Agender

Social Justice Usage

Source: Agender: Having no specific gender identity or having a gender identity that is neutral. Sometimes used interchangeably with gender neutral, genderless, or neutrois.

New Discourses Commentary

“Agender” is a term used for people to describe themselves when they believe they do not have a gender. They see themselves as being without gender and take a lack of gender as their gender identity. It is a concept that only really makes sense in gender studies and queer Theory, and it is considered to be a queer gender identity (or a “genderqueer” identity) under the “gender non-conforming” heading used for people who do not conform to the gender expectations connected to their biological sex. It is similar to a non-binary gender identity, which rejects the idea of a gender binary, but is distinct in that it refuses the concept of a gender altogether and then takes that as one’s gender identity. It is (apparently) a synonym for the less-common word “neutrois.”

It will strike many readers that this seems to make no sense whatsoever, and that’s because it doesn’t have to. Queer Theory does not require things to make sense in the usual fashion, or at all, and so queer identities, including genderqueer identities, need not “make sense” in ways that people would normally recognize. For example, while the concept of claiming that someone has no particular gender—no set of social and cultural “performances” related to their gender or underlying sex, as the social constructivists have it (see also, gender performativity)—seems to make some sense if considered on its face, claiming that this is a gender identity plainly doesn’t in the same way that the absence of sound or color can’t be considered a sound or a color. Just as people would understand the ideas of “silence” and “darkness” in terms of sound and light, however, so they can understand the idea of being “agender” as a “gender identity” (see also, Derridean and absence).

The purpose of acknowledging an agender “gender identity” within the Theory and thought of Critical Social Justice, or more specifically within gender studies and queer Theory, is to fulfill the queer Theoretical mission of destabilizing and subverting any notion of stable, normative categories that describe human beings (see also, hegemony), particularly in terms of sex, gender, and sexuality. Queer Theory maintains that having stable categories with regard to these things is insufficient to account for people who feel that they fall outside of them (usually, very narrowly interpreted through strict, outdated stereotypes). This is believed to create a form of oppression in and of itself, sometimes referred to as a “violence of categorization.” Acknowledging the people who feel like gender is an inappropriate way to describe their lived experience in that regard and considering it as a (paradoxical) gender identity is therefore productive of queer politics (see also, queering) and allegedly beneficial to the people who fall outside all categories of gender.

Related Terms

Absence; Critical; Derridean; Gender; Genderqueer; Gender identity; Gender non-conforming; Gender performativity; Gender studies; Hegemony; Identity; Lived experience; Non-binary; Normativity; Oppression; Queer; Queer (v.); Queer Theory; Sex; Sexuality; Social constructivism; Social Justice; Subversion; Theory; Violence of categorization;

Revision date: 11/1/20

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James Lindsay