Gender detachment
Gender detachment is a term coined by sociologist Canton Winer, based on Winer's interviews with asexual people.[1] 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. Some gender-detached people feel totally detached from gender, while others feel some resonance with a specific gender alongside the detachment.[1]
Winer observes that gender detachment poses a problem for models of gender which assume that everyone has a gender identity. Winer calls the belief that everyone has or should have a gender identity "compulsory gender".[1]
Relationship to nonbinary identity
Gender performance
Winer found that some interviewees wanted to alter their presentations or other elements of their gender expression to be more neutral. However, many gender-detached people Winer interviewed had no desire to move away from their existing performance of gender, even if others viewed it as gendered.[1]
Quotes
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.
- Ollia, a white 23 year old from California, quoted by Winer[1]
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.
Faye, a Latine 18 year old from Illinois, quoted by Winer[1]
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.
Dana, a white 27 year old from Massachusetts, quoted by Winer[1]
