My Coming Out Story: On Being Agender

I rarely talk or think about being agender. Most of the time it feels pointless. I will forever be her, reminding myself to turn around when someone has called out a name that is unfamiliar and doesn't belong to me. I can't change that, but my silence feels complicit. I don't want to be an accomplice with a world that refuses me my own gender identification.

Passing

Passing is a term in feminist circles meant to suggest that someone of a minority is assumed to be "normal" or what everyone else is. The minority is typically a stigmatized group and by passing as "normal" they will receive preferential treatment. If you saw me on the street you would immediately think she. I pass as female. For the last year my hair was a bubblegum pink curly bob. Now it's aqua and long ocean hair somehow makes me girly. I wear dresses and purple short shorts with yellow flowers. I even regularly hold hands with a person that passes as male, making us pass for a heterosexual couple. This is how I pass, and I do so knowingly.

As an asexual panromantic agender person, passing has been a point of frustration for me. I am assumed female and heterosexual until I prove otherwise. Proving is dangerous though. Telling every person you meet, "please don't refer to me as she", or "just so you know, there is zero chance I will be sexually attracted to you, thought you might like to know", is a social transgression. I could try and look androgynous so I wouldn't have to say it, and I have done this in the past, but can't I wear a dress, menstruate, and not be a woman?

Passing holds a very precarious place in my heart. I love that I can look in the mirror and see someone very femme. But I don't want to be assumed female. I cringe every time someone reads my name (Talia or Natalie) and then immediately after the pronoun she comes into vogue. I also know by passing as female, I am safe from transphobic violence. I am physically safe, but feel like I don't really belong anywhere. Many trans people are male to female or female to male or look androgynous, but that is not where I stand and that is not my story. I live through the benefits and pain of passing.

Coming Out

My agender coming out story practically never happened, which is perhaps why I find it so intriguing. By this point my mother knew that I was a vegan asexual feminist. Her response to all of these labels was she wished I wasn't, I was making my life harder. My mother was driving me somewhere and I was sitting in the front seat of the car. I was talking to her about agender people because one, I find the topic fascinating, and two, I was dipping my feet in. When she hadn't gotten angry yet I quietly said, "Mom, that's what I am." Then she let out this sigh and said, "Of course you are." And the topic changed and that was the end of it. I asked her about it another day and what she had meant was, Talia, you're already all of these weird identities, of course you're another one. It was like she was sighing and saying, just your bad luck. Or, here we go again. Like I said, not much of a story, but it's stuck with me.

I have not repeated my agender coming out often. None of my other family members know I am agender. I go through life being she. I am her, the female, with the boyfriend.

The only exception is online. Almost all of the cisgender (people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) male friends I've met through playing online video games have been supportive. They hear my voice over voice chat programs and assume I am female and I will tell them quickly that while I may seem female, and am called female, I do not identify that way. I don't think any of them get it, but they accept it. At worst they forget it, but in a well meaning way because it just doesn't fit into something they can understand. They tried though, they always do. I think it's the distance that makes it safe to out myself. It's also the masculine atmosphere of World of Warcraft that compels me to identify as agender, pointing out I am not a male buddy, and I am not a female conquest either. I am outside of your boundaries and I want you to make space for me. I think they do, or at least they pretend to.

The Fluidity of My Gender

Although I have said I am agender up until this point, it is not that simple. I am not always this nothing beyond a binary system. If I think about it long and hard there is no word for how I feel. It is an experience of nothing, and yet it doesn't feel empty. It is just what it is, complete in its own ineffability.

Other days I will wake up and there are words for it. I can be femme or feminine. On those days I even giggle at being called a princess or being greeted as miss or lady. I know they are meant as terms of endearment and they amuse me because they are not too far off. Not right, but just outside the boundary of the inexplicable I am. Lesbian almost seems appropriate, but in the way Monique Wittig meant it and not in that I'm sexually attracted to women. I am still asexual. On those days I still don't like she. She is always someone else, someone not me. Like being called the wrong name by someone you don't know very well and you sigh, wondering, should I correct you? What will be least uncomfortable for everyone involved? Because there is no way to avoid the discomfort.

