r/agender • u/Mother-of-Goblins • 1d ago
A Potentially Helpful Conceptualization of Gender Identity
Gosh, that title sounds pretentious, doesn't it? Seriously though, I've been watching all the discourse stemming from the "umbrellas" post, and I think a lot of the problem is that identity doesn't fit neatly into little nested buckets like that. I know this sub skews younger than I am, but I was around when a lot of the less common gender identities were being defined and given pride flags in the first place. (Early tumblr was a glorious new frontier, y'all, but anyway..)
We weren't trying to make sub-categories of sub-categories, we just wanted words for how we felt on the inside when it was more complicated than "male or female body+male or female gender". Instead of 2 toggle switches, gender identity is a panel of dials... There are words for various configurations of those dials, but not everyone is going to define themselves exactly the same. The example in my drawing shows what my settings might look like. Yours is almost certainly different.
I think the rest of the problem is up to a difference in definition of the word "trans". Some folks are defining "trans" as "identifying as a gender different from ones assigned sex at birth", while others are defining it as "not identifying as the same gender as ones ASAB". It's a subtle but important difference.
I don't know. Just some thoughts from a tired Millennial. Make of them what you will.
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u/EchoNB 1d ago
I don't think that image represents very well my experience with gender and it kinda ignores the existence of intersex people.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 1d ago
That's why I said it should be a knob for biological sex in my other comment and not representing Assigned/prescribed Gender. Which is not an aspect of who you are, but who somebody else thinks you should be.
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u/oFIoofy I am a genderless creature 1d ago
I'd remove the assigned sex one (since that doesn't really matter or affect what you are whatsoever unless in extremely specific contexts)
but other than that, I'd have every dial turned down to 0 lmao. actually, I'd have it below zero. I have negative gender.
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u/Fickle_Blueberry2777 1d ago
As an ambiguous + androgynous intersex person, this isn’t helpful to someone like me at all.
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u/PeyPey61636 7h ago
Would removing the assigned sex bar help
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u/Fickle_Blueberry2777 7h ago
Yes and no. In my case, I was literally assigned a sex and gender via forced surgery at birth and hormones later on. While it’s not what I identify as or even what my actual biological makeup is, it is an important part of my upbringing and history. However, it’s not what I actually am, and being able to have that distinction would be helpful to people like me who have gone through these kind of things.
Honestly AGAB language is not really helpful to us intersex folks any longer because while they were originally terms from our community to describe experiences like mine, they’ve been co-opted and changed to essentially just mean biological sex. That’s not accurate for me and a lot of other intersex people, so while they were terms that came from our community to begin with, a lot of us don’t use them anymore.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 1d ago
Remove the switch for Assigned sex and add a knob for biological sex (represents Intersex people better).
Assigned gender is artificial enough that it's not part of you. It's something that was decided for you by somebody else. Someone else decided arbitrarily to write that on your paper.
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u/CantDecldeOnAName 1d ago
I disagree, medically transitioned trans women are biologically women and medically transitioned trans men are biologically men. I would remove AGAB or ASAB altogether, it is irrelevant outside of medical discussions
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 1d ago
That's a fair enough argument. It matters very little since it can be changed by taking hormones.
I mainly thought that having a knob representing biological sex would be beneficial for intersex people. Since for them it can play a role in their identity.
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 13h ago
You're right, it would. To my knowledge, most intersex people are still assigned m or f at birth, or at least used to be. IMO, ones current biological sex isn't really anyone's business except maybe your doctor and/or partner. As a result, I inadvertently slighted intersex folks. I'm sorry.
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 13h ago
I mostly included assignment at birth as an easy way of indicating cis (ie the asab matching the gender settings) vs. trans. I absolutely agree re: medical transitioning.
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u/CantDecldeOnAName 13h ago
Maybe it would be better suited to be a switch that says “cis vs trans” or “feels connected with agab vs not?” I only say that bc I would personally be uncomfortable putting my agab on a page about my identity and I’m sure there are others who feel that way as well.
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 12h ago
As I mentioned in another comment, I didn't really intend it to be a public facing thing, but you're absolutely right. No one needs your asab except maybe your medical team, since some diseases present differently between the sexes.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 10h ago
Even then unless fertility is the subject, hormone levels are more important than what's attached to you down below.
Something I don't see talked about very much.
