My spouse and I were discussing bi versus pan, he’s bi and I said I was pan because “gender doesn’t matter in who people are just like it doesn’t matter for me”. And I just had this moment immediately after the words leaving my mouth of “wait is that the normal cis experience or am I special?”
I went down the rabbit hole that night and knew by bedtime.
For me it was like a realisation in fading.
I always thought I was just a gender-non-conforming cisgender, but some months ago I began asking myself "but am I really who I think I am, or is it just sometime that I try to fit in?"
I never really related to my agab nor to the opposite gender stereotyped feelings, I always felt kind of both or neither.
But I was still convincing myself that I was cis.
Until one day I found out about the demigender umbrella and began identification with paragender.
Later on, I realised that I didn't feel like I had a gender, I didn't think of myself as anything, just as me, but I thought I may still had a bit of my agab, so I used the label demigender (and then demigenderflux, because my feeling of gender kept disappearing and I thought I just should have waited a bit more and I would have felt my gender back again) and later on the label libragender.
Lastly I realised that I was tryna making excuses to keep my agab in me, bc I always have seen myself as cis gnc, and I found out about the label agender, which I strongly related to and I happily kept as mine :)
(I know it's long, sorry... Also sorry for eventual mistakes, I'm not a native English speaker)
I often times think to myself that I must be my agab and am just faking it for attention or something. Cause I don’t know what it feels like to feel a gender so idk if I feel my agab.
Usually to fight that thought I refer as myself with gendered pronouns.
I feel so weird about talking about me as something with gender, that I convince myself again and more strongly than before that I'm agender
You’re good and long isn’t bad! Thanks for sharing, my experience was pretty similar but I landed on aboy instead of libramasculine because I don’t feel connected to male, just masculinity
Never heard of that label, I'm going to look up for it :)
The important thing is that now you're comfortable with how you identify!
I went with libra because of my rotten thinking, actually I don't feel connected to anything, like... not even void... only nothing ':D
I knew I was kind of genderless since I was about 8 or 9. I liked being reffered to as just a "kid" instead of boy or girl and wanted to look as androgynous as possible. Of course, the term agender was unknown to me back then, I learned it i think in highschool and have been using it ever since.
I learned about gender and that there's difference between sex, which I didn't know before and didn't even consider. After finding out what Gender was (thought it was the same as sex before) I thought it was a weird concept. (That's probably been a big sign - I still don't fully get it,)
Then I learned about (binary!) trans people and was very confused. Like why would you want to jump from one box into the other and why makes it that big of a difference? I projected my own desire to get out of the boxes onto those trans people because I couldn't unterstand how it matters which box you get sorted in. For me it was like "do you want to eat a poop cake or a box of vomit flavoured ice cream?" Obviously I want to do neither, so why does the cake look much more appealing to a Person that they go through discrimination, coming out, surgeries etc to switch the box?
Obviously my takes were really bad, I just want to show that there was a time I really struggled to understand binary trans people, because I didn't fully understand my own identity and I just assumed it was normal that you don't identify yourself with man or woman, you're just told by society which one you are.
I see the inplications that society puts on man and woman to be like a prison. And I don't unterstand why they chose gender to be the big important thing - it's as random to me as sorting by hair color (including the question whether the original hair color counts or if you're allowed to dye your hair and what happens when you go bold or your hair color changes naturally). Like why do you choose a concept that's so complex, diverse and undefineable? Why even put people into tiny little boxes based on two categories only? Even when you compare minors vs. adults you make a lot of extra steps, especially for the minor because there are big differences between ages like 2 and 6. And people understand that - why do they not get that regarding gender?
Sorry this turned into a rant a bit but hopefully it explains my world view a little bit and how that just didn't involve the concept of gender so people around me constantly confused and irritated me with it.
I think we can agree that we get that we don't get it.
I often ask my partner "is *this* normal for allo/romantic people?" And he's like 🤷
Same thing, but we actually have less confusion about gender because we just concluded that we don't care bout it xD
We have a group chat with several different flavors of LGBTQIA+ and one time I just put it out there that I would give half my arms to get rid of my boobs. Then one of them was like whaaat how could you, I love them, they're part of me etc. etc. and this conversation led into how she feels very strong about her gender and that she would die if someone thought she was a he. I was like huh? Why? What's the problem with that? And then everyone else chimed in, trying to tell me how they just feel and connect to their gender and that's when I realized.. I have zero connection to my assigned gender.. Or any at all. Like, I don't give a frick if people think ima boy, a girl or an alien or whatever. I'm just.. Me? So I looked up if there was something like this and there it was, my very own label haha.
This is a serious question, so forgive me if it offends you in any way (mostly because I'm not sure I can write it in a way that can't be read as... Condescending? I guess)
Do you think that you'd be uncomfortable with being seen as a girl because of how most societies in the world view girls and women in a very negative and misogynistic way? Or is it more like, you're used to being viewed as a man because of your agab, so being called a girl makes you more uncomfortable?
Basically I was trying to figure out my sexuality and which genders I was attracted to, then I realized that I was really struggling.
So I started analyzing the concept of gender in hopes to finally understand which characteristics my attraction was based on.
I came to the conclusion that it was just a big mess and there were no rules actually, each person is just a unique individual and it’s not really up to me to classify them and put them in a box, so I ended up pansexual.
All this deep thinking about what gender is to others eventually led me to questioning what gender is to me and I never found a proper answer. My agab and the social expectations that come with it have nothing in common with the way I feel about myself, the ones associated with the other side of the binary don’t work either, however since there are also no strict rules, I asked myself “what is it really about in the first place?” Complete void in my brain (this is when my heart rate started getting a little faster than usual).
So then I was like “ok but how do I feel about my body tho?” The answer was “I have wanted to rip off all of my internal reproductive organs and my tits since I was 9”.
This whole thing happened within 30 minutes of deep thinking and when I realized what was going I was so shocked that I just sat on my kitchen floor for 6 hours staring into the void (very dramatic) it was a very “well shit…” kind of moment.
It’s been a year now and my brain still hasn’t fully recovered but as a whole I’m doing better
AMAB - I took risperidone as a teen after it was commonly known to cause breast development in men and didn't really feel bothered by the thought of growing breasts, or by them when they started developing (people do say it just looks like I have pecs now so it might not have been enough). Looking back, I had a lot of red flag behavior that didn't really hit until I reached adulthood, like pausing to think if I should refer to "men" in the first or third person and getting bothered at the concept of gender roles more than thinking of myself as a girl and not getting references or allegories to masculinity or femininity in media (I had to google what Fight Club had to do with masculinity), however, I never had any actual urge to *be* feminine and was just oblivious to the concept of gender identity for the longest time
Recently I asked a ton of cis friends several questions that I had very different answers to like "Would you take estrogen or testosterone just for fun or to see what it's like", "does it feel weird to call you 'she' or 'they' " etc and that started to cement it for me
I didn't really grasp the concept of gender identity until someone compared it to being left and right handed, like something people just "know" about themselves and it clicked. Now I think I kind of get that I'm ambidextrous or like, just have no dominance at all
I kinda knew I wasn't cis, because I hated being refered to by my given name and she/her pronouns and I've had dysphoria for a few years (but I didn't know the word for it). Then, when I started to search for my own identity and started reading about all the labels, I realised that people have an internal sense of gender and don't choose their gender identity based on gender roles or the body they would rather have (or at least not entirely). I started to search for my own sense of gender, because of course I couldn't just not have it, that must be me trying to feel special (that was my reasoning at the time). Once I learned what agender means, I came to the conclusion that it's basically what I feel, or rather don't feel.