I once had someone tell me I think so much, I thought my gender away. I looked and looked for something, and found nothing, so I decided there was nothing. I'm not sure he's wrong. Sometimes I wonder if gender is as much a discourse as Foucault's sexuality and while it is multiplying while everyone else looks for its secrets, I've looked in a different way and found nothing there and been surprised at it all. To say that though would mean a lot. It would mean something about your gender and I don't think I want to go there right now. I'll just speak for myself, but the feeling remains. If Beauvoir said women are made, not born, maybe I am unmaking myself? I can't help but wonder. Which leads me onto my troubles with feminism.

I am an agender Feminist

In Gender Trouble Judith Butler said one of the problems with feminism is that it assumes a female subject, constricting the very identity it hopes to liberate. Over twenty years later and this hasn't changed much, from what I've seen. Yes we've got trans feminism and intersex feminism and all kinds of fantastic third wave stuff that makes me squeak with delight, but when it comes down to it I am still sitting in feminist classrooms being taught by women to women who are all feeling pretty damn safe because I am a woman. Put one "man" in the class and it throws the whole vibe off. Once he admits he's gay everyone settles down a little (as occurred in my intro to women's studies class), but everyone is still aware he is there. To be a woman in a woman's studies class is to be in the know, to be included. To be spoken for. The foundation of the theory largely relies on the fact that I am a woman, but I'm not.

So I feel this weird backwards pull, the desire to be a woman amidst feminist. Yes, I menstruate! I want to say. Yes, I understand what it's like to be afraid of the dark at night and to pick my shoes based on how likely I am to be raped based on where I'm going! Through these affirmations I realized I do belong, these theories speak for me, whether I am a woman or not. I am, as some feminists have said, in the class of woman. I belong to the social organization called woman, but I am not a woman. I am something else, I only fit neatly into this patriarchal category we all bond together inside. So this is a liberating thought, when I remember it. If I, an agender person, can be in the class of women, what about men? Is there room for them in here too? Sometimes, although they, like me, need a little wiggle room. We need our own theories, but I'm confident we'll get there safe and sound.

I am an agender vegan

I first thought against writing this post because, what does agender have to do with vegan, and isn't this a vegan feminist blog? But I am a vegan feminist and my life is this complex web of intersections. Being agender and vegan do intersect, or, more importantly, they don't. Being trans or agender is a non-issue in the vegan community. By non-issue, I mean it is not spoken about as far as I have seen. I'm not sure if this is a "don't ask don't tell" policy or similar to their feminist policy, which is generally "if we're vegan for political reasons, we almost certainly accept feminism as important. Not the most important, but important." I suspect the latter, so there isn't much to write, aside for this: lately for me I've grown a little disenchanted by animal rights. We vegans say time and time again that we will not save the world or be at peace by putting humans first. Feminists say this too in a slightly different way. We need to find peace for everyone all at once. We can't leave anyone behind. I especially have begun to feel this way after reading Derrida's The Animal That Therefore I am.

Vegans need to be a little bit more open about saying all rights, for all animals, right now. Not because we'll get some humanists or other people who will say, well we think you hate humans, but because we are all equally important. Our campaign posters should simultaneously say we support animal rights, the end of animals as property, being queer, being trans, and all of those other variations humans can be and are. Yes animal rights is important, but we're all here together. We know we can't just save pigs, we've got to save cows, and chickens, and fish too. Dogs while we're at it. Humans as well. We're animals too.

Asexuality is a Feminist Issue

I believe I've always been asexual, but I've only self identified as asexual for the past few years. To be clear, I do not believe I can reproduce on my own. Many people have made that mistake when I have told them that I am asexual. The education system teaches us the medical definition of asexuality and never the sexual definition of asexuality, so it's an easy mistake to make. Medical asexuality and sexuality asexuality are two completely different words with very different meanings.