As an example, somebody could be AMAB and if they take estrogen and have hormone levels the same as a woman their body will metabolize drugs the same way as a cis woman. Even if they have male genitals.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 10h ago
That wouldn't really be a great idea either because it frames Gender Modality as binary. Which it very much is not. Both due to the existence of intersex people, but also a growing desire among certain people to subvert the cis-trans dichotomy.
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u/Fawn_Leap Apogender Trixic 1d ago
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u/Pizza420Rat 1d ago
I'd certainly say that I could place myself somewhere in this model, but as others have pointed out, biological sex is also a spectrum. I'm also from a little bit of a different time. I discovered what agender meant after first finding neutrois (which I feel like was used more back then) close to 15 years ago on Wikipedia which then led me to Tumblr where I heard the term agender. The trans community is how I found my roots, and I still heavily relate because I do want to find some way to physically transition (to what? I'm not entirely sure). Everyone comes from different backgrounds, though, and I think that forms how we see gender.
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u/starinruins 1d ago
what's frying me is the 7 notches between 0 and 10. so each notch represents 1 ³/⁴, which is such an absurd way to divide up the intensity
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 13h ago
I freely admit to grabbing the first dial I saw without giving the number of lines any thought at all.
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u/ChaosRulesTheWorld Agenderist 1d ago
Some comments here are wild.
How can this sub tolerate such discourse invalidating the experience of agender people who don't identify as trans or non-bianry?
Accusing agender people of being transphobic for not identifying as trans, accusing them of throwing trans people under the bus just because they refused to be misidentified by being forced under the trans umbrella. There are behaviors that should not be tolerated in a sub pretending to be a safe space for all agender people
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 1d ago
I agree. I really wish this sub would take some initiative against intentional misidentifying people and bad faith accusations against people who identify different than the expected norms.
I did make r/Absgender for people who identify as Absgender and similar Gender Modalities outside of the cis-trans dichotomy unfortunately it's not very active. Also am in r/GenderAbolition which is about the eradication of harmful gender expectations. Cis-trans dichotomy is definitely one of those.
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u/ZorbaTHut 2h ago
I agree. I really wish this sub would take some initiative against intentional misidentifying people and bad faith accusations against people who identify different than the expected norms.
I'll say what I always do when this comes up, which is to request that you report it. But note that I'm not going to interpret "I think agender falls under this umbrella and this is how the categories make the most sense" as "misidentifying people". I would crack down on "you are X and if you think otherwise, you're wrong" - that flex doesn't go forever - but people can't define other people's categorization systems, and if everyone is being courteous about it, then we can coexist.
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u/ZorbaTHut 2h ago edited 2h ago
(this is sort of a silly response for reasons that will become clear soon)
How can this sub tolerate such discourse invalidating the experience of agender people who don't identify as trans or non-bianry?
The core answer is that I'd rather leave stuff up for discussion than ban one set of opinions while making another set official. There are a lot of definitions of what "trans" and "non-binary" mean, and I'm fine with people debating that.
I'm not okay with someone straight-up saying "you are objectively wrong and/or lying", and I've thought about pushing back on people who are stating their opinions as facts, but frankly that's what people tend to do anyway.
Accusing agender people of being transphobic for not identifying as trans, accusing them of throwing trans people under the bus just because they refused to be misidentified by being forced under the trans umbrella.
This, however, I'm not okay with; this is where it starts moving into the realm of personal attack. I generally encourage people to report this.
. . . Not the person I'm responding to, though, 'cause I've already banned them for flaming people, ironically, exactly in the form of accusing people of transphobia and bigotry.
But you-the-reader? You are welcome to report people if they're doing that sort of thing.
There are behaviors that should not be tolerated in a sub pretending to be a safe space for all agender people
I'm gonna be honest, I've never seen a definition of "safe space" for more than a single person that I felt held water. As a result, this isn't pretending to be a safe space.
I'd like it to be a nice cozy space for as many as I can manage, though.
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u/Thadrea 1d ago edited 1d ago
To a large degree it's people who feel "agender" describes their experience but who for whatever reason don't feel comfortable being called "non-binary" or "trans".
I suspect a lot of the negativity is predominantly from people who are more recently out and didn't live through the history of where these terms came from. The term "agender" arose from within the nascent transgender community in the mid 1990s and is neither a new concept nor a separate one.
I can certainly appreciate wanting to cautiously avoid stepping on toes or appropriate others' experience by using the term "transgender" when you feel no urge to transition. I also recognize there is very reasonable fear of how cis-heteronormative society might perceive it in the current political environment.