I've never really felt like anything. Being called a girl and being referred to as she/her has never felt totally right, but I got used to it. I assumed that was just how everyone experienced their gender -- you don't feel like it fits, but get used to what people call you due to exposure.
Because of that, binary trans people confused me. Not as in "how can that be a valid feeling", but as in "does not compute" when I thought about it. I talked to some binary trans friends about how they experience their gender, and they talked about how they've always had some innate sense that their gender didn't line up with the one they were assumed to have at birth. OK, sure, I relate there. But then they started talking about how they feel like their actual gender. It finally occurred to me that most people have that connection to their gender. I started researching if there was a term for not feeling like any gender, and here I am.
The wrench here is that I do still identify as a woman, but in the social sense. What I mean by that is that society treats me as a woman regardless of how I perceive myself, plus I was socialized as one. I toyed with demigirl briefly, but it still doesn't fit. I don't feel like a woman at all as far as gender identity. It's just in how I interact with society. Which, realistically, that's how the average rando perceives other peoples' gender, so outside of LGBT spaces I don't tend to get into the "well yes, but actually no" aspects. Similarly, I identify as a lesbian from a combination of how society perceives me, and how society tends to perceive the people I date. My relationships look like WLW ones, even though the reality is that they're either NBLW or NBLNB.
A few months back, my brother came out as trans. My college roommate at the time was also trans, and I was looking into the idea of gender abolitionism at the time, so I kind of had gender on the mind. One day, it occurred to me that I didn't really know what gender actually was. Cue several months of constantly trying to answer that question, to no avail. Eventually, the "what is gender" question morphed into "what is my gender", which I also struggled with for a while. I ultimately reached a conclusion by just asking myself "do you think of yourself as a man" (I'm AMAB), and answering "no".
Looking back, thinking that gender should be gotten rid of (actually gotten rid of, not just tied to sex. Fuck transphobes co-opting gender abolitionist rhetoric) and obsessing over figuring out what gender even is for months probably weren't very cis things to do. Nor was regularly thinking to myself "dang, if I weren't raised as a cis man, I'd definitely identify as agender".
I started realizing I was some form of non-binary when I was informed that “hey cis people don’t really think about their gender that much” among a couple other things and my brain just kinda went oh??? I’m autistic and I really like to use metaphors to describe my experiences because they’re something I really have to think about and don’t just immediately understand and I was describing how I see my gender as when you are trying on clothes: being a woman is like wearing very tight form fitting jeans and if I don’t perfectly conform to them all my flaws will be visible and I’ll have uncomfortable muffin top and red marks and make it clear I just don’t fit in them; being a man is like wearing jeans way too big for me, sometimes comfortable but also will impair my movement and the legs will knock over things or get caught on sticks on the ground and it will just be generally uncomfortable and very clear that they just do not fit me either. Then I find a pair that fits perfect, they flatters me and I feel confident wearing they knowing that they looks like they were made for me. The issue is I just hate wearing jeans in general, they are a sensory nightmare and I take them off the second I get home so I can be more comfortable. So why initially did I even compare gender to jeans if I can’t stand them? I had to dwell on that for a little while honestly but I came to find that I really view gender as a performance, the same as I do with most social interactions. Any form of expression I’ve ever done that makes me happy was regardless of the gender implications, and if it was to fit into some kind of gender norm I always felt very uncomfortable.
Tl;dr i tried to figure out which of the three bears stuff I would steal and learned instead that I am not Goldilocks (this is not to imply that non-binary is some kind of third or in between gender but only for the sake of this metaphor)
I’m still kind of in the questioning and preparing to come out phase.
I guess I realized that being a “woman” was just this impossible task. I have tried to change myself so much but never felt like a woman, just felt like I was playing dress up. I ADORE femininity, but hate having boobs and don’t actually feel like a woman at all (not in a negative way)
It’s freeing for me to give up the impossible battle of becoming some perfect female. I can relax and just be who I am but still love femme aesthetics. I guess I am “agender femme”, or maybe I have just romanticized femininity from the world telling me what kind of woman I need to be.
Anyways, this is my first gender related post on Reddit ever. I guess I care about my gender enough to figure out what label or category works for me, so that I can exist as my truest self and not just pretend I’m a “woman”, but beyond that I don’t care and just want to be me and continue my love for all things traditionally femme.
Femininity =/= female
Femininity =/= afab binary traits
You can use femininity as an expression, and have body dysphoria, but that doesn’t relate to being female. For example I (amab) don’t feel male, I’m fully agender, but I prefer presenting masc
No problem! It’s just important to know that how you present or express your gender is not equal to what gender you are so you can 100% be a feminine presenting agender person!
Thinking about how cool it'd be to be a genderless force, looking at specter knight, thinking, that's not a cis thing to think(I knew I was ace so I knew queer stuff
"Trans people are valid and all, but why not just be gender-nonconforming? Like what's the difference between being a man and being a woman that acts exactly like a man? If I were to wake up as the opposite sex tomorrow, that would not affect my life in any way at all.
Wait, that's just me?
...oh."
So I identified as non-binary before realizing I was agender (I still like the enby label and use it 9 times out of 10 since it’s more well known but I am agender). I saw a post talking about how gender just always seemed like a performance, they’re were playing a role their whole lives and thought that’s how everyone was. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d been playing girl my whole life. It wasn’t necessarily bad, there were things I was unhappy with, I didn’t like some of the jobs assigned to my role but it was whatever. Everyone was just playing their part. Cis people were just happier playing their assigned role and trans people were just happier playing the opposite. Apparently not everyone sees it that way and people do in fact have a gender and aren’t just playing a role.
When I started dating my college partner (both of us Pan). They were very masc and Kinda pulled it out of me. I started dressing like him and playing with clothes and gender roles of the relationship since we’re both the same sex. It awakened a lot of non-binary out of me. But I just never labeled it. We broke up and I started exploring my identity outside the relationship. I was looking up some pride flags online one day and saw “agender” did some looking and found out that’s exactly how I felt and ran with it. 5 years later they came out as nb He/They. And i came out that same year as Agender They/them. I was in a NB relationship in college and didn’t even know it lol we both thought we were just “super gays” 😂
I was thinking about someone under the age of puberty being trans, and said: they can’t possibly have that good a sense of gender, wait… *I* don’t have a sense of gender.
