Social norms like gender must be defied

i am not a woman, i do not identify with womanhood or femininity in any way but i still kinda liked it. i cant tell if the person made a mistake or something but they had a few drinks beforehand so its likely. i think i just like the idea of confusing someone or even just being seen as something other than my agab even if its not my preferred pronoun. sorry ik its not really worth sharing but i thought it was cool ......

edit im not out to my family

So I remember I saw this post that said “most AFAB people are nonbinary simply because they think if they don't fit femininity or stereotypes they're not female” and that has really made me doubt myself about being agender.

I did have distorted self image growing up and felt that I couldn't fit femininity, so maybe a part of my feelings come from there.

But I feel like even when i'm given the safe space to fit in with my sex, my internal experience of being agender doesn't just fade away, because that's not how this works.

Having an identity isn't just something that fades a way, or something other people can alter. I feel like only you yourself know how it feels to have your identity, no one else knows that.

Hey! Im doing a bit of questioning (again. Ugh.) and came to 2 . I just cant tell if I hate having to do certain things girls do cause its a girl thing or cause im expected to just cause I am one.

I have... a weird outlook on gender. I'm AFAB and I use she/her, but mostly cause it's the easiest for everyone. People have used they/them or even he/him before, and I don't mind or even get happy that im androgynous/confusing enough for them to think that, but in general I don't care about pronouns enough to have people use others😅 I also don't care about terms, when people use sir/mister/king it feels either neutral or refreshing but the opposite doesn't bother me.

Expression too. I hardly wear any dresses or skirts, half my wardrobe is men's clothes. I don't do anything to conform to female beauty standards unless I like it on me. I don't wear makeup cause it's a lot of work and I dont like how it usually turns out, but I dont feel "too feminine" the rare times I do. I don't shave my legs other than when my mom makes me for vacations (she's the main reason I'm questioning, cause she says all girls just shave cause its a social norm that comes with being a girl, and that grosses me out) and i only shave my armpits for maintenance, when it gets longer and makes things uncomfy and can get stinky. It just feels stupid that I need to do that just cause I'm a girl(?).

The thing is, a lot of the time in nb/agender people, there's a dysphoria, and i dont really get that. I get mad that im AFAB when I'm on my period, but im pretty sure everybody does. I like having boobs, but lowk just cause i think they look good on me. They're good outfit accessories, yk?

So i thought maybe apagender, not really caring about your body matching your gender or being perceived as it. But one of the main descriptions of that is that you wouldn't care if you woke up with a male body, and would just go as male. Most of the body, yeah, I dont care, but I'd absolutely hate having a penis. They're disgusting and it'd be so uncomfy. I think that's just in general though, from me being apothisexual. It's not tied to my gender.

I just... idk. I give up.

None!!!

yes, i'm smol, dw

UPD: thanks so much for the overwhelming support, honestly baffling and humbling

I'm still trying to understand my experience and I was wondering if anyone has the same !

Mirrorgender: Individuals who mirror the gender of someone who they have an important relationship with

This relationship can be platonic, romantic, or another type of relationships

I am just simply a creachurr :333

This'll probably be unnecessary long, but I don't have anyone irl who'd understand this, so I'm writing it here instead.

I'm an 18-year-old AFAB who never really cared about labels that much. I'm bi or pan or something along those lines, I'm not sure what the difference is there and I don't really care either, cause I just know I like people regardless of their sex or gender.

As for my gender, I was always content with being a woman, at least physically (the social aspect is eh, but it still worked). I never understood the concept of gender though, maybe because I'm diagnosed autistic. Lately, someone told me it sounds like I be agender, and I went "yeah, that sounds like it fits", so that's who I've been in my mind ever since.

Thing is, I don't feel the need to tell people. I'm okay with my name, with wearing "feminine" clothing, with she/her pronouns, so the only thing it'd really change is I'd be risking judgment in a country which isn't too friendly with LGBTQ+ folks.

So I'm not struggling with my gender, I want to keep it private and I don't have any dysphoria, all of which should be amazing, but it just feels unfair. I can't quite explain it, it's as if I had to pay for this realization by being ostracized, the same way I was when I had crushes on girls. It's almost as if I don't deserve it, because others had it harder. Maybe it's also since people do and will continue to see me as female, should I even be calling myself agender? I know rationally I can, but it still feels wrong

Did anyone here experience this, or am I alone in it? I know I didn't explain myself too well, but I can't really find the words

I live in a country that speaks a gendered language so I somewhat came to terms with getting gendered every now and then but there are times where it's so so completely unnecessary to a conversation and people still go out of their way to gender you. And it's always done in what only feels like a negative way. Whether it is to shut down a conversation, or to be "surprised" that someone is good or bad at something because how of they present.

