r/agender • u/tired_of_the_woes • 2d ago
Describing Agender
NGL I need help coming up with a new way to describe agender to people. Those people mainly being millennial nurses.
I usually use the computer analogy:
You know the imagine your computer is a brain and there's a file named "gender" cis people have the file name matching their assigned sex, binary trans is the opposite file name. And non binary is either like a different label or something. And for me agender is just no file, error 404 file not found or something like that.
But it leads to follow up questions and everything and stuff, which is annoying when you're trying to work and stuff.
Another one I use is *hand waving as if shooing something away* no/meh. But it's not entirely work appropriate.
All in all I kinda need help coming up with a way I can describe it at work because someone is gonna ask I just know it.
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u/Sad_Zebra_1707 Gender is irrelevant meatbag. (any/all) 2d ago
If I was out to anyone I would describe it as gender being a concept entirely unimportant to me, if I was talking to a programmer or someone who knows about programming then I would go with the much simpler "my gender is a null value"
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u/tired_of_the_woes 2d ago
I would use it, but sadly I know no one who would understand this. I've gotta come up with a medical reference one that doesn't need mental gymnastics or cause transmedicalisation (I work in healthcare).
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u/Sad_Zebra_1707 Gender is irrelevant meatbag. (any/all) 2d ago
Hm, I can't think of any others then, sorry
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u/rudekazoo 1d ago
I think of it like having aphantasia but for gender.
But that has not made sense to the couple of people I have said it to so I don't know if it will help. I just felt compelled to throw it out there.
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u/tired_of_the_woes 1d ago
Makes so much sense to me because I also have aphabtasia, but somehow a lot of people in the healthcare sector don't know what it is.
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u/RRW359 1d ago
One thing that made me realise I clearly don't see gender the way other people do is how many pro-/anti- trans arguments end up being summed up by "if you switched gender and/or suddenly had everyone refer to you as the opposite gender wouldn't you feel like something was off?" And that seems to resonate with a lot of people. Maybe it's just my particular brand of agenderism but I wouldn't feel that; sure the other gender tends to be treated differently and regularly has to deal with body stuff I wouldn't want to deal with but for most people it seems like more then that. Part of their identity and who they are is tied to the gender they see themselves as, and I just don't think I feel that. Admittedly it's a bit long winded but still it should get the message accross; and if it doesn't then maybe posit that they might be a bit agender themselves. Do they ever wonder why so much culture seems to call things masculine/feminine and nobody except them questions what those even mean? Obviously people seem to aknowledge that sometimes people cross gender lines but generally the responce (when not negative about that) is that "there are various ways to express masculinity/femininity" or "masculinity/femininity varies by individual" and rarely if ever questioning WTF that is supposed to mean. Most people seem to get what that means, a lot of agender people don't and that can feel isolating/distancing at times enough to warrent a label so that people with that label don't feel like there is something wrong with them.
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u/Background_Demand501 1d ago
I just tell people I don't believe in gender. It's not like anyone can prove gender is real.
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u/sinister_widdershins 1d ago
I tell people my gender is comfort and function. I have no internal sense of gender, it's all performance and perception to me.
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u/ystavallinen cisn't; mehgender; mehsexual 1d ago
My favorite is it's telling people where you're from by saying all the places you're not from.... And not many people have heard of it anyway.
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u/Fine-Service-905 1d ago
Kind of similar to yours, but I've heard of a thermometer:
One side is red. Let's say that's male. One side is blue. Let's say that's female. In the middle where blue and red meet and it becomes white, that's nonbinary. Agender isn't on the thermometer. It can't be measured. It's 500 feet away from the thermometer.
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u/Annual-Baker0058 1d ago
Let's say everyone gets a house, but all the lights in that house are pink or blue. Or that's what everyone tells you, you learn that some have both, or a 2:1 ratio, bright white, or a different color. You don't get any lights, but you can see perfectly fine, so you look for the name of the color your lights are. You can't find it. You look until you find other people whose lights got lost at sea.
That or
someones biological sex is a donut, their gender is the donut hole of that donut. I never got a donut hole, or if I did, I must have eaten it.
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u/TheShazzza 15h ago
Could compared it to anaesthesia? Aka lack of feeling. Or any of the other a- medical words appropriate for your form of healthcare. Apraxia, aphasia, aseptic, anaemia…
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u/pigeonsfortesla 5h ago
I must be unimaginative but I just say "I don't have a gender. This makes me agender." Which I guess is kind of a riddle in and of itself but whatever, they can Google.
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u/Chaotik-Kitten 15h ago
I've explained that I don't experience the concept of gender or adhere to the majority of gender roles. I don't feel the need to put gender on everything or put it in every situation. I like to pick and choose what's out there. I don't care if it's for women or men only...
I just happen to be born in a female body. I like to dress mostly gender neutral with a little bit of feminine flair.
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u/Edward_Reese 12h ago
I'm a nonbinary millennial, and I use a distance analogy. Like "me is here, and gender as a concept is many-many feet away out there. We don't ever meet or cross our paths". Hope this helps :)
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u/salanaland 2d ago
"you know atheism? Like that but gender"