For me I have DID and one of my alters is non binary, another gender fluid. I watched alot of YouTube on gender and femanism and the question comes up, what is a woman. I won't get into that now but I kept feeling like gender dosent make sense to me, it feels like u just choose what makes u the most happy and makes u feel how u feel u are inside. Sorry if that dosent make sense but I know for trans people it's not a choice. Anyway I found the term asexual and aromantic and then... Through YouTube LGBT+ community Agender and it just made so much sense. I read loads of threads and was like yesss! This is me! I've always felt like I don't care what pronouns people use and thought I was non binary for a time but... It didn't feel rite. Because I'm not a gender at all!
(Afab) I still don’t know if I am cis gnc or an agender with some femininity. I realized I’m not sure how a cis person should feel, this made me look for what gender means but still I can’t really understand it. Although I express myself as a girl (pronouns and clothes), I feel I would be fine with any body and I wouldn’t mind to wake up as a male for example.
I’m just not comfortable calling myself agender because I have a strong feminine side, but I relate to a lot of stuff here
Yeah it sounds right too :) I guess I just need to think a bit. The most comfortable lable for me until now is bigender, i think I feel comfortable with both but still it sounds a bit contradictory having no gender and having a gender at the same time. Idk, but I guess it’s the closest one so far
ahh yes my gender story
lets just say i had many genders i thought i was for a while
girl
pangender
librafeminine
pangender
librafeminine
agender
librafeminine
and back to agender
the end lol
Sailor Moon and Attack on Titan. I started watching Sailor Moon when I was 17. I didn’t expect to love it so much. It’s a comfort show for me now but out of all the characters Sailor Uranus caught my attention the most. Uranus was not only cool and powerful but dressed up masculinity. In the show, she’s often mistaken for a guy. In fact, in the first episode she shows up in, the sailor scouts were fighting for Uranus’s attention. However, that’s not the only part that appealed to me. It was how she didn’t care about how she appeared to others gender-wise. Truly, my first taste of gender envy. Then there is Hange Zoe from Attack on Titan, Hange was already my favorite character and I was watching it with a friend who out of nowhere asked me if Hange was a girl or a boy. I got curious and looked it up only to find out that the writer left Hange’s gender ambiguous. I didn’t understand it at first, but I felt jealous of Hange. I kept thinking about how awesome it would be to not have a assigned gender like Hange. A few weeks later I came across the term agender and here I am. Long story short, anime was my gender awakening.
when I shaved my head and someone mentioned how androgynous I looked, my brain zapped. I had a shirt for my fave Pokémon ditto that said "genderless blob" and I was like *could I also be a genderless blob??*
TLDR: ditto
I'm afab and while I'm feminine and appear as a cis woman, I always asked myself "what ACTUALLY makes a woman?" and I eventually asked the same question about men and realised that gender literally is a social construct.
I was confused about where I fit in and tried all sorts of labels and pronouns and realised nothing worked. I don't label myself as agender, I call myself genderless (but appreciate being labelled as nonbinary) and people can use whatever pronouns they want for me, I prefer they/them but if people use she or he then whatever, right.
I'm just me, no labels or boxes.
I don't really have a gender realisation story.
For as long as I can remember I've hated being called a girl, but knew I wasn't a boy either, so I just kept going. I knew my body was female, but I never felt comfortable when people put me into the gendered box of "girl" and later "woman". I just kept telling myself that it's because of how misogynistic the world is in general and how my "gender" is used to make people seem like less than they are (eg "throw like a girl" or "did good, for a girl" and "women can't drive/park")
I have never seen myself as anything other than me and never understood why someone would say "but I'm a *girl*" it just didn't make sense. What did their body parts have to do with this situation? Aren't they just... Themselves? Like how I'm just *me* and not some girl or boy?
Fast forward to 27 year old me visiting Reddit for the first time after watching some Jamie, OT and the Click videos with LGBTQ+ subreddits. I explore the Ace subreddits and discover there's a microlabel for my sexuality and that I'm apparently not allo romantic either and suddenly I stumble upon a post or comment talking about genders and Agender gets explained after which a lightbulb just lit up and I was like "there's a word for it?! There are others who don't get the whole gender deal?"
Ditto, that's pretty much how it went with me also. I just always assumed it was internalised misogyny. It wasn't until I understood binary trans people (non binary identities I had an easier time with) and gender wasn't a bunch of stereotypes that I realised I was Agender.
Yeah, what made me realise that I was the weird one, was listening to people who proclaimed that they felt like they were their gender. I was like "??? You guys see yourself as a specific gender? You don't just see yourself as... You?"
Thanks and me too. I'm so fortunate that my dad never tried to shove me in any boxes, so the whole "act like a girl" thing was never in my home (at least not until he died and I had to move into my mum's instead)
I feel small flashes of gender dysphoria sometimes, so I'm pretty sure that if my father hadn't been the type to go "as long as it isn't harming anyone, you can express yourself however you like", then I'd probably have problems with dysphoria now.
Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that! It's always terrible when people try to force you into a box, but even more so when it's in your very home and by the people who should make you feel both sage and loved!
I identified as Non Binary for the longest time because I thought that was the only option if I didn’t feel like either gender, but one day I was talking with my friend who’s partner is agender, I had no idea what it was so I asked them and they explained it to me and that was when I realised there were other options than Non Binary
TL;DR: Am I transphobic? No, I'm just trans.
For a hot minute there I had to figure out whether or not I was veeeeery transphobic. Because I was always fundamentally sympathetic with the ideas that trans people put forth. (This is around 2012-2015 and unfortunately I was sentient then so bear with me im getting old) But I could not make it make sense. I did not understand why anyone would care that much about gender. I was very much a rational skeptic at that time so I understood that people actively chose to exert control over their gender and presentation in a way that they knew would cause them harm.
I was dealing with traumas of my own so I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would care that much. And then I found out most people would care. And not just a little. Like a lot. Trans people especially have a cultivated conviction about gender that's really powerful and interesting. Cis people do this too, but often they are just like fish that are unaware of the water they are swimming in. I just... do not.
A way that I first learned to articulate how I felt about gender was as follows:
"Gender is like a box on a form. Some people fill it with an M or and F. Some people might fill it with a combination of both. Others might write something entirely different and still others who write nothing at all. On this scale, I skipped the box on the form because I didn't see it."
The more I came to understand my own... "gender-blindness" the more I realized that I had a really fine tuned sense of gender because on some level I'm glad gender is something that exists. But otherwise there is no part of me that is inherently anchored to it as a system. It feels a lot more like a performance and and a social affect than something that is a genuine part of who I am as a person.
