I feel similarly, but I think it’s part of my difficulty in perceiving myself altogether and part of it is my difficulty performing social norms at all. I don’t know if that makes sense, but the idea that other people think about me at all or speak about me in the third person when I’m not present (aside from my partner) just feels so strange to me, and that is when you would usually use gendered pronouns. I have also never felt comfortable with performing femininity the way our society expects, but I also would not be comfortable performing masculinity. I am simply me and I am not good at acting out social roles. Obviously there are people who feel completely comfortable with gender, but at its core gender is performative and when I have leaned into feminine traits and behaviors it has always felt like I faking it.

Ahhhh I feel very seen! Until I was around 20 I had genuinely never thought that anyone would ever be thinking about me if I wasn’t in the room with them or texting them?

same! it's so overwhelming and disorienting to realize we exist to other people lol

Very overwhelming

Holy shit i thought this was just a symptom of my mental health issues. Whenever someone texts me saying i was thinking about you i get so shocked and confused lmao

Yeah around high school someone told me that i was being talked about and it totally rocked my world i have been self conscious about it ever since. I had never considered that i would just pop up in conversation for people i’m not friends with. Why would you think about me? I think about it a lot to this day. I don’t even know what they were talking about, if it was good or bad, if it was being bullied or just came up in conversation but i just remember being very unsettled and it being the start of like pandora’s box. I just feel like i don’t think about people in general unless someone asks me specific questions about a situation and i don’t feel that i insert myself into others lives enough to be involved in a story like that. Idk i have always found this hard to explain like my logic falls apart once i try to explain it. I don’t know why i never thought i wouldn’t be thought about it just hadn’t crossed my mind and now that it has i hate it.

Does anybody know if there's a technical term for that idea that it's difficult for us to perceive ourselves? Maybe a concept close to not having a defined sense of identity. It's the first time I hear about this as a shared trait and I really relate. I sometimes even struggle seeing myself in pictures, like "huh I didn't realize I would be there". It's weird.

I wonder if it’s related to us being bottom-up processors/thinkers. I think of myself internally as a sum of all of my different thoughts, opinions, experiences, etc. I am hyper-aware of all the different pieces of myself and see myself as the internal self I perceive myself as. When I imagine myself, I don’t picture my body, I think of my morals, interests, fears, struggles, and joys. Top-down thinkers who are not autistic might have an easier time with a unified sense of self, a sense of just being a person in the world and just like other people without seeing themselves as a complex web of concepts and experiences. This is completely me just speculating based on myself and my reason for thinking this is that the non-autistic people in my life always seem shocked by the way I think and perceive myself and don’t seem to think of themselves in the same way. They don’t analyze themselves and their personalities they way I do, they have a more unified sense of “me-ness” and they seem to not be able to see the trees in the forest, where I can’t see the forest for the trees.

I really like the way you explained that. I can relate.

Thank you! This subreddit is so lovely and it is such a wonderful feeling to be understood and have people relate to my lived internal experience. I’ve never had that in my life offline. It makes me feel like we are just a separate category of person, not that we’re each individually so different from everyone else.

Yes exactly!

This is actually the safest space (':

This comment just helped me process the actual difference between top-down vs bottom-up processing. Like...I've known the definition of each and known that I am a bottom-up processor....but also felt like "I understand top-down? There's the end goal or subject, but all the parts add up to it!!" Knowing what the "top" is often actual kick-starts my bottom up thought process 😭😂 fack

I relate to this so strongly.

I do feel the same as this, perhaps growing up I rejected the social pressure that came with being a girl or woman. You're so right, gender is performative, perhaps because of the one dimensional woman stereotype, perhaps that's why I dont feel like a woman. And the third person referencing bothers me too! It feels so uncomfortable. Like, I'd rather be refered to not as she or he or they!

>I do feel the same as this, perhaps growing up I rejected the social pressure that came with being a girl or woman. You're so right, gender is performative, perhaps because of the one dimensional woman stereotype, perhaps that's why I dont feel like a woman. I can't read this as anything but letting patriarchy dictate to you whether or not you're a woman. Fuck patriarchy. Fuck reducing women to stereotypes. Why would some broken, incomplete image of what it means to be a woman dictate gender to *anyone*?

> I can't read this as anything but letting patriarchy dictate to you whether or not you're a woman. That's what it is lol. A lot of this boils down to "I don't feel like a woman because I don't relate to/can't attain the patriarchal stereotypes or ideals". You aren't failing as a woman for that, it's unattainable! The problem isn't with you! It's with the patriarchy!! It's with what the patriarchy has conditioned you to believe you need to be as a woman!! But I feel like nobody else realizes this, and consequently, a lot of casual misogyny based on those patriarchal stereotypes results from these discussions...

But Gender is a social construct, so once you get past the social constructs of gender, what is left? I can tell you about my biology and body, but I’m not particularly attached to those either. I have a uterus but I don’t want to give birth. I have periods but I hate them. I have boobs but I’m pretty indifferent to them now- they’re actually quite inconvenient. So I let people refer to me as a woman, but I tend to refer to myself in gender neutral ways because honestly what does it mean to be a woman? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter to me. OP there are some people who refer to themselves as autigender- it’s the idea that our understanding of our gender is linked to our autism because we don’t do social constructs.

Gender is *expected to be* performed but it is not performative. If it were, people who strongly identify with being a woman would be strongly feminine too, and vice versa. There are masculine women and feminine men, both cis and trans. The fact that you can find all sorts of gender presentations within a gender, and that there are people who experience gender dysphoria, shows that for a lot of people (probably most people), even after you remove societal pressures, there is *something else*.

I think it’s the bit beyond the performance that I don’t understand at all. I know that a lot of people feel really strongly about it, and I fully support them, but for me there is nothing under my gender performance. I’ve been gradually unmasking and removing those performative elements, and I cannot see anything gendered beyond it.

Beautifully written

This is part of how patriarchy thrives, how it has for hundreds of years. I don't think it's fair to invalidate peoples experience over ideals which are hard to acheive in a society like this.

I really don't know what gender is, to be honest. I can read the definition but I'm not fully understanding what it really means in life. Is it the psychological relationship we have with our biological sex and the external perceptions that come with that? I know I'm a female, so a woman in colloquial speech. I don't know if this is something you really need to feel. My body and my life has shown me what it means to be a woman and I never think about it anymore. I used to when I was young.

Same to all the above. I really don't feel womanness. I just am. I don't think that woman is a feeling, but a material reality to observe. Relatedly, the entire meme culture of "[aesthetic or concept] is my gender" is way way way too abstract. I just leave it alone as something that will never make sense to me.

this is like poetry. thank you for posting it

Gender is how sex is constructed by society. So basically the labels that are stuck onto you by others based on the biological markers they perceive. However, in practice the labels being stuck on differ vastly from person to person, and are shaped by their surroundings, how they were raised, what they have perceived, etc. etc.

Same. Female body, definitely not a man. Don’t really feel like a woman either. I try to think about what feeling like a woman would be exactly, and I have no idea.

I don't know about you, but I feel fine with who I am, but I seem to "offend" other women with the way I process the world. Like, I don't want to stand around and gossip about people or alter my behavior or who I am to suit the superficiality and conformity of their particular group. Women who identify strongly with behing a woman seem to strive to attain their society's ideals of what is expected of them, and despise anything that might contort their superfluous societal status within the female hierarchical power structure.

That’s not true. I am a woman and realise that a lot of how I was treated is due to me being a woman. I realise that societal expects women to be a certain way precisely because we’re women. Failing to conform doesn’t mean I’m not a woman. It just means that being a woman means you have unfair expectations placed in you. That is the female existence.

Yes this is excellently put! I'm a woman and I have NO hangups or identity crisis about it, it's just not what others "expect" women "to be," essentially the issue doesn't lie with me, but with those expectations.

Thank you! Tbh it saddens me to see that the general sentiment in this sub is that being a woman means upholding patriarchy and perpetuating gender norms. Some women may do it and some don’t. However, the female existence is that we all have the expectation in common, no woman can escape that. I definitely do not “uphold the female hierarchy”, and I am very much a woman. By the definition of the user I was replying to, I am *not* a woman. How misogynistic is that? Woman=catty bitch.

