5:01am August 9, 2014

genderless/agender/neutrois

things i’ve seen so far:

Genderless, Agender, and Neutrois are usually not the same things. Agender can be Genderless, or Neutrois depending on the persons definition. Genderless and Neutrois are the least likely to be called the same.

Gender may not equal presentation, but Agender or Neutrois are more likely to feel uncomfortable if they do not present as genderless/androgynous.

Gender may not specify pronouns, but Agender and Neutrois seem more likely to use gender neutral or created pronouns for themselves. Genderless people, from my experience, are less likely to care about any pronoun used or how they are viewed in their presentation.

Neutrois people sometimes say their gender is Neutrois, where as Genderless and Agender people are more likely to simply say they have no gender.

Genderless and Agender people tend to seem more comfortable admitting or being viewed as their biological sex.

Sexuality may play little to no part in gender, though Asexuality seems to be more common in Neutrois individuals.

I made this kind of for my own sake, to just kind of compile things I’ve heard or seen from people..since I know a lot of the terminology isn’t agreed on by everyone.
So, uh, feel free to disagree or..point something out to me.

All I can say is my own experiences.

I prefer the word genderless because it reads more like an ordinary English word that can be readily understood, than agender or nongendered or neutrois do.

I go by sie/hir pronouns when I can, ze or xe pronouns when I can’t.

I have body dysphoria, although I don’t talk about it much because I don’t like opening myself to scrutiny about things so private. Suffice to say it covers both primary and secondary sex characteristics and at times it gives me more trouble than others. In an ideal world I would love to change my body to match how I automatically see it. And yet I have trouble knowing if this body dysphoria is directly linked to genderlessness or just happens to coexist with it. (Because I don’t link any particular type of body to gender, consciously. But this has always been there, since before puberty.)

I’m highly uncomfortable with the idea that “presenting as genderless” is the same thing as “presenting as androgynous”. To me, appearance should not have to have a gender attached to it at all, that’s part of the whole point of genderlessness. I know it’s more complicated than that, because there are other genders and people want to be able to visibly show their gender, in many cases need to be able to. But I would love if I were able to go out looking ‘male’ or 'female’ or 'neither’ without anyone making any assumptions about my gender at all. Because I have several different aesthetics that I prefer, and gender has nothing to do with them, but I get read as different genders depending on what aesthetic I’m wearing at the time, and this gets to be a real problem. (And dangerous to me.)

Genderless doesn’t mean androgynous. Genderless means not having a gender. Androgynous is a gender presentation in between male and female, usually slightly more towards the male if you’re DFAB and slightly more towards the female if you’re DMAB. Genderless is not about being in between male and female, it’s about not even being on the map. Some genderless people prefer an androgynous aesthetic, and that’s fine, but their aesthetic is not more genderless than a feminine or masculine aesthetic or an aesthetic that has nothing to do with gender whatsoever. I really resent the idea that androgyny is the same as genderlessness. They’re not the same thing whatsoever.

In an ideal world, my non-driver ID card would read X instead of M or F. And so would my passport. I’d be addressed as Mx. instead of Mr. or Ms. And sie/hir pronouns would be universally understood and universally pronouncable. (See/hear.)

In an ideal world, I would at least be offered the body modifications, covered by insurance, that would allow me to live in the body that my brain has always thought it had, whether or not that body matches a conventional set of gender markers or not.

I do care a good deal about how I am viewed in my gender presentation. But it’s more like, I wish people would stop thinking I had a gender presentation. I wish people would recognize that when I like a certain aesthetic it’s not because it’s masculine or feminine, which for me it is neither, it’s simply because I like how it looks. Right now I’m wearing clothes people read as masculine. I associate them with my father, but not with masculinity. I wear them because I love my father, not because I want to look masculine. I have other clothes I wear that Iook feminine or androgynous. I would love if people could hold off on reading clothes as having a gender presentation, until they know whether the person in question has a gender or not, and what gender that is.

And when I wear 'androgynous’ clothing that is not 'more genderless’ than when I wear 'feminine’ or 'masculine’ clothing. Genderlessness, for me, means not having a gender. It’s not androgyny, which is a gender, or set of genders, all its own. (Androgyny can mean in between male and female, or combining male and female, but it doesn’t mean lacking gender in any way whatsoever. And while some genderless people may prefer an androgynous aesthetic for a huge variety of reasons, it still doesn’t make their aesthetic more agender or genderless than any other aesthetic.)

I don’t mind people knowing my biological sex, but I don’t see my biological sex as my gender or as something to “view me as” except in a sociological context. I don’t have a gender. And the only time I want to be viewed as a woman is when taken sociologically as a group of people who are treated a certain way based on certain assumptions about who we are. Which is different than being seen as a woman because of a gender identity of female. (Which is also a totally valid reason to be viewed as a woman, regardless of assigned gender.)

Oh and physically I get read as female sometimes, male others, and “WTF” others. It has something to do with the combination of facial hair and breasts.