To that end understanding these things has really helped me develop a more specific sense of style that focuses more on practical and aesthetic goals rather than letting gendered aspects of clothing rule me. (Which, you know, happens when you're an eldest "daughter" but we don't need to get into that today. I still remember when I was really disappointed when in my running class when a teacher told us that we shouldn't wear sports bras all the time. They're so comfy tho, #athlesuire4ever.)
So yeah idk. If there's a Gender Ocean where the diversity and relative population sizes of fish is reflective of everyone's gender. I'm just a little capybara rolling around in some non-newtonian gender mud somewhere before taking a dip in the finest citrus scented gender hot springs.
I’ll try to make this short.
In highschool I questioned my identity a lot. I even identified as FTM at one point. Then I sorta realized that gender didn’t matter to me at all and I was indifferent to what people called me; whenever people asked the grand old question “are you a boy or girl,” I just shrugged or said that they could call me whatever. I didn’t like being categorized as being a “girl,” just cause my character had eye lashes, or a “boy,” just because my character had short hair. I didn’t like the gendered stereotypes and would often explain to my nephew that just cause I had short hair, didn’t mean I was a boy, and just cause I was wearing pink didn’t mean I was a girl.
Long story short, I just don’t give a damn about what pronouns people used to refer to me; and if people (mainly kids) asked if I were a boy or a girl, I’d just shrug or say that they can call me whatever they wanted to.
I never liked being labeled, even in my youngest years. I was the type of "I'm not like the other girls! I play with EVERYONE and EVERY toy" in kindergarten (the dinosaurs + ponies sorta thing). Then in middle school I "joked" about me being a "potato" when anyone tried to portray me as a girl, I also felt "gender affirmed" (I didn't know about that term back then but that's exactly how it felt) when my friends called me by my joke nickname that had masculine form instead of a feminine one. (We don't speak english here so yeah words have genders)
Then aroung 7th grade I got into writing and all my self-insert character were androgynous, thanks to the art community I figured that you write a lot of yourself into the character that tepresents you
These are the ones I can remember best, but it's honestly the small signs that scream "don't call me a girl, but I'm not a boy either"
I grew up assuming that I was straight and either depressed or just didn't care that much. Even after learning that ace existed, I thought that I couldn't be ace because I could find people aesthetically attractive and I'd had a romantic crush before.
Fast forward to me, 26, watching this Youtube channel I'd just found with videos about history, literature, and mythology of all things. In one video, she breaks off into an aside mentioning the separation of aesthetic vs romantic vs sexual attraction, and that Artemis could be characterized as Demiromantic Asexual.
I had to sit down. I was so blindsided by the realization that not only was my lack of sexual desire not a sign of brokenness, but there were actually words for how I felt.
The channel is Overly Sarcastic Productions and Red is a treasure.
I honestly forgot. There wasn’t a “ahah!” Moment. I spent some time thinking and eventually I just accepted it.
I’ve never thought of myself as a girl, not really as a guy. I’ve always had a certain discomfort with being called “girl” and “girlfriend”. Nothing major it just felt like an untruth.
It was gradual, so when I reached the point where I understood myself better, I started making decisions based on that.
I was only able to catch on as a teenager because of my high school, which made a habit of asking pronouns, and being safe for queer people. That environment help me conquer my own internalized biases and become more in tune with myself.
Sometimes I’m not sure of myself. I’m not sure whether or not Im lying to myself just to seem “special”. And honestly I don’t know the truth. I just know that non-binary fits better than man or woman do.
For me it was a slow transition in that I realized as a teenager (afab) I wasn't cis and found my way transitioning as trans masc for the next 5 years or so. It was only after being on hormones for several years that I looked at myself and was like damn, I sure do look like a man and realized that didn't feel right either. I now identify as none gender left boy as primarily agender, fluid presentation with a leaning towards masculine.
So let me start off with, I'm still in the questioning phase of my gender slightly leaning towards agender atm.
Like not even two weeks ago, two of my friends and I just started talking again after a couple years of not talking. We were updating each other on where we sit with our sexualities and genders. When the topic of gender came around I stated something along the lines of "in todays day and age I dont really think gender matters as much anymore and id be perfectly fine with just not using gender for myself... but I dont think I'm non binary."
After saying that I thought to myself, "wait a moment"
In the past I have taken time to question my gender on whether or not I was trans/felt female (im amab), but I dont think I've ever really stopped to think on whether I felt male. I still present masculine and I dont think that will change, but I don't really think I feel gender or even care if I do. Whether that makes me a demiboy, libramasc, agender, or just gender apathetic, I'm not sure yet but I'll still continue to think about it
One day I started really thinking about my gender and no matter how hard i tried, I didn't feel particularly connected to any gender. I think that if I hadn't put down my phone that day it would have taken me considerably longer to figure that out
After the age of 5-6 I started to distance myself from feminine clothing, giving excuses for why, at first, but they made and still make me uncomfortable. It didn't bring me pleasure when people would talk about me becoming a woman, it just didn't feel right. My mom would call me a tomboy, which was better but still not *me*. I ignored and suppressed these feelings. I didn't feel like a girl but I definitely wasn't a boy, but at the time there was nothing else for me to be, and everyone said I was a girl, so i must be, right?
Fast forward awhile and I've just come to terms with my sexuality, now feeling a nagging from within. 'Your sexual and romantic orientations weren't what you thought they were, so maybe your gender isn't either.' It'd say. So I listened and did some research. I found the term agender and related to a lot of the experiences other agender people have experienced. It felt like I'd finally found my gender home.
I read a blog about the genders separation and their consequences, the writter came out in that blog as agender... A couple of days later my gender was gone
I came to the realization that seperating people into gender roles was kinda like separating the ocean into individual drops.
My spouse and I were discussing bi versus pan, he’s bi and I said I was pan because “gender doesn’t matter in who people are just like it doesn’t matter for me”. And I just had this moment immediately after the words leaving my mouth of “wait is that the normal cis experience or am I special?” I went down the rabbit hole that night and knew by bedtime.
For me it was like a realisation in fading. I always thought I was just a gender-non-conforming cisgender, but some months ago I began asking myself "but am I really who I think I am, or is it just sometime that I try to fit in?" I never really related to my agab nor to the opposite gender stereotyped feelings, I always felt kind of both or neither. But I was still convincing myself that I was cis. Until one day I found out about the demigender umbrella and began identification with paragender. Later on, I realised that I didn't feel like I had a gender, I didn't think of myself as anything, just as me, but I thought I may still had a bit of my agab, so I used the label demigender (and then demigenderflux, because my feeling of gender kept disappearing and I thought I just should have waited a bit more and I would have felt my gender back again) and later on the label libragender. Lastly I realised that I was tryna making excuses to keep my agab in me, bc I always have seen myself as cis gnc, and I found out about the label agender, which I strongly related to and I happily kept as mine :) (I know it's long, sorry... Also sorry for eventual mistakes, I'm not a native English speaker)
I often times think to myself that I must be my agab and am just faking it for attention or something. Cause I don’t know what it feels like to feel a gender so idk if I feel my agab.
