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 of their 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]
