OutCasting; Agender (Part 1 of 2)

when i was about eleventh grade i had a friend and we started dating. and it was a great time, but the whole time she referred to me as her girlfriend and I was incredibly uncomfortable with it. it was a gender thing, and i am agender, like it made me so uncomfortable at that point, being called her girlfriend, that i could not stand it. this is outcasting, public radio's lgbtq youth program, where you don't have to be queer to be here. outcasting is a production of media for the public good, a listener-supported independent producer based in new york, online at outcasting media dot org. hi, I'm Dhruv, a youth participant in outcasting's main studio in westchester county new york. in previous episodes of outcasting we have discussed the complex topic of gender identity. you can hear all of these episodes at outcasting media dot org. as we've come to understand more about gender, it's become clear that gender and physical sex are two different things. physical sex is usually defined as the biological

characteristics that will determine a person to be either male or female at birth, but gender is more complicated. it can be defined as a spectrum between masculinity and femininity and it's an emotional and mental component of our existence. in most of us, our physical sex and gender are in alignment with each other and we're not conflicted about our gender. the word that describes that is "cisgender", "cis" being derived from a latin root meaning "on the same side of". so cis gender means that our physical sex as male or female is on the same side of, or in alignment with, our self-perceived gender as male or female. the opposite of cisgender is transgender. there's evidence that female brains are physiologically different from male brains and in transgender people, a female body may contain a male brain or vice versa. a transgender boy may feel that he's a boy, even though he lives in a girl's body, and he can feel male just as strongly as a cisgender male. it's no less real to him just because he lives in a female body. there is more to gender variation than that. just as the range of

sexualities is a spectrum from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual, with many people falling in between, there's a spectrum of gender identities as well. there are people whose gender is nonbinary, meaning that they don't feel entirely male or entirely female. some people have a fluid gender identity that changes over time. on the most recent edition of outcasting we talked with our own youth participant Jamie, who has a nonbinary gender identity. beyond that, there are intersex people who are born with ambiguous physical organs. often, doctors make decisions when an intersex baby is born to perform surgery to create either male or female genitalia. then, they instruct the parents to raise the child as the sex that was assigned at birth. surgery. it's starting to become more widely known that they often make mistakes. this demonstrates that having female organs and being raised as a girl do not make you a girl, and vice versa. in this two-part outcasting series, we examine yet another variation on the theme: agender people who don't experience gender at all. outcaster Jamie

talks with their friend Tori about Tori's experience of being agender. thanks so much for joining us, Tori. you're welcome. you identify as agender and use they/them pronouns. tell us about that. in the past, before i realized that i was agender, i used the typical pronouns that are ascribed to women, which are she/her. but realizing that i was nonbinary, i went through a couple of pronouns before i decided that they/them were most comfortable for me, not only because they didn't really -- they weren't prescribed to any gender, so i felt like that resonated best with me, as i am agender. what other pronouns did you try out? I used xe/xem them for a while, that's like x e, x e m. and that was simply because at that time i was nonbinary, and I was like trying to figure out

what fit best for me, like what pronouns were most comfortable for me, and i used them like alternating with they/them, and because it was just easier for most people to use they/them and because over time i was hearing it more, i felt more comfortable using those pronouns. before we really get into what agender means, let's talk about what gender means. what is your definition of gender and how is it important in modern society? Like most things, gender is a social construct, and over time, gender has meant different things. in earlier times, to be a man meant different things than it does currently, like you were a hunter, you were a protector, in a patriotic society. women were meant to stay home, they were meant to take care of children. these were things that were put on people based on how they were born. so to say, well because

you're born with x genitals means that this is going to be your lot in life, you're going to be a wife, you're going to be a mother, you're going to be a teacher because you're a woman, you are nurturing, you're sweet, you're soft. to be a man means that you're assertive or that you're hardened. these are things that are put on people which may not necessarily be true. like as a man, you don't have to necessarily be like a hardened person. you can be anything that you want to be, and to say that you have to be this simply because of how you're born or because of what some person arbitrarily puts on you is ridiculous. so for me, gender is a social construct that we have to constantly look into and say, is this true, are these things that can be changed, are these things that are necessary. and for the most part, they're not. to say as a woman you have to be this thing, you have to be a wife, you have to be a mother, and to be looked