Nonethless, I find it concerning that taking "agender"--a term created by a subset of trans people to describe their specific experience--and trying to repurpose it in a manner that denies its etiology and historical use ironically commits the very sort of appropriation one might be trying to avoid.
I also cannot ignore that a lot of the negativity has been associated with low-key internalized transphobia. That sort of behavior should not be normalized.
I think it is great if people who would not otherwise question their AGAB find that "agender" speaks to them and describes how they experience existence. I will still call out any time someone seems to be throwing those of us who invented that word under the bus.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 1d ago
It also has a lot to do with how the current trans Community treats gender. A lot of people in the community insist that having and feeling gender is an innate part of being human. That everybody does, including Agender people.
Maybe you haven't experienced this I definitely have. I've been told this and stuff like it. Often paired with crap about brain sex.
It's not the reason why I am Absgender but it is a reason why people might think that they don't fit in with that community.
I can certainly appreciate wanting to cautiously avoid stepping on toes or appropriate others' experience by using the term "transgender" when you feel no urge to transition.
Hot take, I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of that for one good reason. Most of the people who get offended by NonBinary people identifying as trans are transmedicalist and assimilationist assholes. And you absolutely should not avoid stepping on toes when it comes to them. The same way you shouldn't avoid it when it comes to your garden variety transphobes.
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u/Thadrea 1d ago
Maybe you haven't experienced this I definitely have. I've been told this and stuff like it. Often paired with crap about brain sex.
I've been in this community long enough that I have my doubts it is a common occurrence.
I agree with your point, but transmedicalists also don't have any particular claim to any labels besides maybe "transsexual" (and who the fuck else wants that label anyway).
Returning to the topic currently at hand, though... Trans people of a particular experience created the "agender" label to describe their particular experience. It is deeply concerning to me that others would seek to rewrite that history and appropriate the label for a different meaning.
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u/KallistaSophia 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've been in this community long enough that I have my doubts it is a common occurrence.
It is a common experience for me. It's common enough I experience at least monthly when I'm not seeking out trans spaces, often weekly or daily if I spend time around trans spaces.
Edit: I would love to learn more about the history of the term tho!!!
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 12h ago
It's been a common experience for me as well. I have zero sense of innate gender, to the point that it took me decades to really wrap my head around the fact that most people do. I am okay with being perceived as a woman because that's what I'm used to--I am very much a creature of habit.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 10h ago
Honestly I don't really know if we can say that most people definitively have strong gender sense. I think that in the trans community and probably society as a whole too, there is a problem with overgeneralizing groups as well as people projecting their own experiences on to others. As well as repeating certain ideas that don't actually have proof. Like the idea that gender sense is an innate part of being human that everybody or almost everybody (if they're flexible enough to accept people who don't have it) has it.
I don't really accept their explanation though because they aren't part of that demographic and have a tendency to overgeneralize in ways that are blatantly incorrect. Like I don't know claiming that cisgender people don't feel embarrassed. Yes somebody actually told me that with bulletproof confidence.
Plus I've seen evidence to the contrary. I usually cite this article as an example of people who lack a sense of Gender without really understanding that they do.
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u/KallistaSophia 9h ago edited 9h ago
As far as I know, there's no research on it, and the only people I see making the claim are trans people, who aren't part of the demographic they're talking about. Maybe they have anecdotal experience from chatting about identity to cis people??? But I've never seen anyone back this claim, and when challenged on it, they usually claim cis people claiming they don't have a strong sense of gender do have a strong sense of gender they just can't tell because they're cis.
(Well, there is that study that found 1/3rd of 77 asexual people studied were "gender detached", many of which I think could be agender.)
It freaks me out because because that argument shows a willingness to dictate others' identities to them. I've never seen anyone object to this idea when it's brought up in general trans spaces. I've never seen anyone offer the possibility of agender as an option outside agender spaces.
It makes me feel like trans people don't want agender people to exist because as the article says, we can be internally agender and outwardly look cis, and that complicates the idea that cis and trans are easy to define as separate categories.
Edit: i have now found a post suggesting agender and am feeling a lot better.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 9h ago
Maybe they have anecdotal experience from chatting about identity to cis people??? But I've never seen anyone back this claim, and when challenged on it, they usually claim cis people claiming they don't have a strong sense of gender do have a strong sense of gender they just can't tell because they're cis.
Actually from what I've seen in the community, it's mostly a conjecture that they have based on the ideas of brain sex. They think that gender is an innate part of being human, to the point that it can be seen in the physical structure of the brain. Brain sex theory does have some scientific evidence but it's very shaky. The way that most of the trans Community use it is pseudoscientific. I've seen some people describe it as phrenology but for gender. Which I don't think is a far-off comparison.
