#but me connecting to my gender (or lack thereof) is also tied to me rediscovering myself and who i am so as much as i hate the overthinky

[1mnobodywhoareyou]

oh i have so many thoughts on this and we've now maybe opened a can of worms 😅 (this is me actively joining the discussion not opening an argument, wanna make that tone thing clear cuz otherwise I'll be anxious about it for the rest of ever)

i think it's amazing when people can just exist as they are. with or without labels. umbrella labels or microlabels. it's incredible. i wish i could do that.

but i can't. for me, labels offer a few things: an entrypoint into community, a simpler way to communicate, explanations for things about me that i've struggled deeply to understand for my entire life and have been othered over. and they also make my category brain happy.

unfortunately it also means that i overthink the categories i'm considering for myself for YEARS. and how I'm perceived by the world at large. do i want cishets of the world to know that i'm a collector of 'a's? no. i don't really care. but do i want to find other 'a' collectors to build relationships and community with? yes. do i want other queer folks to know that i'm "one of them"? yeah. do i have the capacity to "look" any sort of way right now? no. does it fuel the impostery feelings? yeah. and yeah, that's for me (and the community at large) to work on. cuz queer doesn't HAVE a look. but that doesn't take away the feelings.

this is what i find so much easier about existing online. i can just plaster my 'a' collection to my figurative forehead. that important community building information is right there. (in addition to all the other really meaningful things about me that inform my relationships with people but that's a whole different convo for a whole different day).

my experience with gender is different. i'm not so much apathetic about it as very much NOT any of the things. with a preference for the pronouns I'm used to. and both versions (or any other) are valid. there are as many ways to be agender as there are agender people.

anyway. to return the rant to the original point 😅

i love love love the box analogy. you get to sit in the box that fits you. and if that box ceases to fit, you get to find a new box. or no box at all. and what you look like or how you're perceived doesn't inform which box you fit in. though it can affect your comfort in said box. and i think it's okay to think about and work through that. try things out. figure out what feels good.

idk if this actually wound up making any sense. but op. if you feel like the agender box fits? you get to sit in it. and the same is true for me too. and for prev re: cis and/or bi or and/or no box at all😉.

So, I have been thinking. I don't really care about my gender. Like i don't care if people call me she or he or they, or anything if I'm honest. I know I have an afab body so people will proceive me as female, but I don't really care if I'm honest.

And I've come to the realisation that I might be agender. But with that comes the question :

If I'm agender do I want to change anything about image to make me look different than the gender I'm presenting?

And the answer is no. So does this really mean I'm agender if I don't want to change the way my body looks??