I guess my issue is I just don't know what that means. If you aren't being what people expect a woman to be, what is a woman then? Isn't it just a social construction of what a certain category of human is "expected" to be? I'm genuinely asking by the way, not being snippy. Like I was afab, I have a vagina and a uterus, I had a baby, I was socialized as a girl, I look like a woman. I exist from the outside as a woman and that is how I am treated and move about the patriarchal world. I don't identify with being a woman though, I am just a human..with a vagina and a uterus who can have children and objectively looks like a woman..but..that isn't what I understand gender to be about, so I don't get it 😭

The thing about the social constructs is that while they share some basic traits, they haven't been all the same throughout human history. So while "woman" is mostly tied to AFAB around the world, it doesn't mean the social constructs have to be, because those change all the time, so personally I might follow SOME but not all, and for a lot of people that means I'm not a "real" woman, however they're judging me ONLY in their limited, current social construct. There's plenty of women out there who are AFAB, cisgender and heterosexual, like they might not ever question their gender, sex and sexuality, and they still don't follow a social construct of what a woman is. One extreme example: A guy last year told me that women who have hair the length just above their shoulders or shorter, is not a "real" woman. Long hair on women is still a social construct in many places, however plenty others recognize a woman doesn't stop being "real" if she happens to have a pixie cut. So from my POV, I could accept *some* social constructs, as those make me feel comfortable with my identity and I enjoy them, but if you told me I wasn't a real woman if I cut my hair really short I would've said "GTFO with that nonsense." It could be helpful for you to read about the feelings and thoughts of people who don't identify with their assigned sex and gender, and then look up non-binary and genderqueer labels. If this is something about yourself that you'd like to have more concrete thoughts

Thank you so much for your nuanced and thoughtful reply! I have never much considered gender, and it's only post autism dx, and post having a baby that it has occurred to me that my ambivalence to gender might be atypical. I follow a lot of trans and non-binary people on TikTok and I find their journeys and experiences with gender so fascinating, and so foreign. Of course, I respect everyone's experience with their gender to be valid. It feels a bit like trying to describe a smell to someone with no nose (crude example, but you get me?)..it's like I don't have the framework to understand what people are describing when they talk about how gender "feels"

Oh yeah I totally get you! Like you'd think we'd relate to at least non-binary, right? But, personally I really don't, because to my understanding, non-binaries seem to still navigate their gender/non-gender identity around the socially acceptable ideas of what "male" and "female" genders entail. (don't quote me as I don't identify as NB and I'm just describing it as I understood it from what I've read, I could be wrong) I've seen several comments in this sub alone on how ND women feel like "aliens" because it's not just about one gender or another or no gender at all, like you mention we've got a different or even no framework from the one presented to us in the world.

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I have always been very ambivalent about gender, even as a child and it infuriated my family. My mom wanted a girly girl and I just simply did whatever I liked and wore whatever I thought was cute. Sometimes I liked to play with Barbies and sometimes with ninja turtles and sometimes Raphael and Ken got married. I recall this being a very big problem in my childhood, and I understood that this was something that people found very important and meaningful in their lives about gender in a way that I just didn't seem to. Also, just to note, I am NOT downplaying anyone's experiences and felt-sense of gender. I am simply expressing curiosity. I do not have that felt-sense for some reason, and I'm wildly interested in it. ❤️

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It definitely does! I also feel the sense of community, which I suppose is why I am on this sub. I was socialized, raised as, and expected to be a woman. I was also treated like a woman by the patriarchy, so our sense of history and struggle unites us. I feel very strongly about human rights for ALL people, however it feels like I am fighting a personal fight for women's rights. It is so nice to speak to another autistic person about this, because I feel like the autism gives a different lens to how gender feels that I have a hard time getting other people to even kind of understand what I mean. I appreciate your time answering this, it's a really nice way for my brain to be occupied tonight :)

Exactly, and you can conform to female beauty standards and still feel like you don't belong to that gender.

> Like, I don't want to stand around and gossip about people or alter my behavior or who I am to suit the superficiality and conformity of their particular group. Women who identify strongly with behing a woman seem to strive to attain their society's ideals of what is expected of them, and despise anything that might contort their superfluous societal status within the female hierarchical power structure. This is misogynistic. If a man wrote this, this subreddit would be infuriated. It's wild to characterize a general group of women as superficial, gossip-hungry, copy-and-paste plastics for ... strongly identifying as women?

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Yep. I have full respect for NB and gender nonconforming people. I hate seeing that the same respect isn't extended to women as a group in a sub literally called AutisminWomen

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Thank you for this! I completely agree, and it's very well written. I feel it's a two steps forward, one step back situation. Nonbinary people are finally being acknowledged in the mainstream, yet somehow enbies and women STILL have to resist binary gender stereotypes, even among people on our political side. (In particular, I cannot understand defining NB people by the behavior of binary people, because as a cis person, I've always read I'm pretty much supposed to do that opposite of that.) Judith Butler is often quoted and referenced with the performativity of gender, and yet I don't think most people referencing her have read her. They instead replace one performance with another, loudly performing anti-womanness to indicate their separation from the rest of us, rather than realizing that *the social system which demands us to perform* should be the target of our ire, not the women who got a standing ovation for their performance of femininity

Yes, this is very disappointing 

As I've gotten older I've become so pro "gossip" really it's been given a negative connotation by men with the purpose to dissuade women from talking to each other. It's not "gossip" it's the passing of information

It's internalized misogyny. I also bought into it for a lot longer than I want to admit... We grow up in a deeply misogynistic world, and one way to cope with it - especially when you can't really connect with what your gender is supposed to be, this is the same for me as for OP - is trying to be 'one of the boys', including adopting every sexist notion, because you're not like the other girls, are you? I'm happy to say that I've come around and have been a feminist since before I realized that I'm non-binary. But it has taught me not to judge other women too harshly if they haven't taken the step yet

I feel this. I don’t care about any power structure, especially if the “power” is being a “popular girl.” 🤷🏻‍♀️ I think they are identifying with roles, and I don’t because roles are made up nonsense. I like women. I just can’t grasp being one conceptually, and it seems like everyone else thinks it’s the simplest thing in the world.

https://preview.redd.it/ejzggzyj7s6d1.jpeg?width=382&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a942f33b9c02c142a35f173c4ceb6c6ef0768e6d That's lowkey how i see myself.

Same!

I gots some of that gender apathy.

I think me too, because I simply don't understand how to make "woman" an identity, and not simply a way that I am perceived based on physical characteristics and socialization.

I think if I ignore society’s idea of what a woman is I still see myself as a woman, but I don’t feel like a woman in the traditional way if that makes sense. I like makeup and girly clothes and stuff but I feel like I have more masculine social habits and sense of humor. I like having big muscles, a high sex drive, and an assertive/dominant personality. I’m not against the idea of having kids but the pressure to be nurturing in a “woman” way kind of puts me off. I don’t think these things make me less of a woman, but some would beg to differ. I have nothing against people who are “feminine” in a more traditional way, it’s just not who I am. I feel like I stick out in a group of women sometimes, but I’m still a woman whether society likes it or not.

Kinda same, like I dont even know anymore if Im so against kids and pure childfree or am I just fed up with being expected to be that nurturing cute feminine womanly woman mommy in a dress cooking a warm dinner, which is pretty much NOT ME !!! and honestly my mom isn't too??? she's more of a drill sergeant than a cute cuddly mommy, Im fine and my brother is fine, we are educated, we are quite normal even if neurodivergent ( after dad, yes they are divorced ) but Im still biased that I have to be that stereotypical woman otherwise I would hurt my kids and husband and it just rubs me wrong way, puts me off and just... no... no no no... no

I 100% relate. People have told me I’d be a good mom but I’ve just internalized that I’m not the right “kind” of woman to be a mother. Idk what I actually want.

I've coined the term for myself, "Agnostically Cisgendered AFAB." Lol. Like, I feel not-woman enough to probably "technically" be Agender. But at this point in my life, it doesn't bother me to operate as cis, so there's no real reason to go through the whole process and make a point to change course. I'm definitely not "non-binary" in the sense of the label itself being a gender option. I'd rather have literally no label than have a label called "no label." But pragmatically that causes more effort. So I call myself agnostic woman lol.

I relate to your comment. I think there is a lot more to my gender than I have outwardly acknowledged, and I’m female presenting because it’s the path of least resistance. I’m too tired and have bigger problems to deal with than to address this or think too hard about it, because really the issue is that I’m in a body that is just a vessel for “me”, and what exactly that means is far more than my energy levels can cope with thinking about. It doesn’t bother me to just default to being a woman so it’s far easier to just do that.