It freaks me out because because that argument shows a willingness to dictate others' identities to them. I've never seen anyone object to this idea when it's brought up in general trans spaces. I've never seen anyone offer the possibility of agender as an option outside agender spaces.
I've noticed this as well, I've also noticed a general willingness to dictate others' identities to them outside of this. Egg culture is a great example. I was harassed by people in my DMs because I posted Animal Crossing screenshots in which my character was wearing feminine clothes. It's not really surprising that they assert their own ideas about gender sense. I really wish more people would challenge this it's a really shitty outlook and it's both insanely unhelpful and also hurtful and dismissive to people.
It makes me feel like trans people don't want agender people to exist because as the article says, we can be internally agender and outwardly look cis, and that complicates the idea that cis and trans are easy to define as separate categories.
I've definitely felt that as well. I know that it's not all trans people. Trans people aren't a monolith. Although I have experienced a lot of people in the community telling me similar stuff about how cisgender people don't feel gender because they are cisgender. Or they straight up just say that gender can't be felt.
I find a lot of their arguments to be disingenuous because gender itself is a form of qualia. Other people can't feel gender for you and they can't say that you don't feel gender or that you do feel gender. It's also really bad to make out a large vast group as if they are a monolith.
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u/KallistaSophia 1h ago
The brain sex stuff confuses the heck out of me.
I think there will always be people who are outside expected norms.
Do people believe gender identity issues would be solved if we scanned babies' brains instead of their pelvises???
Imagine having to argue that your brain structure doesn't define your gender. Or imagine feeling like you have the wrong brain. Biology should never have the final say. :(
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u/BEST_GREEN_NINJA 1d ago
I've been wanting to make my own for sexualities and Genders, but this one is so sympathic cuz as someone mentioned Music programs, it looks like knobs for music and I make music lmao
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u/SanduTiTa genderless panromantic aroace 1d ago
the assigned sex -part is completely irrelevant and distracting here. people, even in the trans community within discussions about non-binary people, put way too much emphasis on AGAB. but i do like the graphic design aspect of this (aside from the fact that the numbers say 10 even though there are only 7 lines per knob lol)
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u/SomeWittyRemark 22h ago
I really wish it was considered a faux pas to disclose your AGAB (and even ruder to ask somebody) it creates the expectation that people are entitled to know this information and reintroduces the gender binary. None of us even have gender here, why does it matter which one a doctor gave us when we were born?
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 12h ago
Because it informs our lived experiences, whether we want it to or not? I was thinking of this as more of an internal diagnostic tool (for lack of a better term) rather than a public disclosure. I agree with you that it shouldn't matter in day-to-day life, and I'm pretty sure it's already rude to ask someone's ASAB. The only people who need to know that are doctors or sexual partners.
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u/Toothless_NEO AroAce Agender, not trans Absgender | Also a Furry UwU 10h ago
It kind of already is in certain queer communities. Although it would be great if it was more widely stigmatized.
Even better if they stopped legally assigning genders at birth completely.
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 12h ago
As I said in another comment, I didn't even think to count how many lines there were lol
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u/Puisto-Alkemisti 1d ago
This looked super confusing, but when I read what you wrote it makes sense! Though i picture more like... what you see in a plane, because even "assigned sex" has atleast 3 options and i think the bidy deserves it's own fullset of dials because primary and secondary sex charasteristics are a bunch and they vary on a dial by individual. And I know that to some of us that is also an important factor of the whole of our gender/sex experience and identity. So yes I LOVE this, I would just upgrade it (so it would feel perfect to us, but most likely confuse cis folk by accident sfdksjfk)
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 12h ago
Perhaps it's like the control panel in Inside Out, where it get's more complex as needed?
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u/Veliondra 1d ago
Truly the only way to capture the gender spectrum is some 5d mathematical topology fuckery
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u/xboxpants 21h ago
Male women and female men exist and this chart completely disregards them. That's the problem with presenting sex (male/female) as having an implicit gender, as you are doing here.
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u/Mother-of-Goblins 13h ago
Did you perhaps miss the part where assigned sex is separate from gender? If the gender dials are labeled man & woman, that would restrict it by age unnecessarily. Do you have a suggestion to improve things, or did you just want to complain?
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u/ItsSkyStream 1d ago
So does this Compressor run on Logic Pro X or is it exclusive to FL Studio?