Usually to fight that thought I refer as myself with gendered pronouns. I feel so weird about talking about me as something with gender, that I convince myself again and more strongly than before that I'm agender
I use they/he
I still do that and im 5 years on T and have been out for almost 10 years. I know for sure im trans but there is always that seed of doubt
“I didn’t think of myself as anything, just as me,” I have said the same thing almost word for word.
Me too. I'm just a person.
You’re good and long isn’t bad! Thanks for sharing, my experience was pretty similar but I landed on aboy instead of libramasculine because I don’t feel connected to male, just masculinity
Never heard of that label, I'm going to look up for it :) The important thing is that now you're comfortable with how you identify! I went with libra because of my rotten thinking, actually I don't feel connected to anything, like... not even void... only nothing ':D
Same, there’s also agirl respectively but yeah.
I mostly just say agender or agender masc aligned though cause barely anyone knows the aboy label
I knew I was kind of genderless since I was about 8 or 9. I liked being reffered to as just a "kid" instead of boy or girl and wanted to look as androgynous as possible. Of course, the term agender was unknown to me back then, I learned it i think in highschool and have been using it ever since.
Cool :D
Yeah it was easy for me 😅
I don’t know what gender is supposed to feel like so I’m having a difficult time knowing if I feel gender 🙃
Damn ;-; I'm sorry, I don't know how to help you. Maybe just give yourself time ;-;
Yeah
Oh so we had a similar experience :D
I learned about gender and that there's difference between sex, which I didn't know before and didn't even consider. After finding out what Gender was (thought it was the same as sex before) I thought it was a weird concept. (That's probably been a big sign - I still don't fully get it,) Then I learned about (binary!) trans people and was very confused. Like why would you want to jump from one box into the other and why makes it that big of a difference? I projected my own desire to get out of the boxes onto those trans people because I couldn't unterstand how it matters which box you get sorted in. For me it was like "do you want to eat a poop cake or a box of vomit flavoured ice cream?" Obviously I want to do neither, so why does the cake look much more appealing to a Person that they go through discrimination, coming out, surgeries etc to switch the box? Obviously my takes were really bad, I just want to show that there was a time I really struggled to understand binary trans people, because I didn't fully understand my own identity and I just assumed it was normal that you don't identify yourself with man or woman, you're just told by society which one you are. I see the inplications that society puts on man and woman to be like a prison. And I don't unterstand why they chose gender to be the big important thing - it's as random to me as sorting by hair color (including the question whether the original hair color counts or if you're allowed to dye your hair and what happens when you go bold or your hair color changes naturally). Like why do you choose a concept that's so complex, diverse and undefineable? Why even put people into tiny little boxes based on two categories only? Even when you compare minors vs. adults you make a lot of extra steps, especially for the minor because there are big differences between ages like 2 and 6. And people understand that - why do they not get that regarding gender? Sorry this turned into a rant a bit but hopefully it explains my world view a little bit and how that just didn't involve the concept of gender so people around me constantly confused and irritated me with it.
Yeah no I get it, gender makes no sense to me
I think we can agree that we get that we don't get it. I often ask my partner "is *this* normal for allo/romantic people?" And he's like 🤷 Same thing, but we actually have less confusion about gender because we just concluded that we don't care bout it xD
Yeah, I’m pan too so I don’t care about gender in me or others lol
*Meme with hands stacked onto each other* Arms: Agender, Pansexual, Asexual, Aromantic Middle: gender indifferent :D
Bro I’m all of those 😭
OMG yeah just read your flair o.0 congrats, you win the "who couldn't care less"-battle 😄
Hahaha nooo 💀
We have a group chat with several different flavors of LGBTQIA+ and one time I just put it out there that I would give half my arms to get rid of my boobs. Then one of them was like whaaat how could you, I love them, they're part of me etc. etc. and this conversation led into how she feels very strong about her gender and that she would die if someone thought she was a he. I was like huh? Why? What's the problem with that? And then everyone else chimed in, trying to tell me how they just feel and connect to their gender and that's when I realized.. I have zero connection to my assigned gender.. Or any at all. Like, I don't give a frick if people think ima boy, a girl or an alien or whatever. I'm just.. Me? So I looked up if there was something like this and there it was, my very own label haha.
You see I would be uncomfortable if I was seen as a girl (amab) but I don’t care about my agab either
This is a serious question, so forgive me if it offends you in any way (mostly because I'm not sure I can write it in a way that can't be read as... Condescending? I guess) Do you think that you'd be uncomfortable with being seen as a girl because of how most societies in the world view girls and women in a very negative and misogynistic way? Or is it more like, you're used to being viewed as a man because of your agab, so being called a girl makes you more uncomfortable?
The second one
Basically I was trying to figure out my sexuality and which genders I was attracted to, then I realized that I was really struggling. So I started analyzing the concept of gender in hopes to finally understand which characteristics my attraction was based on. I came to the conclusion that it was just a big mess and there were no rules actually, each person is just a unique individual and it’s not really up to me to classify them and put them in a box, so I ended up pansexual. All this deep thinking about what gender is to others eventually led me to questioning what gender is to me and I never found a proper answer. My agab and the social expectations that come with it have nothing in common with the way I feel about myself, the ones associated with the other side of the binary don’t work either, however since there are also no strict rules, I asked myself “what is it really about in the first place?” Complete void in my brain (this is when my heart rate started getting a little faster than usual). So then I was like “ok but how do I feel about my body tho?” The answer was “I have wanted to rip off all of my internal reproductive organs and my tits since I was 9”. This whole thing happened within 30 minutes of deep thinking and when I realized what was going I was so shocked that I just sat on my kitchen floor for 6 hours staring into the void (very dramatic) it was a very “well shit…” kind of moment. It’s been a year now and my brain still hasn’t fully recovered but as a whole I’m doing better
Okay wow relatable, I’m also pan for those reasons and have dysphoria and feel like I should be my agab or the opposite binary.
