Agender/en: Difference between revisions

It is often said that non-gender or genderlessness is the experience of having ''no'' gender identity at all, whereas gender neutral or neutrois is the experience of ''having'' a gender identity, a gender identity which is not male or female, but neutral. However, these statements don't match the experiences of everyone who has taken up these identities as their own. This is a result of a disagreement between word definitions that are ''prescriptivist'' (telling everyone how they ''should'' use a word, and saying that many people use it wrong) and ''descriptivist'' (describing how people have actually been ''using'' a word, without telling them to change).

===Non-gendered as an umbrella term===

Some activists, such as [[Christie Elan-Cane]] use '''non-gendered''' to mean all gender outside of the [[gender binary]]. This use comes from several years before the term '''nonbinary''', but is seen as problematic because it gives the idea that nonbinary gender identities don't exist, or that all nonbinary people are genderless. Nonetheless this usage is in some official organisations' documents and resources as the term to cover all nonbinary people. This is most common in the United Kingdom, for example throughout the recent [[UK Government Transgender Action Plan]].

==List of kinds of agender identities==

There are many more [[Nonbinary gender in fiction#Nonbinary genders in fiction|nonbinary characters in fiction who have a gender identity outside of the binary]]. The following are only some of those characters who are specifically called by the words "agender," "genderblank," "genderfree," "genderless," "gendervoid," "non-gendered," "null gender," or not having a gender, either in their canon, or by their creators.

* “Ashiok” from the popular card game Magic: The Gathering is explicitly referred to as being nongendered. Though some depictions of the character include “he” as a pronoun, a lead designer from the company that makes the game has insisted on numerous occasions that the character is explicitly nongendered.<ref name=dougbeyertaggedashiok>[http://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/tagged/ashiok ''A Voice for Vorthos – Posts tagged with “Ashiok”''], Retrieved 29th September 2014, Doug Beyer’s Blog – A Voice for Vorthos.</ref> Even going so far as to write stories which avoid referring to Ashiok using gendered pronouns at all.<ref name=dougbeyerashiokstories>[http://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/85018556969/ok-so-when-are-we-going-to-learn-more-about-the ''A Voice for Vorthos – Ok so when are we going to learn more about the specifics about Ashiok? Ashiok is not in the first novel at all and nothing is depicted in the cards.'], 7th May 2014, Doug Beyer’s Blog – A Voice for Vorthos.</ref> Ashiok's card can be found [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373500 here.]