What are your thoughts on agender people?

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Hello mumset, I am brand new here and made an account because I'm curious about how GC women feel about agender people. This is purely for my own understanding as I've read several posts from GC women on this site saying they do not have a gender identity, and I wanted to explore further the reasons why this is.

From my understanding, there are two types of agender people:

1. gender apathetic i.e. people who don't have a gender identity and don't care (gender has no inherent value to them so they do not mind gendered language being applied to them)

2. gender averse i.e. people who don't have a gender identity and actively reject gendered language (they are distressed at the gendered aspect of their lives and are more likely to seek an androgynous appearance)

Do either of these concepts resonate with you, or do you still feel very connected to your female sex despite lacking a gender identity?

Borges was a writer. It's from en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge

It's in Jorge Luis Borges' essay 'The Analytical Language of John Wilkins' first published in Spanish in 1942. It's a fictional Chinese taxonomy of animals.

Another translation runs:
"(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies."

I'm no less impressed to find it not original to you. Just absolute genius to use it in this context bamboux.

Thank you, Bint and Chers, that's really interesting. I agree with the Dame that this was an excellent use of the words.

Same.

And to be fair, categorising humans along the lines of 'a fictional Chinese taxonomy of animals' still makes more sense, and is vastly more interesting, than doing it on the basis of gender identity.

Agreed!

And I've learned something new, so thanks for that as well, Bamboux.

@Bamboux , Plagiarist Laureate then

Gender identity is just unnecessary. 'Gender' refers to the social stereotypes associated with a biological sex. For example, a 'woman' wears dresses and make-up, likes to gossip, enjoys certain kinds of films and books, is nurturing, is bad at driving etc etc. Most people who are biologically female won't fit in with all of those stereotypes so what is their gender identity? And what's the point of even trying to figure it out?

Two things here.

1. PSHE. When pupils learrn about e.g. drug use, they are not taught in a way that makes them more likely to use drugs. They are not taught about terrorism in a way that makes them more likely to become a terrorist. But with gender identity, they are taught in a way that positively encourages and significantly increases their chance of identifying as LGBT.

1. It's not the same as a born again christian asking to use a new name. Its more like if they said their mental health and wellbeing hinged upon you agreeing that God is real and joining in with their prayers. And that if you didn't go along with it then you obviously want all Christians to die

I have an age. It's a number that's directly linked to the number of years since i was born.

I don't have an age identity. And I don't interact with or identify with my age. It's just a fact about me.

Let's say I'm in my 40s. Some of my day to day experience is directly linked to my age. Perhaps I have irregular periods or weight gain or a loss of physicsl fitness.

But most of my day to day experiences are unrelated to my age, and might even be more common in people of a different age. Perhaps I like anime or building lego or knitting or stamp collecting. Those things don't change my age.

I don't identify as a 20 year old or 60 year old. I'm just a 40 year old who likes anime and knitting. And liking anime certainly wouldn't entitle me to play in an Under-18 sports team. Nor would it stop me from going through the menopause.

Yep — in fact Foucault famously uses it in his Archaeology of Knowledge, to illustrate a point about how the ways we categorise subjective aspects of knowledge and experience, and how these change over time. They might seem obvious and “natural” ways of ordering the world at one point in history; then look baffling, illogical and incomprehensible in a different era.

Much like the ways that organising the world by “identity categories” would look incomprehensible and irrational to other eras. We don’t currently build our ideas around what are fundamental aspects of the self out of Galenic humours (as in parts of the premodern and early modern world); nor do we think of what we like to eat, or our place of birth, as determining our character. Similarly, to someone 400 or 2000 years ago, the arbitrariness and fanciful boundaries of current ideas of “gender identity” would have seemed as silly and bizarre to them, as we find Galenic medicine today.

Actually, my mistake — I just wrote that, then thought, actually, I’m sure it’s in The Order of Things, not The Archaeology of Knowledge. So, an erratum to the above! (peri brain fog!)

Yes, it is in the Order of Things 🙂

I'm so happy to see it went down a storm here.

I’m a FAG (Fuck All Genders)
Pronouns: Do/One
Love this!

All the above. There is no need for me to artificially create my personality through carefully planned out self assessment of what presented categories I want to access. I might as well be trying to understand myself through my favourite power ranger. I don't have time for this.