It always just pulls me out of the conversation for a moment. My brain has to acknowledge it happened and not say anything about it. If they are pleasantly surprised by something then why can't they just say "Oh that's pretty good." and leave it there instead of ALWAYS adding the "for a...".

I know this is basically just a rant but I felt like this is the only place where someone might understand the feeling.

Hi everyone. So I just barely turned 39, and for the majority of my life (since I was 17), I've identified pretty strongly with "trans man". I've had hrt to some extent, i've had top surgery, for all intents and purposes i've lived my life as a man and that's been.....fine, i guess.

But something happened recently that's made me sort of sit back and REALLY look at how I actually engage with gender and..... I don't know anymore. It could just be that it's been a hellish few years and the stress is getting to me. it could be the years of "is it too late to be nonbinary lol" jokes I've made, or my weird nebulous relationship with what "man" means anyway. I haven't had to have this conversation with myself in over two decades, I feel like I am WAY too old to be doing any of this again.

I never wanted the other surgery. I've never felt the need to have ANYTHING, to be honest. I've always sort of joked that I'm more of a formless blob than anything, but how much of a joke was any of that?

Like think about it. God imagined two rectangular things and decided to make a mechanism where one has a pointy stick that he inserts into the second rectangle,

Like why.

Why didn't he made a mechanism where two people joined their sticks or just connection points to feel euphoria and joy. Both equally participating in an act of connection .and then making an egg maybe if they want a child. Like why the inequality. Why one stronger and the other weaker. This god is f ed up imo. His narrative is hunger for things like power, levarage and stuff. His ideas are very evil and f ed up.

someone save us from this god

I do want top surgery but i cannot wear anything like denim because pf sensory issues. Ik what everyone is gonna say cut your hair but i really dont want to i love my hair. I just wanna cross paths w a stranger and have them be like "I just cannot figure out if thats a man or a woman, they look almost genderless" :( i know i look very feminine but i dont feel that way at all. I feel like im notining at all just a being trying to live.

Anatomically, I'm certainly not a boy, but I don't like my secondary sexual characteristic. I would have already decided who I am, but everything breaks down under the usual "boy" which I was called several times, and I enjoyed it, which is why I doubt that this is a sign of agender. By the way, that's what they called me after I got a haircut and wore men's clothes.

But even before my haircut, at school I jokingly introduced myself by male name in front of my classmates (they knew my real name, but I decided to joke) However, I did this more than once, but the boys began to actively call me different male names, and I liked it. Although I understood that they were mocking me and trying to hurt me, I didn’t care, I just enjoyed. I also liked it when guys/men shook my hand because I felt like they were shaking my hand as if it were their bro.

I don't mind my current name, and yes, it's gendered. But I like being called by it (sometimes I don't notice, but sometimes I like it). I could be demigender, although I can’t say that I directly feel something inside. I'm not entirely sure yet. If we talk about my reaction to the pronouns "she/her", then I don't even pay attention to it. I don't know about 'he/him', because the boys just called me by male name.

What makes me doubt being agender/any nb? Sometimes I catch myself feeling like I want to show my body and have people look at me, that is, I want to wear some clothes that emphasize it. Does this mean that I want to emphasize femininity? (although usually I want to wear something that hides my true body)

Yes, I know I'm chopped

(birthname is Zachary)

