gender "non-positive" experiences and the joy they come with
[pt: gender "non-positive" experiences and the positivity they come with. end pt.]
what is a gender "non-positive" experience? in this case, we're referring to genderlessness, gendernullness, gendervoidness, and similar identities - in a mathematical or numerical sense. if having a gender is 100%, then (complete) genderlessness is anywhere from zero to negative infinity.
with non-positive - or negative - experiences regarding gender, there's a strange assumption that they're almost associated with sadness. it's not an active assumption; people wouldn't go up to a genderless person and go "it must be so sad not having a gender" (at least, i hope they don't). but, there's an assumption that there's something missing with people who don't have a gender; or, that someone who doesn't experience gender might somehow yearn for the ability to experience it. you rarely see people in (mainstream) spaces talking about the joy they get from being genderless, so surely this must be true.
i mean, the first thing my (now boyfriend of three years) said to me after i'd explained being gendervoid and how it felt to him, he'd told me that it sounds sad. i wasn't upset at him; just baffled at the fact that my absence of gender could, in any way, read as sad to him when for me? it was the most comfortable i'd ever felt.
through my interacting with other genderless and agender people - as well as my own experiences being genderless (and more specifically now gender-averse(link)) - i've found that there's just as much joy to be felt here, in this community, as there is in every other community. who would've thunk it? a queer community finding joy for themselves in spite of the world around them?
i can't speak on other peoples' experiences. but, what i can say about myself is that i've never been happier than when i'm embracing my genderlessness - and especially gender-averseness. it's not that i hate gender as a concept; it's a social construct, but i believe it's helpful in that the concepts it describes will always help someone with a word to describe themself, and that's enough. but for myself? trying on gendered language has always felt like putting on socks that are a size too small or too big. even boyhood, to be quite frank with you. and, i like being called a boy; it makes me happy. but, to say that being a boy is my gender wouldn't be right. no, that's not quite my connection with it.
so what was i to do when i resonated so strongly with boyhood despite feeling nothing? some people say that just the euphoria is enough to say whether or not you're a boy or a girl, and maybe that works for them, but it never worked for me. there was euphoria, yes; but there was no feeling of belonging or correctness to describing my gender as being a boy. i am a boy. that does not mean my gender is boy.
at some point, i re-discovered agender; i'd used it for myself for about a year or so, before reverting to nonbinary (because nobody really acknowledged the fact i was agender).
and then, further down, i picked up genderless.
to say that i've had all positive experiences with genderlessness wold be a lie. to be honest, i've fought tooth and nail to get myself to the point i'm at - where i acknowledge the fact that i'm genderless, aqualitine(link) and gender-averse. how was i supposed to accept the fact that - in contrary to all the xenogenders and subgenders and genders that i'd thought i experienced before - i was none of them? that, instead of being multigender with thousands of genders, that i had none? it felt like i was going against all the acceptance i'd worked myself up to over the years.
but - and this took a long time - it's comfortable for me.
genderlessness, that is. it's like finding your old favorite pair of socks that you thought you lost, and finding that they fit like a glove (at least for me). that, when you're seen as genderless and called genderless and referred to as being genderless, it feels righter than any of the other labels i'd tried on for myself did. embracing my genderlessness means embracing me - separate from the concept of gender, separate from what's expected of me because of my perceived gender, separate from normative ideas of how i should experience things.
i'm not gendered. i'm actively averse to the idea of being gendered. but, to say that my aversion to genderedness is a negative experience for myself would be a lie. it's just not for me. and, really, that's okay.
tag for archival -> @radiomogai
