Gender detachment: Difference between revisions

Gender detachment is a term coined by sociologist Canton Winer, based on Winer's interviews with asexual people.<ref name=":0">Winer, C. (2025). Does Everyone Have a Gender? Compulsory Gender, Gender Detachment, and Asexuality. ''Socius'', ''11''. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231251339382</nowiki> (Original work published 2025)</ref> Gender-detached individuals do not feel that gender is a useful, meaningful, or relevant lens for understanding themselves. In other terms, they can be said to lack a gender identity.     

Gender-detached people may express a degree of apathy around gender or feel that gender is something externally imposed on them. They may dislike being asked to claim a specific gender identity or set of pronouns, because it feels too much like an assertion of identity. Others find the whole concept of gender identity confusing.

Some gender-detached people use nonbinary terms like [[agender]] to describe themselves. However, they often see them as the closest or most convenient language available, rather than representations of a "true" self.<ref name=":0" />  

<blockquote>My gender is like an empty lot; there may have been a building there at some point, but it’s long since fallen away, and there’s no need to rebuild it. The space is better for being left empty.</blockquote>-  Ollia, a white 23 year old from California, quoted by Winer<ref name=":0" /><blockquote>My feelings about gender, for myself, are very detached and distant. I just don’t identify really with most concepts of gender, because it honestly just confuses me. I just don’t get it. I don’t know ''why'' I don’t get it for myself, but I just find existing with preconceived notions on who I “should” be tiring to follow, confusing to understand, and stifling to my true person. Gender, for me, is archaic and not worth the energy. </blockquote>Faye, a Latine 18 year old from Illinois, quoted by Winer<ref name=":0" /><blockquote>I would say that I’m mostly a cis woman, but I don’t feel super strongly about it? I saw a Tumblr post once that said something like, “I’m a ‘she’ in the same way inanimate objects are ‘she’ to gays and sailors” and like . . . yeah? I’m a she because nothing else fits or feels right, but it’s a loose concept. . . . I think more than anything, my gender is something aesthetic? I’m loosely attached to it as a concept, but I do construct it in a certain way that most people generally interpret as at least feminine-leaning, and I’m content with that. </blockquote>Dana, a white 27 year old from Massachusetts, quoted by Winer<ref name=":0" />