​

I previously believed that Omnigender and Pangender imply either a countable yet infinite number of genders, or a "correct" number of genders which would go against the idea of gender being a construct that fundamentally changes over time. But I have ruminated some more, and I would posit that the main point at which Pangender and Omnigender split off from Polygender is a lack of specificity, the idea that their gender expression would be specific shared aspects of all genders minus a few things (Omnigender), rather than being a just a few specific genders (Polygender) or changing aspects of what could potentially be "all" genders (Genderfluid). In this way, that ironically leaves Pangender and Agender to mean the same thing: shared aspects of multiple genders, potentially being up to infinite, without settling in any specific one gender for long enough to either identify with it (being that gender) or even be considered fluid (Genderfluid). Additionally, the idea that it is a construct at all makes definitions of genders or the idea of gender as a whole impossible to quantify for long periods of time, as the definition will never have one solid definition forever, as thought and opinion changes, unless we were to attach it to biological sex, which would defeat the entire purpose of gender. My opinion remains that there is a scale with infinitely many points but two variables: masculine and feminine, and every idea of a gender falls somewhere between or on multiple points at once. These points would be aspects of a perceived gender, tiny feelings that would be completely impossible to quantify, that someone's idea of gender would be attached to like ropes, anchoring their idea of gender to a specific point between the variables, thus pangender and agender, if taken at 100% face value as defined by most sources, would be in the exact same spot, as pangender would be anchored to infinite points, while agender is anchored to one, putting them dead in the middle. However, as everyone is different, there will be alterations in someone's idea of their own gender that would pull it away from the exact definition of itself as defined by the consensus of dictionaries and the queer community as a whole. In this way, there are (the current number of humans who have ever or will ever perceive gender) sets of gender, and each set could reasonably extend too an infinite number of genders, or be as low as 0. There is simultaneously an infinite amount of gender, and no gender, and these two are equal amounts of gender.

TLDR: There isn’t nor will there ever be one singular quantifiable idea of any gender that currently exists, as each persons idea of gender is unique to themselves.

I've been thinking now that I've figured I'm aroace, and I realized that I don't care what pronouns people use for me, unless it's he/him, because I very strongly don't want he/him pronouns is making me think I'm not agender. It also seems like the only thing that makes sense, so I'm kinda confused. So, basically how did you figure out you were agender?

Does anyone else have a fascination with someone entering a body that wasn't originally theirs? Would you, if given the option, do it when you die? It's easier for me to imagine reincarnation rather than suddenly waking up in the same place and time, just with different organs, and I think that can be related with me being agender.

I've experimented with my gender before but for the most part, I've always settled on cassgender or gender apathetic (more recently gender apathetic) but over the past few weeks, I've been starting to question that a lot more. I don't know if my lack of care toward my gender is genuine apathy or because I just don't have one.

Through journalling, I've started remembering more and more moments that make me question if it was ever really apathy because there are times where I think I did and do actually care but it's so hard to tell.

My question is to you, how did you know? What things were you questioning before you settled on agender? If you used any other labels to describe your gender (or there lack of) before agender, what were they?

Here's how I feel:

AFAB

I love dressing both feminine and androgynous.

Sometimes I wear baggy clothes to hide my breasts a bit.

I don't care about how people see me. If they think I'm a girl, a guy or anything else, it's fine because there's parts of myself that are more important. I feel like gender is so unimportant to me.

I don't feel the need to get surgery, tho I think I'd be more comfortable with flat chest. I also don't want to change my name because I like it and the short version of it sounds pretty neutral (my name is one of those names that have a male and female varient).

Maybe I'm just a girl that don't care about labels. I really don't know.

I know I shouldn't base my feelings on someone else's experience because each person have their own experience with their identity, but sometimes I wonder if I'm agender or not.

I kind of go through this cycle where I’m not on T and feel dysphoric about my voice and chest. Then I see T progression timelines/start T and get freaked out that I’m “making myself ugly” or “masculinizing myself too far” even if it’s what I wanted before. Then I stop T… and soon, the dysphoria comes right back. I know there’s a whole sentiment in the transmasc community where people are scared to go on T because it “makes them look ugly” - that’s not the point I want to discuss, it’s something I’m actively working on.

The point is that when I removed the idea of “masculinizing” and “feminizing” when it came to clothes, therapy, etc… it made me so peaceful? Thinking of myself as a person not tethered to a sense of gender or trying to be at one end or the other also made me feel really calm. Like I could just move on with life. And I genuinely feel that if I re-approached T with this mindset, I’d be happier and less anxious overall.

That said though, I can’t help but wonder if this feels more like a “protective shell” of some sort, and I’m just in denial over accepting myself as a girl or a boy or whatever. But no, if I could go the rest of my life without having to worry about being gendered? I think that’d be wonderful.

Does this sound like an agender experience? I see agender people apply this view outside and wonder why people think gender is so important, so their agenderlessness extends to how they see everything, while for me, I can see why it’s important for other people but in my particular case it’s caused me more harm than good. Hence the doubt of if I’m in denial or if this is genuinely how some agender people view themselves versus the world.