down upon because you're not is wrong. so for someone who accepts what they are told when they're born, to say that you are a woman because this is just how your genitals look, this is your lot in life, it's completely unfair. it's completely wrong. and to not challenge what we're told, and to not challenge gender norms, and to settle for what we're told is right, is anything but right. to say this is how it's always been done is not a good excuse for anything. in the past i've gone through a couple of different labels to try and figure out which one is most comfortable for me, and i identify as nonbinary. identifying as nonbinary for me means that i feel -- i feel comfortable with parts of typical male gender or typical female gender, but not all of one or the other, and not necessarily a fifty-fifty split either. but i know that you identify as agender and a lot of

people may not understand the concept of not identifying with a gender. how can you explain that? Well, I think it it kind of goes back to questioning yourself. when you're born, you're basically told hey, you're male, based on this, or hey, you're female, based on this. and with the gender that you were assigned at birth, a lot of your life is decided for you instantaneously. so to say, yeah, i'm a girl, i enjoy this, or hey, i'm a girl, but i'm a tomboy because i don't like typical female activities or i enjoy sports more than your average girl, i enjoy getting like rough and tumble, i enjoy this, or hey, i'm a guy, but i like baking, i think you have to go back and really think about what gender means to you, personally. to me, i was never comfortable with

being called a girl. and i can't even pinpoint a moment in my life where i legitimately realized, like, this is not comfortable for me. and i think it goes into feeling like what does being a girl feel it? and for me, i don't know, because i've never felt like one. and i have gone through different moments of realization, of understanding myself, because like sexuality, gender is also a spectrum. so to say that, hey, today i strongly identify as agender, that does not mean at some point in my life that i couldn't identify as something else, or i couldn't grow to understand myself more deeply and have a more nuanced explanation of who i am. for me, being agender, it simply means that i don't feel like a girl because i don't know what that feels like, and i don't feel like a guy because i also

don't know what that feels like. and being nonbinary and being agender, because agender is a nonbinary gender, or lack thereof, you really just have to understand like what it is that best describes you, how you feel. and with being agender, with being like nonbinary, there's also a fair amount of questioning that goes into like, in terms of like the body. so with being generally transgender, there're often, but not always, times where you feel dysphoric. this is true of like agender people as well because when you don't feel like you are one prevalent gender or the other, your body comes into play in your thinking, well, what does this mean for me, what does this -- what is my body.

and a lot of the time, when you see androgyny or ambiguity displayed in the media, it is always like a thin kind of waify person. and when you're thin you don't have any secondary physical characteristics of being female or otherwise. so i think there needs to be a talk about like comfortability in gender. like it extends beyond thin waify types, you know? i definitely get that. i felt really dysphoric when i was in the process of trying to figure myself out. didn't know if i was trans, 'cause at some points i feel more drawn to, oh, girls on one side, boys on the other, sometimes i feel like oh i should go to the boys' side, oh wait, where do i go, i'm not a girl, I'm not a boy, I don't know where to go, so i went through that, i went through a bunch of different things, and i totally get the feeling of androgyny is only for thin people. because you know, i have some curves, and curves are very feminine, or at least they are in society, so it's

very hard to be comfortable in a nonbinary gender while looking so much like what is typically seen as a woman. exactly. i understand that completely. but then what i'm also seeing currently which is kind of mind blowing is the other side of the coin, like, masculine androgyny, more like hardened body, more muscles, and this is typically something that's viewed as more masculine, but this is like the other side of the coin, which is really interesting. so like a lot of times when you see like models who are -- who are male but they'll have to be very thin and have long hair and kind of play with gender. you also see now a lot of short-haired female muscular people, which is the other side of androgyny, but you don't really see thicker, more curvaceous people, because curves are associated with

femininity, with softness, with motherhood, which is something that as nonbinary people we try to move away from, typically, because we are not female. you also don't see a lot of androgynous people with facial hair. this is true. this is true. because facial hair is considered a masculine trait. but there are plenty of women and plenty of nonbinary people who i have facial hair. it might be, you know, whether it's just a hormone imbalance, whether it's, you know, you're taking hormones, because plenty of nonbinary people take hormones to feel better physically so that they can better identify as whatever they're most comfortable with. so you can still be agender, you can still be assigned male at birth and still want, you know, want to have breasts, or like be assigned female at birth, you want

to completely be flat chested, and it's just like, these are comfortability politics, i guess. like what makes you feel best. and this is an issue -- not an issue, i wouldn't say it's an issue, but it's something that needs to be spoken about, because as people who are not cis, we're trying to always get away from what cis people would want to call us. so in saying that hey, i am, you know, i have, i have plenty of trans friends who say, well not plenty, but a few, who say you know, you know i'm a trans woman, I'm totally comfortable with my beard. so, you know, this is a thing that needs to be recognized. like what is most comfortable for you does not have to be what society wants to see of you. i think that's a really interesting point. and i, i've definitely thought about it but didn't know how to vocalize that. i'm someone who