To describe my asexuality I often go over the same statements; it has begun to feel like a routine. It typically goes generally like this: "An asexual is someone who experiences no sexual attraction. That's it. Asexual people can and sometimes do masturbate and have sex, but that differs widely based on the asexual individual. Some asexuals don't care about sex and treat it as if it's not their favourite activity, some find sex scary, and others find it disgusting. Similarly, some asexuals will kiss, others won't, some will hug, others won't. The boundaries of all asexuals are different and it's best to ask them about their boundaries in a respectful way. There is also a second word that often comes after asexual; romantic. An asexual aromantic would be not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone, whereas an asexual homoromantic would be not sexually but romantically attracted to humans of the same sex, and so forth. Some asexuals choose to not be in relationships, some choose to be in relationships only with asexuals, and some are in relationships with sexuals." I think that's a pretty fair explanation, but maybe I'm wrong because even after I explain this some people still look at me as if I told them I'm secretly a unicorn.

Some of the common responses to my asexuality are: maybe you've never been with a good enough man, are you a virgin, do you have a hymen, does everything work down there, have you ever orgasmed before, you'll change your mind in a few years, maybe you haven't found what you like yet, and I used to know someone like that too and then they got over it. All of these responses follow a similar pattern. They assume that the person telling me these things knows more about my sexuality based on what is normal than I do based on living in the same body for twenty years, which I find pretty ridiculous. I have decided to identify in this way because it means something to me. If I follow your advice, I will have to live through any consequences that come from your advice and your life will not be affected in any way. These kind of statements place an unfair burden on the asexual, undermine their life experience, and challenge their autonomy. They're insulting. I'm just saying no, I'm not interested. Perhaps the question should be - why does that bother you so much? These questions might be less hurtful if they didn't reflect real issues. For example, FSD (female sexual dysfunction) is a "medical disorder" where one of the symptoms is lack of desire to have sex. So whereas I think my asexuality is a perfectly acceptable, but not common, type of sexuality, if I were to go to the doctor I could be diagnosed as sick. Hrm, does this ring an oppressive bell to anyone? Haven't we been through this before with the DSM?

So perhaps the answer could seem like - well if you experience judgement and are deemed ill if you tell anyone you're asexual, why, just not tell people? There's a concept called "passing" which generally means you can pass or are close enough to the dominant group that you can be mistaken for, and pretend to be, one of them without anyone noticing. One of the problems is that asexuals can pass very well. In fact, I've been in a relationship with a man for four years so I automatically pass by accident. To not pass, and have people stop assuming I'm heterosexual, I actually have to tell them that I'm asexual. I, like probably many other people, don't like to pass. Not telling someone what you are, when you know they don't realize what you are, feels like lying, deceiving, and keeping your mouth shut because you'll get in trouble for the truth. It feels like I'm being dishonest about myself. It makes me feel ashamed, when I really have nothing to be ashamed about. I'm asexual - it's not a problem.

To make this crystal clear; I believe asexuality is obviously a feminist issue because asexuals can experience hardship for living their lives in a way that's true to themselves. Asexuals are treated in negative ways that make their lives more difficult than they would be if these people identified as, or were, heterosexual. I think this is the case because of a variety of different factors, many of which are theorized about in feminism. I think it's time to turn a feminist lens on asexuality.

Finding liberation is not as easy as accepting asexuals; we need to find places and spaces where we know we are supported and safe. There are few and far between feminist publications on asexuals, and I even had a professor once think I meant celibacy when I asked if she knew of any (celibacy is a choice, asexuality is not). There is division within the asexual community. Some live their asexuality in isolation and don't think asexuality is a political issue or something worth explaining to other people and some have restrictive and narrow definitions of who can be an asexual that exclude many currently self-identified asexuals (probably even me). Some asexuals want to find liberation in asexual communities alone because they are not like sexuals, whereas some asexuals turn to LGBT and identify as queer themselves. It can also go the other way, and some LGBT groups may think as non-sexual people that asexuals don't belong there, or they may accidentally privilege sexuals over asexuals within their groups (which seems a lot more likely).

Asexuality is a feminist issue; I just don't know what that would look like if more people took up the challenge at incorporating it into feminism. I'd be excited to find out.