as female, but there are many aspects of womanhood which are kinda stereotyped and I don't like. Like the expectation to be a wife and mother, or to look sexy and pretty. Or the idea that women are weak and emotional, or that we should behave a certain way. Yes things have improved in the last few years, but there's still a long way to go for women to achieve the equality and respect that men have. 

[acowboy]

On 9/21/2022 at 9:59 AM, Possums and Pangolins said:

Yet i still find it important when discussing my life experience that i was born and raised female.

This!! I was surprised to find that other people have such a similar experience to me - being aroace had made me critical of many of the things we take for granted (gender, attraction, identity as a whole) and made me more aware how everything is just codes of how other people expect us to behave or act. I am also afab and present androgynously, although I dress more fem or masc on a day to day basis. Personally the neuter identity really resonated with me - to be removed from gender, to be myself instead of explicitly male or female. 

 

I also find the whole gender presentation thing very interesting because clothes are a huge part in shaping my identity - I see people I find "attractive" and instead yearning for a relationship with them I just want to look like them - gender envy i think. But I digress.

 

Like you, I find it hard to remove myself from my female identity since I've spent most of my life being treated as one - and i find it difficult to label myself as nb because it feels like im erasing  or repressing everything ive experienced growing up as a female. It's a weird conundrum.

[Janus the Fox]

My own gender is as much absent as much as my sexuality.

[Mishmash]

I worked out my sexuality first, and now my approach to gender has gradually become: I'm a girl but that means nothing. On the other hand, there's definitely some stuff that's clearly filed under being raised as female.