2:27am July 3, 2014

Coming Out

So I was gonna wait for three months and eight days more to do this but I think that right now is the right time to do it. I get that the title of this post makes me sound queer and if you think that then you are damn right. I am queer and genderqueer and I just need to let it all out.

I identify as agender. I don’t give a shit what pronouns you wanna use (since most of you know me in real life know me as a girl you can still call me a girl) because being called whatever doesn’t offend me. I just don’t see myself fitting into either certain gender. I see myself as neither, somewhere in the middle if you will.

I also identify as pansexual. For those of you that don’t know, that means I like guys, girls, and trans people. I lean a little more towards girls (personal preference)(like really do you see them they’re majestic)(like wow), but I still like the other two. It works the same way as others do, you just like get crushes on everyone and such. idk what it’d be like to be either 100% homosexual or 100% heterosexual, I like everyone.

I’m sorry if you think I’m joking because I’m really not please respect my decisions for myself. I’m just glad to let it out, and this seemed like the easiest way to do it. Telling my parents is going to be the really hard part, which I might still wait a while for, but I think it’s easier if I just let you know right now. Okay?

Thanks for actually bothering to read this post friends, makes it so much easier for me. Please don’t hate me. Thanks. :)

Since the agender tag is full of ridiculous fights about who counts as agender, I thought I’d send you a welcome message. Welcome to the world of agender people. Whether this stays your identity or not (and either way is just fine, gender can be fluid) I hope that it works for you as long as you need it to, whether that is forever or just for a time.

I’m genderless myself, which for me means there is no gender for me. Not male, not female, not neutral, not in between, not a third, fourth, or fifth gender, no gender. And I am always happy to see other people on the agender spectrum, on tumblr. (And always saddened by people who would turn it into an identity-policing war about who counts and who doesn’t. My view: The more the merrier! If you think you count, then you do count.)

It took me a long time to work out that I was genderless. I thought for some time that I might be a trans man, but that never felt right. It felt better than being a cis woman, but it felt like another trap after awhile, just the same as being female did. It was like one burst of liberation from having to be a woman, then a sense of constriction at having to be a man, and then back to square one. So I decided maybe woman after all (I thought woman and man were the same choices), just… very atypical woman. Until eventually I coined the term “non-gendered”, as so many people have probably coined it before me, and finally started feeling at home.

I don’t always tell people my pronouns because I know a lot of people have trouble with the new pronouns. But my preferred pronouns are sie/hir/hirs/hirself as my favorite, and ze/zer/zem/zemself (or sometimes xe/xyr/xem/xemself – pronounced the exact same) as my second favorite. Sie is pronounced see and hir is pronounced hear. Anyway you can use literally any pronouns on me that you can think of, and I won’t be offended as long as it’s not “it”. I’m especially sensitive to “it” because I’m disabled and not always seen as human.

Anyway, that’s a lot about me. I just really wanted to welcome you. And to let you know that if anyone gives you a hard time about your genderlessness, don’t listen to them. Don’t let anyone tell you what you should wear, how you should do your hair, or how you should behave in order to be a “real” genderless person. Don’t let anyone tell you that if you don’t experience body dysphoria (or don’t experience it strongly enough or in the right ways) then your experiences aren’t real enough to call yourself agender. There’s people running around who have nothing better to do than to pick over the lives of people who call ourselves agender, nongendered, neutrois, or genderless, and discern whether we’re really trans enough to count. And in my eyes, that kind of behavior is never good no matter what oppressed group is doing it.

Welcome. Seriously, welcome. There’s tons of us out there. And for every one of us who writes publicly about our experiences of gender and lack thereof, there are easily dozens if not hundreds more who lack the courage or the advantages necessary to be out in public doing this. So you’re already doing something that a lot of people can’t or won’t do. And writing about your experiences will not only potentially help you connect to other agender people, it will also help other agender people identify with your experiences, and maybe be able to give a name to experiences they didn’t know they had.

So thank you, so much, for coming out and writing this. And welcome to the online world of agender/nonbinary people. And I hope that your stay here is full of making connections with like-minded people and as empty as possible of trolls. If you do get trolled, I once got taught a simple formula for dealing with them. Ignoring them doesn’t always work, psychologically. But if you repeat in your head, “I’m okay, you’re mean!” then it actively tells you that there’s nothing wrong with you, it’s the other person’s problem. It’s simple but surprisingly effective. Hopefully you won’t have occasion to use it, but then I’ve seen the state of the #agender tag some days. I was very happy to read such a post as yours in that tag, instead of some of the others I’ve seen

Sending genderless love if you want it (no hugs involved, in case you don’t like hugs)! <3 <3 <3