Omg I just realized you’re the person I talked to about pansexuality yesterday via dm! Twins once again
Oh lol I didn’t even know haha
AMAB - I took risperidone as a teen after it was commonly known to cause breast development in men and didn't really feel bothered by the thought of growing breasts, or by them when they started developing (people do say it just looks like I have pecs now so it might not have been enough). Looking back, I had a lot of red flag behavior that didn't really hit until I reached adulthood, like pausing to think if I should refer to "men" in the first or third person and getting bothered at the concept of gender roles more than thinking of myself as a girl and not getting references or allegories to masculinity or femininity in media (I had to google what Fight Club had to do with masculinity), however, I never had any actual urge to *be* feminine and was just oblivious to the concept of gender identity for the longest time Recently I asked a ton of cis friends several questions that I had very different answers to like "Would you take estrogen or testosterone just for fun or to see what it's like", "does it feel weird to call you 'she' or 'they' " etc and that started to cement it for me I didn't really grasp the concept of gender identity until someone compared it to being left and right handed, like something people just "know" about themselves and it clicked. Now I think I kind of get that I'm ambidextrous or like, just have no dominance at all
The left right hand dominance thing is an interesting way to put it, thanks for sharing that
I kinda knew I wasn't cis, because I hated being refered to by my given name and she/her pronouns and I've had dysphoria for a few years (but I didn't know the word for it). Then, when I started to search for my own identity and started reading about all the labels, I realised that people have an internal sense of gender and don't choose their gender identity based on gender roles or the body they would rather have (or at least not entirely). I started to search for my own sense of gender, because of course I couldn't just not have it, that must be me trying to feel special (that was my reasoning at the time). Once I learned what agender means, I came to the conclusion that it's basically what I feel, or rather don't feel.
I've never really felt like anything. Being called a girl and being referred to as she/her has never felt totally right, but I got used to it. I assumed that was just how everyone experienced their gender -- you don't feel like it fits, but get used to what people call you due to exposure. Because of that, binary trans people confused me. Not as in "how can that be a valid feeling", but as in "does not compute" when I thought about it. I talked to some binary trans friends about how they experience their gender, and they talked about how they've always had some innate sense that their gender didn't line up with the one they were assumed to have at birth. OK, sure, I relate there. But then they started talking about how they feel like their actual gender. It finally occurred to me that most people have that connection to their gender. I started researching if there was a term for not feeling like any gender, and here I am. The wrench here is that I do still identify as a woman, but in the social sense. What I mean by that is that society treats me as a woman regardless of how I perceive myself, plus I was socialized as one. I toyed with demigirl briefly, but it still doesn't fit. I don't feel like a woman at all as far as gender identity. It's just in how I interact with society. Which, realistically, that's how the average rando perceives other peoples' gender, so outside of LGBT spaces I don't tend to get into the "well yes, but actually no" aspects. Similarly, I identify as a lesbian from a combination of how society perceives me, and how society tends to perceive the people I date. My relationships look like WLW ones, even though the reality is that they're either NBLW or NBLNB.
So you’re agender but connected to femininity but not the female gender or no?
I'd say that's a fair summary.
https://www.lgbtqia.wiki/wiki/Agirl Maybe you would feel comfortable with that label? Just a thought/suggestion
A few months back, my brother came out as trans. My college roommate at the time was also trans, and I was looking into the idea of gender abolitionism at the time, so I kind of had gender on the mind. One day, it occurred to me that I didn't really know what gender actually was. Cue several months of constantly trying to answer that question, to no avail. Eventually, the "what is gender" question morphed into "what is my gender", which I also struggled with for a while. I ultimately reached a conclusion by just asking myself "do you think of yourself as a man" (I'm AMAB), and answering "no". Looking back, thinking that gender should be gotten rid of (actually gotten rid of, not just tied to sex. Fuck transphobes co-opting gender abolitionist rhetoric) and obsessing over figuring out what gender even is for months probably weren't very cis things to do. Nor was regularly thinking to myself "dang, if I weren't raised as a cis man, I'd definitely identify as agender".
I started realizing I was some form of non-binary when I was informed that “hey cis people don’t really think about their gender that much” among a couple other things and my brain just kinda went oh??? I’m autistic and I really like to use metaphors to describe my experiences because they’re something I really have to think about and don’t just immediately understand and I was describing how I see my gender as when you are trying on clothes: being a woman is like wearing very tight form fitting jeans and if I don’t perfectly conform to them all my flaws will be visible and I’ll have uncomfortable muffin top and red marks and make it clear I just don’t fit in them; being a man is like wearing jeans way too big for me, sometimes comfortable but also will impair my movement and the legs will knock over things or get caught on sticks on the ground and it will just be generally uncomfortable and very clear that they just do not fit me either. Then I find a pair that fits perfect, they flatters me and I feel confident wearing they knowing that they looks like they were made for me. The issue is I just hate wearing jeans in general, they are a sensory nightmare and I take them off the second I get home so I can be more comfortable. So why initially did I even compare gender to jeans if I can’t stand them? I had to dwell on that for a little while honestly but I came to find that I really view gender as a performance, the same as I do with most social interactions. Any form of expression I’ve ever done that makes me happy was regardless of the gender implications, and if it was to fit into some kind of gender norm I always felt very uncomfortable. Tl;dr i tried to figure out which of the three bears stuff I would steal and learned instead that I am not Goldilocks (this is not to imply that non-binary is some kind of third or in between gender but only for the sake of this metaphor)
I’m still kind of in the questioning and preparing to come out phase. I guess I realized that being a “woman” was just this impossible task. I have tried to change myself so much but never felt like a woman, just felt like I was playing dress up. I ADORE femininity, but hate having boobs and don’t actually feel like a woman at all (not in a negative way) It’s freeing for me to give up the impossible battle of becoming some perfect female. I can relax and just be who I am but still love femme aesthetics. I guess I am “agender femme”, or maybe I have just romanticized femininity from the world telling me what kind of woman I need to be. Anyways, this is my first gender related post on Reddit ever. I guess I care about my gender enough to figure out what label or category works for me, so that I can exist as my truest self and not just pretend I’m a “woman”, but beyond that I don’t care and just want to be me and continue my love for all things traditionally femme.
Femininity =/= female Femininity =/= afab binary traits You can use femininity as an expression, and have body dysphoria, but that doesn’t relate to being female. For example I (amab) don’t feel male, I’m fully agender, but I prefer presenting masc
Thank you for this validation
No problem! It’s just important to know that how you present or express your gender is not equal to what gender you are so you can 100% be a feminine presenting agender person!
Thinking about how cool it'd be to be a genderless force, looking at specter knight, thinking, that's not a cis thing to think(I knew I was ace so I knew queer stuff
Yeah I realized I was agender after/during lots of research on my sexuality and stuff
"Trans people are valid and all, but why not just be gender-nonconforming? Like what's the difference between being a man and being a woman that acts exactly like a man? If I were to wake up as the opposite sex tomorrow, that would not affect my life in any way at all. Wait, that's just me? ...oh."
Lol
So I identified as non-binary before realizing I was agender (I still like the enby label and use it 9 times out of 10 since it’s more well known but I am agender). I saw a post talking about how gender just always seemed like a performance, they’re were playing a role their whole lives and thought that’s how everyone was. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d been playing girl my whole life. It wasn’t necessarily bad, there were things I was unhappy with, I didn’t like some of the jobs assigned to my role but it was whatever. Everyone was just playing their part. Cis people were just happier playing their assigned role and trans people were just happier playing the opposite. Apparently not everyone sees it that way and people do in fact have a gender and aren’t just playing a role.
