I don’t remember aspiring to grow up to be a man, but was disgusted by the idea of growing up to be a woman. Physically I don’t think I want anything different than what I have today, my own skin.”
—Micah, an agender—or gender-neutral individual—interviewed in “Neither Man Nor Woman: Meet the Agender” from New York Magazine.
Myles.
What would be wrong with all public bathrooms being like this one?
Accessibility to all is a plus!
When I go to an event,if all toilets marked for my gender are occupied,I go to the other side.No difference for me and less time spent waiting to urinate.
Sometimes some dropped jaws and some strange taunts,but I am me,I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.
Myles.
P.S.
Maybe only short people have guts.
Triple S
I do believe that it is possible for an individual to feel that they don’t exactly fit the gender roles and whatnot we have created as a society, however, the amount of times people SAY that they are like this or, as they love to say, ‘gender-queer’, it’s usually weird people who need more attention.
As such, it has tarred the name of being an ‘agender’ person, and made it appear as simply a word to use for more attention.
Kind of like LUGS. One thing for a while for attention, then something else after they’re bored with it.
Triple S
@Myles.: Public toilets like this one wouldn’t work as there is no policing force of it. If men and women could go in the same place for toilet time, there is no way to stop things like harassment, rape, cruising (prostitutes would love a place like this) and any other thing that could happen.
Perhaps not the best of systems, but better than any other.
GeriHew
A lot of public toilets in London are unisexual because they’re designed to be used by one person at a time. Although there’s no way to prevent two people entering them together at the same time.
I was with a trans friend recently who was infuriated when someone guided him towards the disabled loo instead of the gents.
MartinDK
@Myles.: I think the explanation is that women dont want to share barhroom with men who miss the toilet while standing and peeing, so ots not up to you…
MartinDK
There is no such thing as agender. Pnly a person who pathologically does not embrace his gender. We all contain both masculine a feminine traits. Men have feminine souls or their unconscious is feminine. Not feeling your gender means something is messed up.
Drag queens are an expression of gay men being “possessed” by their feminine unconscious. The traits of a seductive, bitchy dragqueen with bad taste in clothes (fabulous, I know…) corresponds exactly to the character traits of the male anima.
These things are not difficult. Its not “wrong” or “sick” just dont pretend that its “natural” to have no gender, because next thing feminists will demand that gender be neutralized so misogyni and male chauvinism van be extirpated…
aconway17
@Triple S: People are raped, harassed, and cruised in same gender spaces, so that doesn’t make sense as an argument.
MartinDK
If gender is forcelibly neutralized then nobody feels comfortable with their gender, and since this is the basis for much of what we call “identity” the result will be even more depression, confusion and psychological trauma than we already have. And for what? To get more women into executive jobs? No one is talking about the need to get more women into the dirty or dangerous jobs at the bottom of society which are exclusive taken by men.
Dont fuck with gender identity. Nurture respect for both masculinity and femininity, if for no other reason then because we all contain both, not neither…
If gender identy was only created by society and we were born empty of content, then how can you punish a criminal? He is only what society made him. This kind of engineering of people is totalitarian in the final analysis. Its what the fascists and communists wanted. To use people as a means to some political end.
aconway17
I checked out the article. While I appreciate NY Mag being a forum for the agender community to present itself to others and use their voices, the article seemed irresponsibly limited. The author sort of presents gender as a… trinary?… that people either identity as male, female, or neither, and doesn’t really touch on the spectrum and diversity of gender. There also seemed to be an overemphasis on body modification and surgical operation, as if to suggest changing one’s physical form was the only way to validate a gender/ agender identity.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
@MartinDK:
respectfully, your jungian-esque mumbo-jumbo has no basis in science or reality. at all. (okay, strictly speaking it ain’t been validated by science thus far… AND NEVER WILL BE!)
human nature, and reality itself, is so shit complicated that people like you are rendered paralized in the bright lights of complexity that you scramble for the comforting shelter of unreason and snuggle into obfuscatory reductive nonsense. good luck with that.
sorry if i’ve offended you my tarot cards told me i was gonna be a bitch today.
JAW
LOL… a that means another letter to the list… we will need to keep the Agenders away from the Asexuals… people my see the AA and think it stands for Alcoholics Anonymous…
it is sad that we are now having to double upon letters… first it was Q… now it is A… which will be next?
the other Greg
Well if she/he is so annoyed by society’s rules, why doesn’t she/he just pee on the street?
But I suppose then we would all be able to guess from the, um, … pose.
So we all have to promise not to look! Because they want attention, but you know, not too much attention. (Sounds like women to me!)
MartinDK
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: Im not offended by people who for personal reasons deny fact and and bring their hurt feelings into the discussions by being “a bitch”. The more emotional the response the more threatened you obviously feel. Hence the need to deride…
There is no way to “scientifically prove” anything about the psyche for there is no outside archimedian point for reference. In psychology the psyche is both observer and the observed. Psychology can never be weighed or measured. Can you measure or weigh a feeling objectively? So it doesnt exist? It is Jungian mumbo-jumbo? I guess the humanities, whose method psychology borrows, do not exist either? Jung outlined a model of explanation. It is model to explain observed phenomena not a statement of metaphysical reality like you think. The model is validated empirically by experience, my own included. You obviously know nothing about these things so why comment?