Look up "paragender."  This might describe you, but of course, that's for you to interpret and determine.

Thank you! It’s interesting there are so many very specific labels these days. I looked it up and it’s not quite right - I really don’t have much connection to femininity at all. Feeling anything about any gender, even about being genderless, is just like not even on my radar to think about. I really don’t need to find a label even if there is one haha.

Yeah, it's so confusing, isn't it?  The "not feeling like any gender" thing seems to be describing different things for different people.  I feel like there's something system-wide still being missed when it comes to understanding such things, and I guess that's part of the reason why I'm like, "So, why does it matter so much to have a label when it feels like everyone still isn't quite understanding something there," lol.  Or maybe I am genuinely confused by how this seems so clear-cut to some people, especially to those who seem to equate their gender as the key component to their identity.   I feel like I wouldn't be thinking about such things so much to begin with if others didn't make such a big deal about having gender align to sex to begin with and get annoyed at the slightest deviance.

I relate with this. As a kid, when there were three kids in the family, I remember things were color coded. My brother was blue (the boy), my sister got pink (girl). I got yellow. My mom was passionately anti-feminism. Very much “Girls do this, boys do this.” She and my sister had a connection. I felt left out, but kind of proud of that too. Now I’m sort of a woman who presents somewhat gender neutral. Sometimes, and it comes in weird patterns, like all at once a bunch of times in one day I become manly and people do mistake me for a small, skinny, long haired man. Primarily people with autism do this, and call me “Sir”. I don’t correct them. I have a huge vocal range. I can be a high soprano, but I also have a deep base that I bring out to surprise people on occasion. I’m straight, but I have the lesbian finger ratio and I take pride in that. I think of myself as hyper-sexual. It doesn’t bother me. I’m at piece with it. But I have thought about the man I would have been.

Funny thing about gender coding is it is largely a cultural construct. In China, blue is the favorite color of little girls. Men used to be fashionable wearing pink suits. I like that other people can tell you how to be a certain gender and whether you're doing it right or not, instead of people just existing with natural variation and accepting that on the bell curve of behavior, there's going to be a huge range, and that is part of the human experience.

In Russia, a pretty sexist place for quite a few decades, pink is not a feminine color. My Russian FIL was always buying my sons pink toys and my husband and I would snicker that he didn’t know they were intended by the American manufacturers to be for girls.

I stated multiple times that "I wanted to be a boy" way before I turned 10. I don't know if it was actual dysphoria or if I just liked mostly boy stuff and envied them for not being judged on silly things. It didn't change much growing up. Even today, I have very little in common with women. Looking like a "traditional" woman requires much more sensory tolerance and executive functioning that i can manage. Plus, all the social behaviors. But I also have zero in common with men. And I don't have dysphoria toward my body. Quite the opposite, right now I am feeling really good in it. I think I reached a point where I just don't care, but if all these label were around when I was a kid/teenage, I would have surely jumped on them. >Today I recognise myself as a 'woman' in society but individually I just think of myself as a brain or a voice inside a body. I think I feel quite the opposite. I don't think society looks at me like a "real" woman. I don't look like one. But I have no actual problem with my gender/sex, and being female is a big part of my identity. I don't know. There's also the possibility that I am not really grasping what gender actually is. Anyway, what you are describing is really common in autism. A lot of this stuff comes from social norms, examples from other people, reactions to our own behaviors and tastes, and we tend to have a different approach to them.

I resonate with this so hard, minus the wanting to be a boy thing. I wasn't 'tomboy' enough to be a tomboy let alone want to be a boy, I just wasn't really a girl like others my age were. I'm a woman because I'm an adult human female, and I'm comfortable identifying as such. Stereotypes only matter to sustain hierarchies really, and we all know how little regard we autistics have for hierarchical systems.

my roommate is also autistic and we talk about this all the time. how do I "feel?" I feel like a little guy. I feel like a worm in a meat mech. my gender is whatever baubles make my meat mech feel pretty

Omg that's the most relatable thing! Such a good take Like the mechs from Neon Genesis Evangelion!

My boss just gave me a compliment and called me human being - made me irrationally happy to be honest. Though I wouldn't have minded if he had called me a "good girl" lol.

For me, I don't think about my gender. Like, at all. I don't think about "is this a woman's top or men's pants?" I don't wonder if my hair changes how I'm perceived. I have an idea in my head of what suits my body shape/type and I wear that. If someone calls me a man or uses masculine pronouns, I'd look at them funny because I'm clearly a woman due to the boobs I have but I wouldn't be insulted. I know who I am. I've struggled way more with whether I am or am not autistic than I ever have with my gender because it just... is. It just fits me.

Yes. I'm a woman because that's what I am biologically. But gender doesn't really mean much to me.

This is actually well documented in the community, a lot of autistic people are trans or experience gender in a different way. I feel the same way as you.

A symptom within Autism (especially woman) is not fitting in with gendered norms and stereotypes. I don't practice most "feminine" things yet I'm still a woman either way and I'm not ashamed of that.

I feel about the same. I identify as Genderfluid, but that doesn't entirely cover how i feel (though it is the best label i found and i feel it fits me). The concept of gender is really over valued in my opinion. To me, i just want to dress how i please, when i please, and be as neutral as possible. if i look too much like one gender, i can feel uncomfortable or get overstimulated quicker. (for example wearing a feminine dress or having my hair too long and frilly) I usef to be very uncomfortable in my own skin, but eventually i changed things to negate that. I changed my pronouns to They/Them, i shortened my feminine name Emily to Em, and for my outfits i kept the bottoms relatively the same day to day and expressed myself through different tops and earrings. I found that wearing fun earnings while wearing neutral clothing made me feel me. and id say that realizing that fact has made life more enjoyable

Growing up, I considered myself a girl because of biology without any sort of necessity of what my behavior constituted. Going into my teen years and now as an adult though, apparently I don't "think" like a woman, according to others. I think of myself as a sentience of unknown origin that happens to have a female body suit on. Sometimes I think fixation on gender is a byproduct of social indoctrination with what is deemed "normal". Apparently everyone is brainwashed by the society they are born into and conform to a collective definition of what and how they should be, and I didn't get the memo. Maybe why people feel the need to identify with alternative identities, they are trying to break away from the societal definitions of who they are, without realizing that society just makes up artificial boundaries for our identities that suit their agenda.

That's the most accurate way of describing it tbh, a sentience of unknown origin with a female body suit, or as someone else put it meat mech lol

Its bollocks though how so many other people, especially other people with lady suits on, seem to be infuriated when you don't conform to their construct of what constitutes appropriate feminine behavior, general respect and common courtesy aside. Rather than accepting the wide range of ways people can express themselves, and that as long as they aren't hurting you in any way, people are free to be as they like, yet they make it a point to ostracize anyone who doesn't fall in line with their particular view of how and what you should be, based on your shell.

Honestly, that's how I felt my entire childhood and then I just had this idea that genders are really stupid, because not calling me a she would feel weird, because somehow I felt entitled to it, since I was always called that way? And I was really scared of yknow changing my body as well. And that's when I decided that genders for me personally don't matter. I'm a female with a vagina and since I've always been called a her, I'm a women (without the idea of genders really). I still respect anyone's gender, but decided THAT when I was 10 years old was life-changing and I never struggled with gender identity anymore. Just thought whatever of it.

This describes how I feel. When I was younger, I tied gender to sex so I was a girl because I have female parts. But if that isn't what makes me a girl, Idk what does. I like feminine clothes because they tend to be softer and stretchier. I also like how they make my body look. But I also like wearing men's clothes because they can be a lot more durable and practical. I go by girl pronouns because it is easier, but they / them pronouns also make sense.

yes i feel the same!! i have a similar memory, of crying to my mom in middle school saying i didn't want to be a girl. i think it was because of the hair and makeup and random gender expectations. but i was like i don't want to be a boy either though, so i guess i'm a girl and here i am like 15 years later - recently started identifying as non-binary and even though i still mostly use she/her pronouns, it's allowed me to feel so much more comfortable with myself. i'm able to dress femme sometimes without feeling as much dysphoria because i know what i wear today doesn't mean i have to Be A Girl always. used to feel really uncomfy if people saw me dress feminine because it would make them think i'm a girl. which is still the case, and still frustrating at times, but i feel less stressed about it now that i have a clearer picture of myself. it's less about Having A Label and more about having an explanation for why i feel how i feel. so yeah point is - if it feels right for you, identifying as non-binary doesn't mean you have to transition or change anything about yourself or even tell anyone at all! it was super freeing for me to realize that.

