Agender
| ||||||
 Meaning Black: absence of gender; grey: partial gender; green: gender that isn't related to male or female. | |
| Related identities | Agenderfluid and Agenderflux |
|---|---|
| Under the umbrella term | Nonbinary |
| Frequency | 23.8% |
| Click here to see alternative flags! | |
Agender (also called genderblank[citation needed], genderfree, genderless, gendervoid[citation needed], non-gendered, ungendered[2], or null gender[citation needed]) is an identity under the nonbinary and transgender umbrella terms. Agender individuals find that they have no gender identity, although some define it more as having a gender identity that is neutral. (See gender neutral for a related identity.)
Agender Pride day is celebrated on the 19th of May.[3][4]
History[edit | edit source]
A 1997 paper in International Journal of Transgenderism states that "An individual of any genetic sex may also regard him-herself as [...] an ungendered person, who does not or will not identify with any conventional gender."[2]
The 1998 book Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender College Students: A Handbook for Faculty and Administrators lists "ungendered" as a label used by some transgender people.[5]
A 2000 post on Usenet described the Christian God as agender. In 2005, another Usenet user wrote that "cultures can have transgender, agender, and hypergender individuals."[6]
Linguistic research by Zimman and Hayworth suggests that "agender" was part of the discourse in gender-related Livejournal communities in the early-to-late 2000s. While the term appeared less often in discussions by members of "ftm" and "genderqueer" than the terms "genderqueer" or "genderfuck", it did become slightly more popular in both communities in the late '00s.[7][8]
"Non-gendered", "genderless", and "agender" were mentioned in a list of valid nonbinary identities in the 2013 text Sexuality and Gender for Mental Health Professionals: A Practical Guide.[9]
Salem X (also known as "Ska" or as their Tumblr user name "transrants") created the agender flag in 2014, sharing the design on Feb 18th.[10] In reference to the colors chosen, they said "The black and white stripes represent an absence of gender, the gray represents semi-genderlessness, and the central green stripe represents nonbinary genders." In 2014, they also created the demiboy, demigirl and deminonbinary flags.[11]
In 2014, agender was one of the 56 genders made available on Facebook.[12]
In 2015, Dictionary.com added an entry for "agender,"[13] which it defined as "a person who does not have a specific gender identity or recognizable gender expression."[14]
On March 10 2017, a resident of Portland, Oregon, USA requested in court to be legally agender, and the request was approved.[15]
A 2018 survey of "Attitudes to Gender", ran by the Britain-based "Future of Legal Gender" project, asked people if they agree or disagree with the statement "More people will identify as agender (not having a gender) in the future." 32.4% selected "agree" and 13.7% selected "strongly agree". 20.6% selected "neither agree nor disagree" and 19.7% "don't know", compared to a mere 6.6% "disagree" and 7% "strongly disagree". (71% of nonbinary respondents agreed or strongly agreed.)[16]
Agender as gender identity or lack of gender identity[edit | edit source]
Some agender people feel that they have no gender identity, while others feel that agender is itself a gender identity. This can be similar to or overlap with the experience of being gender neutral or having a neutral gender identity.
Sociologist Canton Winer's research on gender detachment found that several people they interviewed said they used the term agender for themselves, suggesting an overlap between agender experiences and gender detachment.[17] However, not all of the gender-detached people in Winer's sample described themselves as agender, and those who did often related to it as a label of convenience rather than an authentic-feeling representation of self.
As some agender people have no gender identity, it is important to not talk about nonbinary or transgender people's experiences only in the sense of gender identity.
Difference between genderless and neutrois[edit | edit source]
There is little agreement about the difference between terms such as agender, genderless, non-gender, gender neutral, and neutrois. These terms are often used interchangeably, or defined differently by individual writers in ways that don't necessarily match the self-definitions of others using those terms.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed] 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[edit | edit source]
Some activists, such as Christie Elan-Cane, use non-gendered to mean all gender outside of the gender binary.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] Nonetheless this usage is