However as there are many gay people who are depressed, medicate themselves with drugs alcohol and shopping or commit suicide, withholding information about how to understand themselves and come to terms with themselves seems unethical. We can only hope for improvement if we acknowledge how we function.
MartinDK
“The male’s anima.
The anima has positive traits. When the anima is allowed to express herself through a man’s psyche, she brings the attributes of feelings, emotions, tenderness, relatedness, commitment and fidelity, friendship, love and compassion, imagination, gentleness, romance, creativity, intuition, and a sense of aesthetics.
The anima has negative traits. If the anima is rejected, her traits are deformed: feelings and emotions are replaced by moodiness, sentimentality, hysteria, or bitchiness; fidelity becomes possessiveness; aesthetics become sensuality; tenderness becomes effeminacy; imagination becomes mere fantasizing (particularly of sexual adventures); love and romance are twisted into a series of turbulent relationships or the man’s withdrawal from his wife and family. The spurned anima does more than thrust her own feminine qualities into expression (however warped); she also disturbs the man’s masculinity by, for example, degrading his thinking into the weak opinionating.” http://www.trans4mind.com/jamesharveystout/anima.htm
Compare the negative anima traits of moodiness, sentimentality, bitchiness, effiminacy and sensuality and ask if this is not a characterization of typical drag queens. Then ask why this act is popular among non-crossdressing gays and not popular among straight males who actually fancy women? Dont tell me Jung lived in vain…
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: Compare the above with your need for bitchy comments and ask yourself where it comes from… I dont care but you should…
Greg
What does that mean, free of a gender? Are you a man or a woman? If you’re a woman, you go in the women’s restroom. If you’re a man, you go in the men’s restroom. What’s with all this drama about not knowing? What are you? So she was born a woman, you’re a woman. You go in the women’s restroom. Such b.s. starting all this “agender” crap. Give me a break. Of course it would be a lesbian coming up with all this.
Neo
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: There is some astonishing stupidity from people posting on this site, MartinDK and Greg seem to be willfully ignorant, the worst type of unintelligent cretin.
Sad that they still exist, they are as they are because the education system failed them and they revel in their ignorance.
Sad, it’s 2012, not 1955.
MartinDK
@Neo: Its not 1859 either, Yet The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin remains a valuable model of evolution, it even shares the characteristic of being impossible to “prove scientifically” with psychology. Idiocy is timeless, and only idiots of no understanding measure science or philosophy by its date of publication.
People are really clinging to the wool over their eyes…
Greg
@Neo: Oh, right. Shut it.
esmale
Its too confusing……..
AverySus
@MartinDK:
“Only a person who pathologically does not embrace his gender.”
Yes we do not embrace our gender because it does not feel comfortable to us, so we do what feels comfortable and do not go by societies gender roles, If modifying their own body is a means of doing that so be it, people do it because it feels right to them. This is what Agender means.
“We all contain both masculine and feminine traits”
Good job! We are all born with a penis or a vagina Im glad you can realize this much, and No it does not have to define who we are.
“Men have feminine souls or their unconscious is feminine. Not feeling your gender means something is messed up.”
Im trying my hardest to decipher what you mean by this first sentence, Men have feminine Souls SO their unconscious is feminine? Idk man you tell me, you wrote it. But as of not feeling your gender. yes sometimes it can be a hormonal thing but I would not consider it “messed up” it is simply different and obviously you are uncomfortable with it…sooo you feel the need to attack it?
As for the part about the drag queen? what does that have to do with Agenders and what ever claim you are attempting to make?. Im lost on that one.
And finally how does a gender identity effect anyone who is not directly experiencing it. If people accepted the idea of gender neutrois how would that give feminist groups more power? I think your getting the social issues of gender and gender identity confused.
AverySus
@MartinDK: I consider myself to be gender neutrois or Agender. I simply feel as though I am an “entity” for lack of a better term going through the experience of life, I do not feel like a man I do not feel like a women. All this means essentially, in my experience is that I feel comfortable doing whatever activities. Deemed masculine or feminine by society? it does not matter to me. I love talking about my emotions, cooking and baking, dressing up in nice clothes for the hell of it. I love snowboarding, Hiking, camping and getting my hands dirty and coming home and enjoying a nice cold beer. This is what Agender means to me, I do not and will not subject myself to gender roles that society has influenced. Yes biologically I am a male and I do realize that, but that does not mean I have to “embrace my masculinity” because it is more comfortable for me not to. So how is a person who shares my experience of life going cause confusion and depression? I do not have disrespect for either gender, I simply do not feel like either one, I live life, I do what feels right and what I enjoy and gender simply does not play a part of it.