sometimes likes to wear dresses, sometimes prefers to wear like slacks and a button down, and i get treated very differently depending on what I'm wearing even though my identity hasn't changed. and it's just like, you see, you see someone wearing a dress, and they're automatically not as powerful in society as someone wearing a suit, no matter what gender you are. it's a piece of clothing but it's something that's so important. on that note, how do you make yourself feel comfortable with your gender physically? growing up, i went to catholic school. and in catholic school everyone wears, well all the girls wear dresses, then skirts when you get older. and when i was a kid, because i wasn't, you know, i wasn't focused on gender or how the world viewed me yet, i just loved wearing skirts. so my family sent me to a place where i could always wear skirts. and by the time i was twelve, i hated

skirts, I hated dresses, and i didn't particularly feel like they were right for me. i went until i was about honestly until i was about twenty three i didn't wear a dress again. graduation, fancy ceremonies, i always wore pants and that was what was comfortable for me. i never really explored like wearing, i guess, would be more masculinely coded clothing, but i've always just been comfortable with who i am. also because i am a creature of comfort i always wear the softest pants, the most comfortable shirt, so i've never really had to think, and i've never really thought wow i'm uncomfortable like with how i look. because when my dysphoria hit me i was always at home by myself and i had far too much time on my hands. so like when i'm out in public i never really think, hey, yeah,

people definitely are viewing me a certain way, even though they clearly are catcalling. can we talk about it. let's say it. it happens all the time. so walking down the street, you get catcalled. and it's just like i'm definitely being viewed a certain way because if i wasn't, these people wouldn't speak to me like this. but beyond that i never really thought about discomfort in what i was wearing. can you explain what catcalling is and how it makes you feel towards your gender identity? okay. so catcalling is when you're basically walking down the street as a female coded person, and you know minding your business. and someone, usually a man, says hey, you're looking good, hey, you're looking great, or you know, hey, why don't you smile, what's up, you're looking, you know. that is cat calling. and for me, first of all, gender-wise, it's a

clear indicator that you do not see me beyond my gender. it's disgusting. it's gross. it makes you feel -- you don't feel like you're more than your body. and as someone who does not identify as a woman, being made to feel like hey you are nothing more than this woman's body that society sees you as, it's demeaning, it's annoying. at the time when it happens and anytime, i am just so annoyed to say hey you know, hey what time is it, well, it's twelve thirty, no i really asked you the time, because i thought you needed to know what time it was, that's why not because i thought you were a creepy gross person, you know, who's trying to be gross. and then the other side of it is that when you generally ignore these people, the insults that come after it, which are always demeaning towards women. they think of the thing that will hurt you the most in the moment because they don't

know you. oh you're ugly, oh you're fat, oh you're some unpleasant word, and it's just like you're trying to make someone feel like they are nothing, for no reason, because they're not interested in you. because all you're seeing is their body. this is outcasting, public radio's lgbtq youth program, produced by media for the public good in new york, online at outcasting media dot org. on this edition outcaster jamie was talking with their friend tori, a fellow nonbinary person, about Tori's experience of being agender. i always feel very violated when someone catcalls me and it's usually in a big city or just a big area. i've never been cat called by someone who presents as a woman. it's always been a male issue, and it's always been -- i've been followed on the streets by someone who was initially catcalling myself and my friend, and he followed us for a sizeable amount of blocks, and we tried to lose him, and the only

we lost him was by going on the subway. so not only does it make you feel targeted and worthless, it just, it makes you feel gross. it's just of this internal feeling of like, why am i the one that has to put up with this. and you know, almost everyone woman you meet will say that they've been catcalled. not just a woman but someone who's more female-bodied. yeah. that's absolutely true. because when -- and it is a male issue, it is almost one hundred percent a male issue, because women do not speak to other women like that. usually when women speak to me or people who are female-coded speak to me it's always like in a calm setting, I'm never called out because of my body and of course the attention is because of how I look, but I don't feel immediately sexualized. If you're interested, you could try to speak to someone calmly instead of calling them out in the street and it's terrifying as well, especially when it

happens at night, if you're alone, because these people are targeting you also because they view you as someone who is weaker than they are. This is an issue of power, this is an issue of someone looking at you as less than, which is always the problem with how women are viewed in society. Even as a non binary person, as someone who has grown up with this body and is continually targeted because of this body, this will always be a woman's issue. [Interviewer] Let's talk about your early sense of feeling different. [Interviewee] I think I realized that I was definitely not cis and cis means that this is the gender that were assigned at birth, that you are comfortable with, that you are happy with, that you don't have any issue with, but I am not cis and I think I realized this [sigh]

