Agender Musings

[MorbidMuch]

I don't have a gender identity.

I believe that gender is a social construct that upholds the patriarchy, which is why I don't identify with any part of it. I see it as something from outside of me.

No child is born associating toys, colours, clothes, jobs, or actions with a particular sex. They have their personal preferences, but parents and society then add their gender bias - either making them conform, or supporting them in not conforming.

I was reading the definitions of different genders that are out there and the one I am closest to Is Agender. Even the S.A.G.E. Test I took indicated that I was androgynous.

If I accepted this identity, I would fall under the trans umbrella.

Would it be allowed to run groups / meetings / events for Agender females and keep penes out of it?

Yip, wondered the same myself

Definition 'denoting or relating to a person who does not identify themselves as having a particular gender.'

Yup, shove up under the umbrella and make room for gender critical feminists.

I am like you. I don't have a gender identity either.

However-

I am a woman who works in a male dominated job (the only woman there), who is one of only 2 of us that can do certain parts of the job (which are considered very "male jobs") who doesn't identify with any gender, so does that make me a man in the eyes of society?

Of course not. I'm a gender non-conforming (in some peoples eyes) woman who just happened to be good at what traditionally was seen as a man's job.

I’ve taken to (self) IDing as a Gender Atheist.

I hope you're not appropriating unbelief in a deity to mean unbelief in gender?
Part of my 'identity' is already atheist so I'd have to go with agender atheist ... except the 'gender' part maybe really isn't important enough to name.

I’m bog standard atheist as well

To me, agender (i.e. not having a particular gender identity), isn't the same as dis-believing in the whole concept of gender identity. Agender could sound like -- I believe in gender identity, I just can't find mine. Or the not a man, not a woman gender non-identity. Or not feeling you lie anywhere on the famous gender spectrum, but that in itself still says you kind of believe in the spectrum..........

Gender atheist says more clearly for me where I am. It's the difference between not finding/having a gender, and never going looking for one in the first place......................

I've never been sure how far you can really choose all aspects of being socialised into a gender.

I remember in my sociology a- level seeing people treat babies differently depending on what sex they believed the baby was. It made me think we experience subtly different worlds from birth. Can you really undo all that?

I was 'socialised' into a religion - I chose to think about it critically and reject it.

Gender and god are both concepts which exist, and have 'reality' both inside people's heads and society.

There's two different ways to be agender and they're completely chalk and cheese.

There's the neoliberal individualist way... gender or lack of it is seen as a function of individual identity and personal expression.

Then there's the radical collectivist way. Gender (or at least its importance in society) should be abolished for all. Decouple it from biological sex. Designating toilets/prisons/hospital wards etc by penchant for dresses, make up, sparkles, prosecco on the one hand and camo shorts, football, lager, car mechanics etc on the other is as absurd as designating them by being a tea lover or a coffee lover, or a cat person or a dog person. People like what they like, but the bullshit is in the correlation between said likes and their pants contents.

Choosing to be agender under the transgender ideology umbrella means you are liberating yourself individually, while leaving the bars of the gender prison in place for everyone else. I cannot think of a philosophy more Thatcherite. It's like "getting on your bike & finding a job" while not contributing to the movement against structural unemployment that yokes so many people in misery and poverty.

To me, feminism is about collectivism, solidarity and one for all & all for one. There's nothing wrong with choosing less/no-gendered choices, same with going out and getting a job and generally living one's life and getting by. The problem comes when we forget/ignore we are part of a much wider social context that has material systems of power that privilege some and oppress others.

Yes, Kim, you're absolutely right.

My problem with this is that I'm increasingly leaning towards Miranda Yardley's stance of gender abolitionism. I increasingly believe gender to be harnful, as well as not subscribing ro it myself. Whilst agender people should be welcome under the trans umbrella (although cynically, I suspect they'll find a way of rewriting the ever-shifting definitions to keep female-centric agender females out because we don't centre males), gender abolitionists won't be because we threaten the umbrella's existence.

Thanks for some really interesting responses.

Kim, that's where a lot of my feelings lie. I feel that gender needs to be dismantled completely for the benefit of everyone.

I think my musing came about as either a contingency or a work-around. If it becomes gender rather than sex enshrined in law then, until it's fought, could we legally exclude penes from a group / space designated for Agender females?

There was a particular event I wanted to go to that included a workshop on women's health, this was of course inclusive to transwomen. Why I have no idea, because surely what makes women's health different from just health is women's specific anatomy & physiology?

This was followed up by a session exclusively for the transwomen. So the first was open to all "women" via gender (though exclusionary to transmen with female biology ), the second was restricted via the category of sex to certain males. As far as I know, the double standard was unremarked on. I ended up not going, as I wouldn't have been able to cope with the cognitive dissonance and keep my mouth zipped.

So, no, women can't have groups and events designated for their own sex, they have to be inclusionary of males. But males can have their own sex based spaces, events and boundaries.

8th rule of misogyny: Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.

Yes, bd67th. I wonder if some of the reason for MN being so particularly targeted by TRAs is because it's home to revolutionary gender-abolitionary campaigns such as ....

Toys be Toys lettoysbetoys.org.uk