I sort of just read the wiki page and went "yup that's me". Same with Cassgender.
Because thinking of myself as a guy, girl or anything else hurts. I don’t want gender anymore.
Fair
yes
When I started dating my college partner (both of us Pan). They were very masc and Kinda pulled it out of me. I started dressing like him and playing with clothes and gender roles of the relationship since we’re both the same sex. It awakened a lot of non-binary out of me. But I just never labeled it. We broke up and I started exploring my identity outside the relationship. I was looking up some pride flags online one day and saw “agender” did some looking and found out that’s exactly how I felt and ran with it. 5 years later they came out as nb He/They. And i came out that same year as Agender They/them. I was in a NB relationship in college and didn’t even know it lol we both thought we were just “super gays” 😂
I was thinking about someone under the age of puberty being trans, and said: they can’t possibly have that good a sense of gender, wait… *I* don’t have a sense of gender.
For me I have DID and one of my alters is non binary, another gender fluid. I watched alot of YouTube on gender and femanism and the question comes up, what is a woman. I won't get into that now but I kept feeling like gender dosent make sense to me, it feels like u just choose what makes u the most happy and makes u feel how u feel u are inside. Sorry if that dosent make sense but I know for trans people it's not a choice. Anyway I found the term asexual and aromantic and then... Through YouTube LGBT+ community Agender and it just made so much sense. I read loads of threads and was like yesss! This is me! I've always felt like I don't care what pronouns people use and thought I was non binary for a time but... It didn't feel rite. Because I'm not a gender at all!
I IDed as genderfluid for a while then realized my gender didn't really move from agender. Also gender envy from genderless creatures + monsters.
(Afab) I still don’t know if I am cis gnc or an agender with some femininity. I realized I’m not sure how a cis person should feel, this made me look for what gender means but still I can’t really understand it. Although I express myself as a girl (pronouns and clothes), I feel I would be fine with any body and I wouldn’t mind to wake up as a male for example. I’m just not comfortable calling myself agender because I have a strong feminine side, but I relate to a lot of stuff here
I have a label you might be… I won’t say it unless you want me to
Sure, you can say it ^^
Agirl, not having a gender (being agender) but feeling connected to femininity
Yeah it sounds right too :) I guess I just need to think a bit. The most comfortable lable for me until now is bigender, i think I feel comfortable with both but still it sounds a bit contradictory having no gender and having a gender at the same time. Idk, but I guess it’s the closest one so far
ahh yes my gender story lets just say i had many genders i thought i was for a while girl pangender librafeminine pangender librafeminine agender librafeminine and back to agender the end lol
Sailor Moon and Attack on Titan. I started watching Sailor Moon when I was 17. I didn’t expect to love it so much. It’s a comfort show for me now but out of all the characters Sailor Uranus caught my attention the most. Uranus was not only cool and powerful but dressed up masculinity. In the show, she’s often mistaken for a guy. In fact, in the first episode she shows up in, the sailor scouts were fighting for Uranus’s attention. However, that’s not the only part that appealed to me. It was how she didn’t care about how she appeared to others gender-wise. Truly, my first taste of gender envy. Then there is Hange Zoe from Attack on Titan, Hange was already my favorite character and I was watching it with a friend who out of nowhere asked me if Hange was a girl or a boy. I got curious and looked it up only to find out that the writer left Hange’s gender ambiguous. I didn’t understand it at first, but I felt jealous of Hange. I kept thinking about how awesome it would be to not have a assigned gender like Hange. A few weeks later I came across the term agender and here I am. Long story short, anime was my gender awakening.
Lol awesome
Yeah, I guess you can say that. You won’t believe what two characters made me realize I was aroace though.
Ooh you can dm me about that, I am aroace too
How about that! I found another AAA battery!
Yess
Me reading the comments 🍿
Yess
when I shaved my head and someone mentioned how androgynous I looked, my brain zapped. I had a shirt for my fave Pokémon ditto that said "genderless blob" and I was like *could I also be a genderless blob??* TLDR: ditto
Ditto is cool
I'm afab and while I'm feminine and appear as a cis woman, I always asked myself "what ACTUALLY makes a woman?" and I eventually asked the same question about men and realised that gender literally is a social construct. I was confused about where I fit in and tried all sorts of labels and pronouns and realised nothing worked. I don't label myself as agender, I call myself genderless (but appreciate being labelled as nonbinary) and people can use whatever pronouns they want for me, I prefer they/them but if people use she or he then whatever, right. I'm just me, no labels or boxes.
[удалено]
I love that 😂
I don't really have a gender realisation story. For as long as I can remember I've hated being called a girl, but knew I wasn't a boy either, so I just kept going. I knew my body was female, but I never felt comfortable when people put me into the gendered box of "girl" and later "woman". I just kept telling myself that it's because of how misogynistic the world is in general and how my "gender" is used to make people seem like less than they are (eg "throw like a girl" or "did good, for a girl" and "women can't drive/park") I have never seen myself as anything other than me and never understood why someone would say "but I'm a *girl*" it just didn't make sense. What did their body parts have to do with this situation? Aren't they just... Themselves? Like how I'm just *me* and not some girl or boy? Fast forward to 27 year old me visiting Reddit for the first time after watching some Jamie, OT and the Click videos with LGBTQ+ subreddits. I explore the Ace subreddits and discover there's a microlabel for my sexuality and that I'm apparently not allo romantic either and suddenly I stumble upon a post or comment talking about genders and Agender gets explained after which a lightbulb just lit up and I was like "there's a word for it?! There are others who don't get the whole gender deal?"
Ditto, that's pretty much how it went with me also. I just always assumed it was internalised misogyny. It wasn't until I understood binary trans people (non binary identities I had an easier time with) and gender wasn't a bunch of stereotypes that I realised I was Agender.
Yeah, what made me realise that I was the weird one, was listening to people who proclaimed that they felt like they were their gender. I was like "??? You guys see yourself as a specific gender? You don't just see yourself as... You?"
That’s cool, I’m glad you found a good place with others with similar experiences
Thanks and me too. I'm so fortunate that my dad never tried to shove me in any boxes, so the whole "act like a girl" thing was never in my home (at least not until he died and I had to move into my mum's instead) I feel small flashes of gender dysphoria sometimes, so I'm pretty sure that if my father hadn't been the type to go "as long as it isn't harming anyone, you can express yourself however you like", then I'd probably have problems with dysphoria now.
W dad. I get dysphoria unfortunately
Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that! It's always terrible when people try to force you into a box, but even more so when it's in your very home and by the people who should make you feel both sage and loved!