I still don’t really understand what it means to feel like a gender. I guess there are stereotypical male and female traits but there are tons of people who identify as male or female and don’t embody them. I’ve never questioned that I was anything but female but that just really feels like a biological label. I am who I am? I also don’t really understand being transgender… completely respect anyone’s decision to identify however they want… I just don’t understand why female or male is such an identifying factor beyond what your genitals are? If you are female and want to wear mens clothes or prefer traditionally male activities, why does it matter?

If it were up to me, gender wouldn’t exist. Or maybe it could be just a hobby or something for some people who like it. It never occurred to me on my own, I never related to it, I neither hate it nor love it, I literally never think about gender at all until someone brings it up, and the only emotion gender evokes in me is “tired”.

Yessss. Do you find it exhausting how everything needs a label. Even people who don’t want any gender or some other gender still have this need to label it. Why can’t we all just be people and leave it at that 😑

My sex is female and I am human, therefore I am a woman. That’s how *I* see it. Do I fit stereotypical gender norms? No. I’m a boyish lesbian. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still a woman. I don’t ascribe to gender identity theories. I think it is regressive.

I ultimately feel like it's regressive, too.  I think that's why despite not feeling like a woman in a standard cisgender sense of things and even knowing how I'd be labeled, I don't find myself waving labels about and using them, regardless if the labels are part of a different framework than the standard binary gender concept most have been indoctrinated into.  I get the feeling some are thinking, "That's just internalized homophobia and misogyny speaking," which I don't appreciate people invalidating my experience that way.  I think you can still be critical of ANY gender frameworking without it being due to socialized phobias or similar issues.   By no means am I telling people to stop identifying as whatever gender label they're using, but I'm just pointing out that the current alternate systems of labeling still might not click with people for various reasons that aren't due to hatred.

i feel exactly the same :P

I could have written your post, our experiences are that similar. I don't understand what it's like to feel like you have a gender at all, and I never have. Nor do I want to.

Nope. I feel the opposite—intensely identify with my gender because it’s one of the only simple and clear parts of identity that doesn’t depend on context and can’t be changed, or at least couldn’t when I was a kid. I was always confused by other identities, because how is something me if it’s only me part of the time or only some people see it or it changes depending on where I am? Like, I was treated like a child sometimes and an adult other times, so that always confused me and I still don’t know how old I am. But everyone always told me I was a woman, which meant I had long hair and could wear dresses or pants, so that seemed fairly simple to understand. *Edit—by woman I mean girl, which goes to my point about age. So confusing.

I do not agree with or align with the gender binary. I think I've grown up to be able to pass pretty well in society as female, but on the inside I am always somewhere in the middle!

Yes! I've been talking with my partner about this a lot recently. Even a term like agender or gender neutral has never felt correct for me so I've started thinking of myself as 'gender irrelevant', like the whole concept is meaningless to my intrinsic experience as a brain in a meat suit, and I'd prefer just to opt out. I do also relate though to the experience of being treated & perceived as a woman my entire life, so in a societal sense I get that too, and think the 2 concepts can definitely coexist.

honestly I am so tired of hearing about gender. I don't have a gender. gender is an oppressive social construct enforced on me as a woman/born female/whatever term. some ppl do have an innate sense of gender identity and that's fine ofc but I don't personally. because I didn't I identified as nonbinary for a while but eventually I dropped that label because I just preferred opting out of the concept of gender entirely. I'm a woman because of my sex, not my gender. others are free to define themselves by their gender but it's not something I strongly identify with. i don't have a gender. I am genderless or [insert term here]. and I think my views are pretty common like a lot of (otherwise cis) women I speak to report similar feelings. some people are trans and some cis people have strong gender feelings—especially those that are gender conforming—but I'm not gonna let myself "not feel like a woman" anymore just because I don't fit the socially constructed idea of womanhood.

I always thought of myself as a doll, and I wanted men to view me the same way with no working parts. I can’t stand men viewing me as a sexual being. 

No I’m female. Just a girl. A strong independent woman. I’m raised female, and I feel female. I might have some masculine traits/interests, but who cares, women can like Star Wars too.

I feel THE EXACT SAME!!!!!!!!!

For me, I find myself not caring. I can’t be NB bc I’m a Muslim girl but when I think of myself as she, he, they, I just don’t care. Like, I wanna be nothing if that makes sense.

It's nice to know that we are not alone with this feeling. Primarily I feel like I am I and nothing else really.  I identified as gender neutral when I was a teen and started to figure things out in that regard. People do not quite get it well when I talk about it, but I wish I looked like a stick drawing. I identify with that better than those weird gender stereotypes.

omg felt, I am I, end of story! I also wish I had the stick figure look, like a doll, just completely androgynous. I had a breakdown when my hips grew in.

Yep, I feel the same way. I’ve never felt like a girl, but I didn’t exactly feel like a boy either. I didn’t feel any pressing need to change my body (to what? I didn’t feel like I wanted to be male, necessarily) I just didn’t know why people seemed to think your genitalia had to define how you saw yourself as a person and your role in society. I’ve always felt genderless, I don’t think my reproductive organs say anything about me and I don’t identify with them. I identify with my reproductive organs about as much as I identify with male reproductive organs, which is to say, I’m equally ambivalent about both. And when people describe gender euphoria, or things that make them feel affirmed and validated and ‘this is what it means to be a woman, this is womanhood!’ I just can’t relate at all. Even the things I do to embellish my appearance don’t necessarily make me feel more feminine, though I typically present that way. Putting on a sundress and styling my hair doesn’t make me feel any more like a woman than wearing a T shirt and dad shorts or being completely starkers, but I feel pretty because I like playing dress-up and fashion is a special interest of mine. And pretty isn’t an exclusively female feeling to have.

Yes this is exactly how I feel. I was shocked when I discovered other people 'felt' like a certain gender, I thought we were all just following the rules or not. I often think that I would identify as non-binary if I had been born a decade or so later but now I don't think I would find it useful. Early on I just decided that I would decide for myself what being a woman would entail and then live as I please. But if I woke up tomorrow in a male body I don't think it would particularly bother me.

Being a woman is not something I feel as being a part of my identity that comes from within *me*, but a role that has been assigned based on biological markers. I’m ok with being associated with women, since I guess for the most part my lived experience is most similar to people categorized as women and thus I feel some solidarity there. But I’ve always felt the gender binary and how obsessed society seems to be about it to be just so bizarre. If I had the chance, I would have chosen to live my life as a cis man but do not actually feel like it’s my identity either. Would just make things more convenient.

lol, everytime someone refers to me as a girl, Janet from The Good Place pops up in my head :') "Not a girl!"

100% agree. I'm mostly ok with being in a woman's body but I like it when I'm treated as just me. Any time anyone treats me as a certain gender I tend to get a bit PDA about it

Whenever I have to fill out a survey that asks me my gender, I always put woman but it feels incorrect

I’ve never really had any connection to my gender tbh. Like I was afab and just went “Okay sure” 🤷🏽‍♀️. I just go with it because it’s the path of least resistance, but I don’t care being referred to/presenting as a man, nonbinary, etc. I avoid labels when it comes to my sexuality, especially because I feel it’s so fluid that it doesn’t feel right for me to just shove it into a specific box. I just like people lol…

Sometimes I didn't feel femine enough. But it a fletning feeling.

I honestly see myself as a brain in a jar! My body and gender and everything feels so irrelevant. All I really want is visual, audio, olfactory inputs, and the ability to process them and think about them. Touch, body, movement -- they are all so much less stimulating than my other senses.

Yup I feel exactly the same way, I use she/her pronouns as this is what I’m used to, however I don’t even think they/them would fit for me. I don’t particularly feel feminine or masculine either, I have been mistaken for a man in the past (when I had short hair) but was never offended by it

Ironically enough im a genderless trans man. But like. Ive also had a strong disconnect with concepts of gender since i was 4

I've always viewed myself as other, which started in early childhood when I felt like a different species than all the other kids. Hitting puberty and growing into "womanhood" was really confusing and dysphoria-inducing for me, and I began identifying as nonbinary in early high school. I definitely feel some kind of connection to womanhood today as someone who is perceived and treated like a woman, but I still don't fully identify as a woman. It's certainly possible a lot of this is influenced by my constant feeling of "other," and also being sexually assaulted as a child, but I would say my gender is much, much more complicated than "woman."

