Firstly, my obligatory “I hope this kind of post is acceptable here”. Now with that out of the way.
For the last few years, I have been finally starting to address a lot of things about myself that I pushed down or away for a long time. Among those things was gender. But I’m also likely ADHD at least, and have been pretty burnt out for years now, so I’ve become a lot worse at research and looking into things than I used to be.
So only about two years ago, I finally looked up “non-binary” on Wikipedia, and felt like I was reading about myself. And since then it’s been quite a journey (all internally because I basically never tell anyone irl what I’m going through). From imposter syndrome or feeling like I might be a fraud, to half assurance that I’m on the right track but still not fully comfortable or satisfied in the answers so far, to feeling or registering dysphoria for the first time and regularly since and thinking I might possibly be transfem. But I’ve always preferred and got along better with women and am extra angry with men in general these days, which might be playing a big part in me wishing I was afab these days.
And putting together my personal journey over the last few years, with what I’ve awakened to with regards to both mental health and gender identity, I remembered something about the hidden curriculum. And how it was my history teacher in school (one of the only teachers that ‘got’ me and who I wasn’t constantly fighting with) who brought it up and looking back, he clearly knew that I was different in a number of ways. When he brought up the hidden curriculum, one of the sentences that he specifically used and that I’ve remembered since, was how it “teaches boys to be boys and girls to be girls” (I was outraged by this and the whole idea of the hidden curriculum btw).
Which brings me to why I am agender. I literally never learnt how to be one gender or the other. And it’s not because I wasn’t taught, it’s because I rejected it every step of the way, or just didn’t even notice that it was a lesson. I was raised by my mother and two sisters, who acknowledged me as a ‘man’, but didn’t exactly push me into sportsball and shit. I was very much raised by sisters in particular because my mother means well, but has always been kinda vacant. And in school, I was too busy resisting and fighting every step of the way to learn how to be a ‘man’ there.
So yeah, that’s it. I wrote an essay just to say: I am agender! I finally found the exact label that makes me feel like it’s been so obvious all along. And 100% confident in saying that I belong to. I am agender.
Wow, very clear explanation, I appreciated the link to Wikipedia it did clarify your description.
Makes me think about my upbringing.
The main separation throughout school that I remember was bathrooms. I also did do soccer and karate in elementary school and i strived for an A in all of my classes including PE which put my skills in the higher skill group when my high school PE teacher (in a very blue US state and city and probably thinking about having at least one trans student) split the class based on skill for supervised sportsball games. I got into computer science at 5th grade through Khan Academy and through my older brother who was studying Computer Science in college at that time. So I’m not sure if my agab got me into computers and programming (which would later use programming socks to develop my sense of girliness and fashion) or if it was just my brother spreading his influence and knowledge in the field. Like if I was afab would my brother have helped me get a gaming pc for my birthday? Would I be socially attracted or rejected by girl groups at high school? Would I still be a lesbian?