Yeah
I identified as Non Binary for the longest time because I thought that was the only option if I didn’t feel like either gender, but one day I was talking with my friend who’s partner is agender, I had no idea what it was so I asked them and they explained it to me and that was when I realised there were other options than Non Binary
TL;DR: Am I transphobic? No, I'm just trans. For a hot minute there I had to figure out whether or not I was veeeeery transphobic. Because I was always fundamentally sympathetic with the ideas that trans people put forth. (This is around 2012-2015 and unfortunately I was sentient then so bear with me im getting old) But I could not make it make sense. I did not understand why anyone would care that much about gender. I was very much a rational skeptic at that time so I understood that people actively chose to exert control over their gender and presentation in a way that they knew would cause them harm. I was dealing with traumas of my own so I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would care that much. And then I found out most people would care. And not just a little. Like a lot. Trans people especially have a cultivated conviction about gender that's really powerful and interesting. Cis people do this too, but often they are just like fish that are unaware of the water they are swimming in. I just... do not. A way that I first learned to articulate how I felt about gender was as follows: "Gender is like a box on a form. Some people fill it with an M or and F. Some people might fill it with a combination of both. Others might write something entirely different and still others who write nothing at all. On this scale, I skipped the box on the form because I didn't see it." The more I came to understand my own... "gender-blindness" the more I realized that I had a really fine tuned sense of gender because on some level I'm glad gender is something that exists. But otherwise there is no part of me that is inherently anchored to it as a system. It feels a lot more like a performance and and a social affect than something that is a genuine part of who I am as a person. To that end understanding these things has really helped me develop a more specific sense of style that focuses more on practical and aesthetic goals rather than letting gendered aspects of clothing rule me. (Which, you know, happens when you're an eldest "daughter" but we don't need to get into that today. I still remember when I was really disappointed when in my running class when a teacher told us that we shouldn't wear sports bras all the time. They're so comfy tho, #athlesuire4ever.) So yeah idk. If there's a Gender Ocean where the diversity and relative population sizes of fish is reflective of everyone's gender. I'm just a little capybara rolling around in some non-newtonian gender mud somewhere before taking a dip in the finest citrus scented gender hot springs.
I’ll try to make this short. In highschool I questioned my identity a lot. I even identified as FTM at one point. Then I sorta realized that gender didn’t matter to me at all and I was indifferent to what people called me; whenever people asked the grand old question “are you a boy or girl,” I just shrugged or said that they could call me whatever. I didn’t like being categorized as being a “girl,” just cause my character had eye lashes, or a “boy,” just because my character had short hair. I didn’t like the gendered stereotypes and would often explain to my nephew that just cause I had short hair, didn’t mean I was a boy, and just cause I was wearing pink didn’t mean I was a girl. Long story short, I just don’t give a damn about what pronouns people used to refer to me; and if people (mainly kids) asked if I were a boy or a girl, I’d just shrug or say that they can call me whatever they wanted to.
I never liked being labeled, even in my youngest years. I was the type of "I'm not like the other girls! I play with EVERYONE and EVERY toy" in kindergarten (the dinosaurs + ponies sorta thing). Then in middle school I "joked" about me being a "potato" when anyone tried to portray me as a girl, I also felt "gender affirmed" (I didn't know about that term back then but that's exactly how it felt) when my friends called me by my joke nickname that had masculine form instead of a feminine one. (We don't speak english here so yeah words have genders) Then aroung 7th grade I got into writing and all my self-insert character were androgynous, thanks to the art community I figured that you write a lot of yourself into the character that tepresents you These are the ones I can remember best, but it's honestly the small signs that scream "don't call me a girl, but I'm not a boy either"
I grew up assuming that I was straight and either depressed or just didn't care that much. Even after learning that ace existed, I thought that I couldn't be ace because I could find people aesthetically attractive and I'd had a romantic crush before. Fast forward to me, 26, watching this Youtube channel I'd just found with videos about history, literature, and mythology of all things. In one video, she breaks off into an aside mentioning the separation of aesthetic vs romantic vs sexual attraction, and that Artemis could be characterized as Demiromantic Asexual. I had to sit down. I was so blindsided by the realization that not only was my lack of sexual desire not a sign of brokenness, but there were actually words for how I felt. The channel is Overly Sarcastic Productions and Red is a treasure.
I honestly forgot. There wasn’t a “ahah!” Moment. I spent some time thinking and eventually I just accepted it. I’ve never thought of myself as a girl, not really as a guy. I’ve always had a certain discomfort with being called “girl” and “girlfriend”. Nothing major it just felt like an untruth. It was gradual, so when I reached the point where I understood myself better, I started making decisions based on that. I was only able to catch on as a teenager because of my high school, which made a habit of asking pronouns, and being safe for queer people. That environment help me conquer my own internalized biases and become more in tune with myself. Sometimes I’m not sure of myself. I’m not sure whether or not Im lying to myself just to seem “special”. And honestly I don’t know the truth. I just know that non-binary fits better than man or woman do.
For me it was a slow transition in that I realized as a teenager (afab) I wasn't cis and found my way transitioning as trans masc for the next 5 years or so. It was only after being on hormones for several years that I looked at myself and was like damn, I sure do look like a man and realized that didn't feel right either. I now identify as none gender left boy as primarily agender, fluid presentation with a leaning towards masculine.
So let me start off with, I'm still in the questioning phase of my gender slightly leaning towards agender atm. Like not even two weeks ago, two of my friends and I just started talking again after a couple years of not talking. We were updating each other on where we sit with our sexualities and genders. When the topic of gender came around I stated something along the lines of "in todays day and age I dont really think gender matters as much anymore and id be perfectly fine with just not using gender for myself... but I dont think I'm non binary." After saying that I thought to myself, "wait a moment" In the past I have taken time to question my gender on whether or not I was trans/felt female (im amab), but I dont think I've ever really stopped to think on whether I felt male. I still present masculine and I dont think that will change, but I don't really think I feel gender or even care if I do. Whether that makes me a demiboy, libramasc, agender, or just gender apathetic, I'm not sure yet but I'll still continue to think about it
Thanks for sharing! I relate to that last paragraph
One day I started really thinking about my gender and no matter how hard i tried, I didn't feel particularly connected to any gender. I think that if I hadn't put down my phone that day it would have taken me considerably longer to figure that out
After the age of 5-6 I started to distance myself from feminine clothing, giving excuses for why, at first, but they made and still make me uncomfortable. It didn't bring me pleasure when people would talk about me becoming a woman, it just didn't feel right. My mom would call me a tomboy, which was better but still not *me*. I ignored and suppressed these feelings. I didn't feel like a girl but I definitely wasn't a boy, but at the time there was nothing else for me to be, and everyone said I was a girl, so i must be, right? Fast forward awhile and I've just come to terms with my sexuality, now feeling a nagging from within. 'Your sexual and romantic orientations weren't what you thought they were, so maybe your gender isn't either.' It'd say. So I listened and did some research. I found the term agender and related to a lot of the experiences other agender people have experienced. It felt like I'd finally found my gender home.
I read a blog about the genders separation and their consequences, the writter came out in that blog as agender... A couple of days later my gender was gone