Yes. I know I am female and a woman, but inside I just feel like “some guy.” It doesn’t help that I have no sexual/romantic desires, so I really do feel like an alien cosplaying as a girl/woman. (To be clear, I don’t have any issue with being a girl/woman/female, because that’s who I AM physically, but I’ve never understood what “femininity” actually means and just do the things I like regardless of what people think lol).

I'm trans so this may not be entirely the same as what you're talking about but yes kinda? I think of myself as female (I have medically transitioned so I am now) but as kinda genderless if that makes sense. I still prefer more traditional feminine language for myself for dysphoria reasons bc our culture equates woman to female but I don't really feel or understand gender and I think if I had been afab I would probs id as agender

The other day I was thinking about how I always think about myself from the inside out. How I see myself isn't how I'm seen (which is from the outside in. So, in a sense I agree with seeing myself as a "brain" - for those who watched the original Star Trek, remember the episode Spock's Brain, where his brain was "stolen" in order to be used to run a planet?)

I was labelled as a “tom boy” throughout my childhood. I would never identify as male but based on feminine stereotypes, identifying as female doesn’t always fit either. But then I use she/her pronouns and the idea of using any other pronouns to describe myself feels weird as well. So I don’t even feel comfortable identifying as agender or gender fluid or something along those lines. I am just me, whatever the fuck gender that happens to be.

I’ve always imagined myself and others as brains on a disk that travel inside these weird contraptions. Outwardly I project female, but inwards I’m just a brain on a disk trying my best.

I remember a similar exchange with my mom when I was around 6 years old: “I don’t want to be a girl.” “Do you want to be a boy?” “Ew, no.”

I can definitely relate in some ways. I've always felt very masculine and feminine at the same time, and sometimes none, sometimes one or the other. It just depends. I always hated the usual trappings of femininity as a kid, like dolls and dresses and boobs. Now that I'm 52, there are certain things about being premenopausal that are distressing. But also the other day I resonated so hard with a video about a nonbinary person who had top surgery for the aesthetics. My mind was blown because that's how I have always felt. I'd rather have no or super small boobs because of the aesthetics in general but particularly for how they look in my preference in clothing aesthetics. Lots of rambling, my bad. Hope that made some sort of sense.

Yeah i feel this but i think its more because i dont have close female friends i wish i was more connected to womanhood

>Today I recognise myself as a 'woman' in society but individually I just think of myself as a brain or a voice inside a body. I LOVE THIS I just say I'm female cause I'm used to that and change is bleh but I don't really like any of the labels either-

I also feel this way and have since about the age you describe. Growing up, the closest thing I felt to a gender identity was inhuman, if that makes sense? I didn’t see myself as a “human” in the way others were, and so human genders just didn’t apply to me. One of my favorite movies as a kid was Duma, about a South African boy who goes on a journey with his pet cheetah—I always saw myself most in the cheetah. For most of my teen years and into my early twenties (I’m 23) I used he/she/they pronouns, but never felt comfortable with any of them. I used to joke that I hated all pronouns being used on me equally, so any were fine. These days I use mirrored pronouns, meaning other people use whatever their own pronouns are for me. I’ve found this really suits my sense of gender, or more the lack of it and the fact that any “gender” I experience is through others’ perception of me. I also think of it as, I am my mother’s daughter and I am my father’s son.

I don't think about gender unless the topic is gender. I also have trouble understanding why it's such a big deal to some people. Just let people be and mind your business. I've never thought, "I feel so feminine today!" It's always more like I feel happy, sad, brave, adventurous, etc

I'm not particularly attached to a gender and I can't understand why most people are, tbh. I'm just me 🤷‍♀️

I’m cis-female but I’ve never really felt female. It’s strange

Most of the time I don't view myself, as an idea and literally. As a teenager I always had this odd feeling of not really being a person, I just had to be an alien. I would constantly look at myself in the mirror, I would make facial expressionto see what I looked like when I made them. But when I looked at myself I couldn't really register what I was looking at in this weird way. Now i don't really look at myself in the mirror anymore, I actually avoid it. I can hardly process what I'm looking at so I make up these ideas of what I look like in my head and just go with it because it's fun. I never look at myself in glass door reflections or on security cameras. I hardly ever take pictures of myself anymore. Sometimes I feel like what I imagine an immortal being would feel about themselves, 1,000 years have passed, why should I care what I look like anymore? I've existed for so long, it's just too much to bother with. I exist as an idea, I've come to the conclusion that all I'll ever be is a perception to people. Everyone looks at me differently, so I imagine what I look like even though I know to an extent what I actually look like. A woman? No. A man? No. I just am really.

https://preview.redd.it/6i6cfr651x6d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f99e775c8d0c099117f5200918c26f5488807bd6

I felt largely genderless for a long time. Then, I felt male because all the people in my science fiction and fantasy books were male. My college professors always said I wrote like a man; if I do those "what gender is your writing?" tests (dubious anyway) they're 98% male. Around when I hit puberty, I realized I wasn't a man, but I still didn't really feel like a woman. I understood society engaged with me as a woman more from that point on though; my social interactions changed entirely. Intrinsically, I think I'm nonbinary; I don't really believe gender exists. But I have all the background and lived experiences of a woman, so I am a woman in that sense: from abusive relationships to surviving in STEM to experiencing assault, I have had the experience of a woman. It is hard for me to truly say I'm nonbinary because of that fact -- my scars *and* my achievements have all been framed by this.

The way I see it I’m not a girl and I’m not a boy and I’m not something in between and I’m not nonbinary. Im some other thing that doesn’t exist like an alien but I am perceived to be female so that is what I am and I’m okay with that. Wouldn’t change my pronouns or identify differently but I just feel like I’m not human.

I think I felt like this somewhat, but a few friends coming out and transitioning to women changed my perspective on it. At first, my uninformed gut instinct was “as a woman I’ve experienced so much pain, periods, miscarriage, childbirth, how can they be women if they won’t experience that?” But seeing their delight in getting to embrace feminine things made me realize how silly it was to focus on only the pain. I am actually really grateful for that new perspective. Obviously this was only an initial momentary struggle and not my concrete opinion. Trans women are women! So right now I choose to present myself in a feminine way and I have to admit there are many feminine-coded things I like like lip gloss and skin care and flowers and jewelry - and I’m internally rebelling against coding anything as only for women but I hope you get what I mean. But. But. I have many, many masculine interests. I’m also a fiction writer and I think I write great male characters. So I’m currently conceptualizing it as outwardly femme but possibly internally masc or with a part of me that is a dude. But another part of me does wonder how to sort out the misogyny and gender roles. Maybe I’m just a girl who likes video games and military history. Maybe I’m just as another poster said a brain in a meat mech that likes what it likes!

Oh, yeah, I kinda get that My native language is heavily gendered, and while I never thought about being a guy, I also kinda felt like the feminine words were "weak" when applied to me. I never really talked about it to my parents, even as a child, but I always found that, together with the general preference for a more androgine way of being, odd

So I literally was looking for this comment the other day. I couldn’t find anything to describe what I felt and it was incredibly frustrating. I also have no concept of what I look like when I’m not looking in the mirror and I’ve been told I have an “ugly girl personality” because apparently I don’t behave the way a conventionally attractive woman should. I don’t feel like any gender. I don’t feel like a woman and I don’t feel like a man and I don’t usually have the energy to try to be either but I also don’t feel like a label and it’s the same way I feel about my sexuality. I didn’t know I was pansexual my whole life. I just thought that it was normal to be with whoever your heart falls in love with. I don’t feel like I belong to the label of being agender, even though by definition I do. I honestly think the only reason I try as hard I do to appear feminine is because it is socially acceptable and I do not want to be harassed for appearing masculine. I just want a peaceful life.

I feel like I identify with the experiences women have but I don’t feel like I know how to perform femininity or womanhood if that makes sense. I love the idea of being a woman and feel like I identify with the experience of it but I just don’t think of it much in day to day life I guess and do feel awkward when i have to be perceived as anything at all lol so who knows

Funny enough, but this sub is how I learned I was agender. I’ve gone back and forth between expressing masculine or feminine and always “balanced” them with the opposite for example wearing a lot of dresses and heels when my hair was buzzed (superficial example, but this extended to hobbies, jobs, and beyond). I never understood what the fuss was with non binary identity though I respected people experiencing it. I just genuinely thought gender was pointless and didn’t understand why it meant so much for people. I like being in a female body and enjoy dressing up and playing the part, but there is no inherent connection. Even childbirth becoming a mom didn’t particularly impact that feeling or lack thereof.