fairly young, I think I was around eight or so and I was just like "Oh man, I am so tired of people calling me a girl," 'Hey little girl, oh, don't you look pretty today, oh' and having these words just thrown on me and these titles thrown on me as I got older, and then more people calling me "Miss" and I realized like, or "Hey little miss", like you know these cute little things that people think are adorable to call young girls, I was just, I realized fairly early that this was not for me, this was not a life that I was about and it kind of came to a head when I was like in high school. I was president of my high school's Gay Straight Alliance for my last two years of high school and it was great, I certainly wasn't as nuanced then as I am now, I certainly wasn't as well informed and because everyone there was like

pretty much everyone there was gay or queer, there were very few straight people, but it was just at this time I was like "wow yeah I definitely don't think that I am cis but I also didn't know how to express this." I went through a time where I was just like "Well, I'm just gonna ignore anyone who calls me girl, or 'Hey girl' or girl this" When I was about in eleventh grade I had a friend and we started dating pretty quickly and it was a great time, but the whole time she referred to me as her girlfriend and I was incredibly uncomfortable with it, so every time she said "Yeah this my girlfriend" I would just be like, hm, "well you're my girlfriend" so... and it got to the point where i went on vacation and i was trying to text her, and someone else texted me back, and said well this is

her girlfriend, so. And I'd been gone for like two days. so when i got back home she basically told me, well, I didn't say that I was her girlfriend. so there was a lot of confusion about this, just because of this one word. and i couldn't get over the fact that it was this one word. and i still couldn't say it. she asked me to say it, just say you're my girlfriend, and i'll, i'll be with you, this other person doesn't mean anything, and I was like, i cannot say i'm your girlfriend because it gave me such discomfort. and it wasn't until about two years ago, since she and i remained really good friends, that she asked me, you know, what was the issue back then, what was the issue? and i -- with saying that i was her girlfriend. and I kind of just snapped and i was like it was a gender thing, it was a gender thing. and i am agender. like, it made me so uncomfortable at that point, being called her

girlfriend, that i could not stand it. but because i was about seventeen or eighteen and i didn't have these words, this was, this was so long ago, the, all of these terms and all of these words to properly i'd, like, properly label yourself, perhaps they were out there but the information wasn't as readily available and i wouldn't have known what to search google for at that time, that it just came out like, oh, well, it's a gender thing, because i'm not a girl, and i've never been a girl. and then she said oh. well why didn't you just say that? well. because I didn't know at the time. i think it's interesting, the use of the words "girlfriend" and "boyfriend", because they're, you know, they're so binary, and the one nonbinary non-gender-assuming term is "partner". and the word partner is such a mature word. it's not a word that you usually use when you're in a high school kind of relationship. it something more long-term, something that you usually, you know, before gay marriage was

legal, you'd see two women and they're partners, because for some reason they couldn't call themselves something else. exactly. thank you so much Tori. it's was amazing having you. thank you. it was great being here. Tori is an agender friend of outcaster Jamie. both they and Jamie share their life experiences as nonbinary people in this episode. this has been part one of a two part interview. part two will be heard on the next edition of outcasting. that's it for this edition of outcasting, public radio's lgbtq youth program, where you don't have to be queer to be here. this program has been produced by the outcasting team, including youth participants alex, samantha, callie, andrea, max, quinn, necia?, lauren, dante?, lucas, jamie, and me, Dhruv. our assistant producers are alex mince? and josh valley and our executive producer is marc sophos? . outcasting is a production of media for the public good, a listener-supported independent producer based in new york. more information about outcasting is available at outcasting media dot org. you'll find

information about the show, "listen" links for all outcasting episodes, and the podcast link. outcasting is also on social media. connect with us on twitter, facebook, and youtube at outcastingmedia. if you're having trouble, whether it's at home or school or just with yourself, call the trevor project hotline at eight six six four eight eight seven three eight six, or visit them online at the trevor project dot org. the trevor project is an organization dedicated to lgbtq youth suicide prevention. call them if you have a problem. seriously, don't be scared. they even have an online chat you can use if you don't want to talk on the phone. again the number is eight six six four eight eight seven three eight six. being different isn't a reason to hate or hurt yourself. eight six six four eight eight seven three eight six, or online at the trevor project dot org. you can also find a link on our site, outcasting media dot org, under outcasting lgbtq resources. I'm Dhruv. thanks for listening.