And its not as simple as 'well can't you just respect that other people do' which has a subtext (and enable them without jarring their belief). No, I can't. Because this is not a neutral, harmless thing like your favourite power ranger, star sign, colour season or any other way of understanding yourself and how you wish to present yourself to others to get better social input back. (Which in the end is what it is about.) This harms women. Who are being told to please not mind the harm because awww bless.

No. I'm out of bless I'm afraid. I'm A-bless.

Plus, messing about with gender is the gateway drug to trying to change your sex. Sure, not everyone escalates to surgery and medication and permanent physical damage, but too many do.

Just say no.

Sorry, I need to correct that. Messing about with gender labels is the gateway drug. Just say no.

Crufts seem use gender for sex now, very confusing.

When I was pregnant I was very very ill and almost died several times. There were times I wish I was not the one pregnant and I just wanted to feel okay for a few minutes but never did for the entire few months. I didn't get to choose to be a woman. The woman choose me. I don't get to identify as not pregnant do I?

Do you get to identify as not pregnant? Do child rape victims who are forced to carry their pregnancies of their father's and uncles get to identify their way out of that? No. They are women. Not by choice but by birth.

In the end my feelings about being a woman or being pregnant didn't matter. It's a physical reality for myself and many others. It's offensive to me that this very VERY physical and sometimes unpleasant experience is reduced down to gender or identity politics.

People who think they are agender are either naive or need a serious reality check. You can't change your sex.

Not all women can have a period, get pregnant or experience menopause but ONLY women can experience those things.

*People who think they are agender are either naive or need a serious reality check. You can't change your sex.

Not all women can have a period, get pregnant or experience menopause but ONLY women can experience those things.*

Of course, and I can't believe that some people are even questioning this??

Of course women are defined by their biological organs and body.

It's offensive to me that this very VERY physical and sometimes unpleasant experience is reduced down to gender or identity politics.

And why are women being expected to accept this reduction, this constant arguing and wangling of their 'lived experience' and other things usually shouted about as so important? Why is all this happening?

So that womanhood can be twisted and packaged into something a man can have.

Which tells you very clearly: no one ever loses sight of the fact there are only two sexes. One of which has the power to identify into the bits of womanhood that they want, and the other of which does not even have the power to be allowed to say no. There is no point of identifying into womanhood that the privilege of a man disappears and they reach the point of being unheard and for others to define as women are. No amount of cosmetic surgery does it. No amount of hormones.

Play with gender identity labels is demanding that women collude in their own oppression.

It won't be long before they change the animals going in to the arc 2 x 2 to 3 x 3. Or more.

nilsmousehammer you a said exactly and more pithily than I ever could, exactly how I feel. Thank you very much. I wish this could be a FWR sticky at the top of the topic:

It's offensive to me that this very VERY physical and sometimes unpleasant experience is reduced down to gender or identity politics.

And why are women being expected to accept this reduction, this constant arguing and wangling of their 'lived experience' and other things usually shouted about as so important? Why is all this happening?

So that womanhood can be twisted and packaged into something a man can have

Which tells you very clearly: no one ever loses sight of the fact there are only two sexes. One of which has the power to identify into the bits of womanhood that they want, and the other of which does not even have the power to be allowed to say no. There is no point of identifying into womanhood that the privilege of a man disappears and they reach the point of being unheard and for others to define as women are. No amount of cosmetic surgery does it. No amount of hormones.

Play with gender identity labels is demanding that women collude in their own oppression.

EXACTLY. Gender identity has become a male backlash to feminism. It’s the angry reaction to women gaining some independence. Misogyny is why women who are gaining any kind of power or voice will be cut down on their perceived adequacy of looks or male-gaze sexiness, and/or be told to be quiet and calm down and/or budge up and stop gatekeeping and let men into their womanhood. Because misogyny wants to keep women policed, squashed down, boxed in and on a very short leash.

While I don’t blame any young woman for wanting to escape all of that and become something else, the attempt at escape doesn’t really change anything for her or any other women ultimately.

It seems like a self-protective move and ultimately not fruitful, just a self-distraction and self-deception really. The overall structure of misogyny still has to be constantly fought against by all women just so the lucky ones of us can live our lives with basic freedoms.

I’m conscious that the freedoms we have in some places (in the UK for example) are worlds away from what women in many other countries now or UK women in other eras could dream of having, so this is even more precious to me.

👏👏👏