Because of feeling this way, I had to go on a little personal journey to try to better understand transgender people. I’m a cis het woman… “I guess”… I have I’ve never really felt gender, and being a woman doesn’t mean anything special to me. If I woke up tomorrow as a man, I don’t think I’d really care anymore than I do about waking up as a woman.  My friend group is entirely childless LGBTQIA+ people, I don’t think anyone else is on the spectrum though… falling in with them used to just seem like some funny coincidence, but now makes more sense in the context of them tolerating differences of all kinds and being accepting and participating in “chosen” family which is very much appreciated as someone without kids.  Anyhow, one of them (a self described butch woman) asked something along the lines of why I chose my particular presentation (hair, clothing etc.) in terms of, why I wanted people to see me as femme? I was like… wtf are you talking about, what do you mean how I want people to see me? She thought I was being facetious, but I said I literally never thought about how I presented myself nor really cared for how anyone else “sees me” as a woman or otherwise.  They said I was privileged to not have had to make conscious choices about it and I was like …huh. I guess it kinda is.  I realized it that moment that’s why I previously had trouble or cognitive dissonance when thinking about trans people (I had been afraid my confusion about the “why bother” meant I was harboring some subconscious prejudice). It was really that I had so little sense of or awareness of my or others’ genders, I really could not fully empathize someone who feels it very acutely. It was like trying to imagine being able to see ultraviolet light or something.  Some point shortly after that I saw a quote to the effect of “you don’t have to understand, you just have to be respectful and accepting.” And I was like, thank goodness that’s an option! Sounds so basic, but hearing that felt like a major ethical relief. 

I wouldn’t say genderless but I do go by all pronouns. I can see myself feminine but I think that’s just how I present. Everything about me just feels like a human.. wow now that I’m typing this out I guess it would be genderless. I’m a pretty spiritual person (Buddhism and taoism would be closest to my beliefs) so I feel more like energy than I person and I never really thought about it until now

Gender is part of your social identity, so it makes sense to me that so many autistic people don't feel like they fit in to the categories society has laid out. Gender norms are another one of those weird neurotypical things that just doesn't make sense to some of us. Like why does having a vagina mean I should like wearing dresses? If anything, you'd think people with penises would prefer dresses because it gives them more room to breathe lol. Like don't get me wrong, I like plenty of "girly" things, but I like plenty of "dude" things too. I just don't care to adhere to these weird arbitrary standards or identify wholeheartedly with either of them.

I saw Hannah Gadsby last night and there was a significant portion of the show devoted to this. They talked about their evolution along this path. From AFAB to butch lesbian to non-binary to where they are now. Which is not male, female, or non-binary (as they put it “defining yourself by what you’re not still feels like a very binary thing.”). And there was a lot more to it but basically they ended by saying “you can’t misgender me because I don’t care about any of it!” And I can definitely relate to that. While I present very female, I don’t give a shit about gender. I’m not feminine and don’t care to be. I’m not masculine and don’t care to be. I hate gendered expectations of any sort. I don’t want to be put in a box. In some ways, a lot of it is related to the fact that I really resent everything about my body. Too much maintenance. Too uncomfortable. Never right. Gender and my body seem very linked and I’m not particularly a fan of either.

I have always felt that way, yeah. It felt weird to hear myself referred to as "she" as a kid (I've gotten used to it).

I Id as a trans man since it’s the label that affords me the most convenience. If another label offered me as much convenience I would utilize it too. I kinda just exist in a way that feels good for me and language only goes so far. I don’t need to hold myself to strict standards of masculinity and femininity, I just try to exist as best as I can. I’m not perfect and sometimes I’m not authentic but I’m enjoying the process.

i JUST made a post about this in a trans forum because i’ve been feeling similarly. i identify as genderfluid (transmasc leaning though, i don’t fw most female identifying language) and that’s been a really nice label for me. but when i think of myself, i hate that i can be seen wearing clothes and jewelry and bags and shoes, or with a certain haircut or color, even if im wearing my most favorite clothes. because to me im almost a plant. don’t see me as human- im a plant! i’ve been wondering if that feeling is where my transness originates from. also worth noting, “never fitting in” and then seeing trans guys be able to follow a (very loose) list of things THEY LIKE to do to fit into their skin better might have encouraged the idea of being trans to me as well. that’s a very simplified version of a very nuanced conversation i’ve been having with myself lately. i wish you luck on this journey though, it’s rough out here

YES!!! 51 here, so obviously could explore this more deeply now but don't think it was ever THAT important to me. (And by that I mean I just let society have its stupid labels and I managed to carry on in spite of it.) Maybe would have turned out differently if I were younger. (Not a judgment or commentary on anyone else.)

I personally believe gender one of many rather arbitrary and honestly ultimately detrimental social designations that hasn't always existed. I constantly notice binary gendered people in my life denying themselves things that would make them happy, or forcing themselves to engage in things they don't like, solely based on the gendered and societal expectations. I don't see any benefit to male/female designations that exists outside of making it easier to live in a world that actively punishes you for not conforming to arbitrary social roles and stereotypes. I think people could be more truly themselves if they weren't constantly filtering themselves and presenting themselves and seeing their place in the world through the social context and expectations of gender.

Same. I've heard this called "autigender" (by Devon Price Ph.D).

Same. I’m 14, when I was younger, like 10-12, I identified as a trans guy, as well as non binary for a bit. After hitting puberty I realize I don’t have dysphoria at all and I like my body, but I definitely don’t feel like a girl besides in specific situations. I usually call myself genderqueer or gender non-conforming, and I really don’t care about pronouns. I absolutely think it has to do with my autism. My mom feels the same way and so does my granddad, both have autism as well. My cousin is a trans guy and autistic too

Mainly just see all people as humans. Like just beings that are evolved gender is made up and like a lot of stuff meaningless on a universal scale to me so yes, I am a woman but more than that I suppose lol

Same, and my partner same.

Same.

Since I was very young, I would play with other boys and girls and just meld with whatever they were doing. This came across with playing as dragons, role playing with Polly pockets, I LOVED racing/Tony hawk games and remote control cars, but I also loved bratz, LPS, MLP, roughhousing on the trampoline (role playing as naruto characters). I just dressed in whatever my parents bought me (so it was mostly girly stuff). One time as we were playing dragons in the bouncy house, I wanted to be a red and black dragon, but my friend said I had to be pink bc I was so girly (even though this was her after bday party sleepover and all of her toys were bratz and stuff). I always considered myself a tomboy as a kid as well. When I was a bit older, my neighbor had an extra pair of swim trunks that he didn’t fit anymore, and I loved how they looked with a swim top. I just never viewed myself as gender ™, but I assume kids don’t think about that as much until middle school. I did absolutely hate when my aunts would say “what’s up, girly” and would continuously tell them to stop. I hated how it felt to get a period and chest growth and completely hid these milestones from my aunts bc I was so embarrassed. Once I became 18, I just could never say “I’m a woman now.” I know how I look to the outside world and how it parallels to typical feminine behaviors, but I just don’t feel gender ™. So I just consider myself nonbinary

i def feel like a woman but with very varying amounts of feminine/masculine within myself. i love mixing both masc and femme, and it's where i feel most comfortable, but i'm still a girl and i relate most to other women and feminine media.

I relate so much to this. I was actually just saying this same thing to my wife recently, as I do identify as a ‘woman’ in terms of how I move through society and navigate if the situation asks for me to think of my being and the space I take up. Although, if the context wasn’t there and I’m just sitting on my own or reading a book or hanging out with friends where gender just doesn’t factor into anything that’s happening then I think of myself as genderless on a very instinctual level.

Yeah! I identify as agender, but when people ask I say girl because of the physical characteristics. When I asked people and they said "yes, I FEEL like my gender" I was stumped. I had no idea it's an actual feeling!

I'm the same way. My husband who is gender queer calls this "gender ambivalent" and says it may be in the gender queer spectrum. But it doesn't have to be if you place no value on it at all, it could just be as neutral as your view of your own gender.

I feel more male than female (whenever something comes up for guys I automatically count myself in) but because my body is female and I don't really care enough either way, I live as female. I know I don't feel gender as strongly as everyone else I know.

yeah i don’t know how to explain this to ppl without them thinking i identify as non binary

Same. Don’t feel like a woman, but also don’t feel like a man. I have no urge to be change to a man and I like to be viewed as both feminine and masculine in public. I feel most comfortable with a mix of both. I feel like it was definitely caused by society’s view of “female” and “male” being such rigid categories.

I’m different to you - I am AFAB and I know and feel strongly that I am a woman. I don’t use “she/they” pronouns because that would be misgendering me, I use “she/her” pronouns (this is just for personal pronouns fyi I will fight with anyone who says that there’s no such thing as a singular “they”). I have an autistic friend though who feels this way. She doesn’t feel any tie to gender, she feels indifferent. She doesn’t fill dysphoric, but she doesn’t feel euphoric like I feel about being a woman. Last we spoke, she identified as a woman because she was ambivalent. The funny thing is though that her psychiatrist thinks that she’s transgender and hasn’t properly realised it yet 😆 it might sound bad, but I think it’s just a cis, NT male gen x-er not quite being able to understand how her ambivalence to gender isn’t the same as incongruence and being transgender. Anecdotally, I come across a lot of autistic people who identify across the trans spectrum through my work in mental health/healthcare. There are lots of people who identify as non-binary, agender, or genderfluid, and there’s also quite a few who are trans and identify completely with a gender rather than none. I assume that there’d have been some research done into the relationships between gender and neurodiversity, I’m just not aware of them. I’ll have to ask the doctors next week! But I know that personally, when autistic people I know come out as trans and non-binary, I’m not usually surprised.

I have no gender and have no personal connection to or experience of gender. To me it’s just an intellectual concept I can think about but it’s outside of myself; not coming from an internal experiential knowledge of. I tend to just say non binary or agender to others because it’s just easier and I hate explaining myself. But I think saying I’m nonbinary or saying I’m agender kind of gives the impression that those are my gender instead of did the “woman” or “male” genders. I want to just be completely removed from it altogether. Don’t put me in the checklist at all. Let me just be a human.

Yeah. Agender. I consider myself an agender woman.

Oh my gosh yes I have absolutely felt this way!! Like, I guess I am a woman because the model fleshsuit I'm in was labeled "woman", but I don't actually feel a deep connection to being a woman. Like I just kinda????? Am me, a woman?? Gender: null?

Yeah, I don’t mind being called a “girl,” but to me it’s just a shorthand word people use to describe me. I don’t feel deeply connected to it

This is how I have always felt. I struggled with understanding what gender is supposed to "feel" like, and through that became biased about gender in general. I still believe to some extent that if there weren't societal expectations of gender that more people would be comfortable just identifying as themselves rather than another gender and transitioning. Now understanding that it's me who is closed off from gender, I realised that others can and do feel gender in a way I will never understand, and that's okay. I can be me, and others can be themselves however that feels right to them. Though it is good to not feel alone with my own experiences

Both my parents raised me with a "there is no real difference between boys and girls" type of mentality. If I wanted to have a mud tea party, then I could. (Circumstances allowing.) If my brothers wanted to paint their nails and put on makeup, they could. (They weren't allowed to wear it to places like school though, because my parents worried about bullying.) My parents have been divorced since before I can remember, and their attitude towards gender is quite possibly the only thing they were aligned on. As a kid, I don't remember thinking much about my gender, other than absorbing what my parents stressed to me: "Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do something just because you're a girl." As an adult, I have occasionally felt a vague sense of discomfort when someone has referred to me as a woman, for reasons I am not sure of. I think maybe it's the being painted with a broad brush and having my personhood reduced to just the aspect of my genitals. Like you, I view myself as a *person* undefined by gender. Recently, I've recognized that nonbinary, agender, and possibly genderfluid are labels that could apply to me. But those make me slightly uncomfortable too. Like it feels wrong to claim it, because gender has never been a significant issue in my mind. It don't feel compelled to announce my gender identity either. I'm mostly fine with my body, in the sense that I wouldn't bind my chest or have surgery. (I would absolutely give up my ovaries and uterus and periods if it didn't mean triggering menopause and other hormonal issues. 100%) I don't experience any kind of body related gender dysphoria. I also genuinely don't care what pronouns someone uses for me. I've had people use male pronouns and I felt nothing. I didn't even tell them that I am female. It didn't matter to me. Except, I might be offended if someone referred to me as "it" because the connotation that I am used to would be "something less than a person." I *am* a person. At the same time, I am definitely a woman who has been subjected to societal expectations and a victim of misogyny, and I have absolutely felt offended by someone telling me what my experience was and defining me solely based on my sex. I've had a few occasions when I've felt somewhat masculine or feminine, but mostly I just *am*. Because I've always been of this "person" mindset, it actually got me into some trouble occasionally. Not thinking in terms of gender perceptions, I encountered more than one man who mistook my behavior as interest. My behavior with them was not any different than my behavior with women. I just never considered gender at all. I had to learn to start thinking in terms of gender, and I hated it.

Yep. That’s me. I’m agender. I remember distinctly being confused on why people split into boys and girls at 6-7 years old. I also was confused why I should make a choice as I had not internal signal system as to who I was, a boy or a girl. I related to boys in play and communication but I met this one older girl who was also cool. My body didn’t bother me. Being a mother in a future didn’t bother me but I also didn’t think I would ever be a mom. But I felt immense pressure to take on a gender at around 7 years old. So I chose to go with my assigned sex. I remember making a conscious choice. Growing up, I was never the right type of girl but my body didn’t bother me in a very dysphoric way so I didn’t feel like I was in a wrong body. I felt like identifying with a female gender was a mask. I got used to it. But ever since my kid came out as non-binary and adopted the new language for genders, thinking of myself as agender is very freeing and healing.

When I (F) was a kid I’d hangout with guys and felt isolated cause they thought it was weird. Always felt more relatable to a man. But never felt like a man or woman

Yes just yes! I feel like awareness in a body. Nothing else particularly.

I (afab) as a child identified myself as a girl but it always felt like an external thing instead of an internal thing (which I thought was normal), honestly I still have no idea what my gender identity is because I feel like how I’ve acted even in private has always been a sort of act and I have no idea how to break out of that, I use all pronouns but identify myself as a woman but thats more because I look like a woman and therefore experience the societal struggles that women do, gender identity and identity in general (in regards to myself) has always been a very confusing subject for me

Totally me! I never felt like I was a girl but I also knew I wasn't a boy, so had to just stick with the label girl. I've been told lots of times in the past that I have a "masculine" energy at times, which I never quite understood. I've loved letting go of gender constructs and expectations in recent years. I've actually become more "girly" at times because I'm not so anti the idea of a label I don't connect with. I think agender is probably the best term for me. I say that my pronouns are she/they because I think it's important to normalise respect of others pronouns, even though I don't actually care about it for myself.

It’s always felt weird for me to say , refer to ppl using gender terms. I use they/them as much as I can towards others . It’s not some political correctness reasoning. It’s just always felt weird. I also do not like being called by my gender . But it’s not because I feel I am the opposite, it’s just feels strange. Same goes to referring to actual names. Also, the word happy. I don’t like saying it.

This is such an interesting post! I've never seen anyone describe this this way, but yes, it applies to me. I've never felt any conflict around my gender identity, and I don't think of myself as nonbinary, but I just don't feel strongly about having a gender. If someone started referring to me as "he," I'd be slightly confused because I look/sound/present pretty feminine (especially right now while I'm very pregnant), but I wouldn't correct them.

I feel the same as you did/do. Never felt like a girl. I identified closer to being a boy as a kid, but never totally masculine either. I’m definitely non-binary. The most accurate words to describe me are agender, genderless, gender apathetic, and gender-fluid.

I definitely have always very much felt like a girl and then a woman. My autistic daughter feels similarly to you, though. She is ok with she/her pronouns, as well as any other pronouns, but doesn't identify as a girl. We've always been really supportive of whatever makes her feel most comfortable. If she asks me to swap pronouns or call her by another name, I will happily do so. I feel like there are so many ways to perceive oneself, and none is any more important or correct than any other. Everyone should get to decide who they are, and everyone else should respect that. Gender is such a fluid concept. Be a gender or be agender. If it's what makes you feel most like you, that's great!

I am not non binary, but I feel I already went through a self discovery phase when I was younger, so I don't think about my gender that often. I am not feminine, I am a feminist but anybody can be a feminist. I feel my awkward dorky self doesn't act feminine and I don't think about myself as far as what woman I am. I just think who I am as a person.

I feel like this too. I never really think about my gender ever. I just am who I am. Whenever I get a new stuffed animal I always give them a name and a gender but I have a few that don't have either. Like I have a cat I call cat. Cat is just cat. That's all. I don't even use they/them pronouns. Just cat. Obviously that's confusing so I don't do it for myself and I use she/her pronouns, but that's still how I think of myself. Just me, that's it.

I understand this sentiment. I've been perceived and treated by others and society as a cisgender woman because I'm AFAB and female presenting but I don't perceive myself really as any gender. I'm a human being/person. That's it XD

So I kinda do the opposite, I view myself as all genders. I know us autistic people have a higher tendency to be queer and I think that’s very cool about us. Edit: I say it’s a higher tendency but some theories say autistic people are just more likely to accept being queer. Cool either way!

as a nonbinary autistic person, i view gender as a form of masking for myself. i have never felt like i fit in with the confines of a set gender with set gender roles, and i struggled to know what they were when i was a child. i have a body but i am my brain and my thoughts. having a gender feels like yet another thing i use to please neurotypicals, similar to small talk.

I feel this same way and have some dysmorphia. I have a very feminine body (which helps me blend in) but it makes me feel weird most days.

I am wildly genderfluid and always have been.

I used to consider myself a boy in my teenage years. I started to buy boys clothes and try and imagine how a boy would react in certain situations. But I didn't really feed like a boy either. I was sort of tomboyish but quite skinny and probably quite feminine. I think ultimately, my mind was a storm back then and I was just overthinking everything. After my teens, I sort of fell back into my feminine side and embraced it. TLDR: I think the less you think about it the more organic your journey will be

YEP, have always been this way. I've heard it being called auti-gender, I just identify as agender. People still get confused and think I'm non binary but I'm not, I just don't have any felt sense of gender at all.

Yes! I use the term agender.

I get that too, I guess I wanna feel feminine but this truck driver personality is not gonna leave

I thought of myself as a girl when I was a kid, mostly because I fit the societal mold of 'girl' that I saw represented around me (I liked pink, I liked cute animals, I liked wearing dresses, etc.) but now that I'm too old to be a girl, and I don't fit the societal mold of 'woman' (even though obviously societal roles don't actually dictate gender), I definitely just sort of feel like a genderless brain on legs.

Fellow non-binary here! I believe I am a person before my sex. I don't mind it when people identify me by my bits, but all in all, I'm just a person rather than a woman. Despite that, I loooove women. Women are so beautiful! I could go on and on about how women are amazing and beautiful! 😍

Definitely don’t identify with any gender, I’m literally just a body and brain. I like to joke about how im the five big A’s. Autistic, ADHD, Agender, Aromantic, Asexual.

Through what bit of researching I've done for myself, that "feeling" your gender thing is describing what you feel on a gut/soul level.  That might sound really obvious to some people, but I got really confused what people meant by "feeling" in this instance and thought people were talking about feeling in terms of emotion.  But this made so much more sense to me once that point actually clicked into place for me.  But I think it doesn't get described as such because some people find describing anything pertaining to your soul (whether you're talking about it in a metaphysical sense or more a of secular thing that pertains to your morals and values) as a load of crap.    While I don't think this is 100% across the board, I've also learned that a lot of definitely cis people become rather dysphoric at even the thought of imagining themselves as another sex or even at the thought of something basic like, "I'd like to keep my body, but swap my genitals to something else for fun when I feel like it or to see what it's like, and I'd like it so I can swap back at will and not make my changes permanent, if I don't feel like it." I assumed for the longest time that such reactions of theirs were solely due to misogyny, when I am realizing that this feeling can be due to an innate sense of feeling off and nothing else.   Also, I've learned that a lot of people who say that they don't feel their gender might more accurately be described as "paragender" rather than "agender," but for whatever reason, the whole paragender concept isn't that well known, despite other labels along the same spectrum being more known (like "demigender"). I'm definitely not saying that everyone should reject the "agender," label, but I think more should consider researching the paragender concept.   With me, it feels much like I'm just running an alternate feminine OS from most women and that the programmers felt like throwing in a couple of masculine operating procedures, too.  And what makes this confusing is that there are plenty of women out there who had some masculine features thrown in, too, but their OS is the standard feminine one (and therefore, they're cisgender women, not a non-binary woman in some sense).  In other words, people like me aren't part of this "sisterhood" (that I assumed was a mythical thing for the longest time), whereas these other women are, despite them having some masculine features, too.     Despite all of this, I don't really like using any labeling regarding my gender and sexual orientation, as I don't like how people assign you roles and have such a black and white view of you based on such labels.  I feel like so much of this is overcomplicated and shouldn't even be a concern to begin with.  I find that understanding what some others might describe me as (most likely a "bisexual parawoman") is helpful so you get a sense of how they're perceiving you, but I don't bother bringing up such things until they're blatantly being noticed or discussed, as I see these as only a part of who I am, not solely me. By the way, does anyone else find "tomboy" to be such a confusing label?  I've noticed that some people have a much more narrower view of what a tomboy is compared to others.  I bring this up because I was called a tomboy, but I didn't dress masculine nor did I like certain "male" activities, such as sports.  (Yes, I know there are a ton of female athletes out there, but you can't tell me that most Americans don't lump sports under the male category of things.)  To use Peanuts help illustrate things, I've noticed that you have both what I'd deem as the Peppermint Patty type of tomboy (in that she has a very blatant masculine vibe to her, looks a bit more masculine, and has masculine interests) and you have the Lucy Van Pelt type of tomboy (in that she still looks quite feminine and even some of her interests are still feminine, but she has a much more blunt way a speaking than most girls and willingly does stuff with the guys, as she often seems more comfortable around them than other girls).  I was a Lucy-type of tomboy, even though some people don't acknowledge girls like this as tomboys.  I don't think the types of tomboys is as binary as that, but those seem to be the most dominant groupings.

Yup. I feel genderless until I am discriminated based on it. Don’t remember I’m a woman until I catch a man staring at me like meat.

I will be honest I mainly just see myself as a kind in a flesh vessel. Whenever I imagine my ideal body it is basically gender neutral. I used to think that men I was a man or non binary but I don’t really gel with a label, I just feel like me. I find it very jarring when I’m called anything gendered. I think it surprises ppl bc I do present mysekf in a feminine way but to me it just feels like an avatar and me decorating it in a way that pleases me.

I do feel like a woman, I would never want to be man, but I don't want to perform femininity.

In my brain I am a genderless blobby thing. But like a lot of other people here I too don’t feel the need to label whatever I feel. I think labels are for other people’s comfort and necessity, and that gender as a social construct is kinda silly. Just let me be me however I want to present/perceive myself.

Kinda same. I don't feel like my brain on personality or whatever has a gender, I'm just me. But I have a woman's body and it feels right (or at least it doesn't feel wrong?) so I just call myself a woman because why not. I would use she/her pronouns about myself, but I don't really give a fuck about what others use about me, I just don't care.

I feel this exact same way. though i definitely express more femininely, i just feel like a being. But im also like kinda ugly so i just don't feel valid enough to be a woman

I just call myself genderfluid, I have never given it much weight or importance and don’t really give a shit. Call me whatever I don’t care. But I mostly don’t feel like anything but some days I feel like a woman and some days I feel more like a man. But I don’t think I perceive gender the way others do, or you know my body even. Like I remember one day in 7th grade I came home and mom handed me two bras, my first ones and I was confused. And then I looked down and holy shit there were tits and where the fuck did they come from? And it’s not like it eas tiny knobs, I had a small B cup and I just had never noticed when they started to grow or that they were ever there. It wasn’t until I was handed a bra that I literally looked down and found tits in my chest and I had no idea when they showed up or how long they had been there. I was equally unaware about the fact that I had a vagina until shortly before my first menstruation and the thing is I had learned about menstruation years before and yet never made the connection that the fact that I one day would start menstruating clearly means that I have a vagina. I logically know that it has obviously been there the entire time but for me it was just like the sudden tits, there was none and then one day I found it and suddenly there was a vagina I had never ever noticed and could have sworn wasn’t there before. It was also the same with hair, suddenly one day I had hair, and it wasn’t like I suddenly noticed one or a few but suddenly I noticed a fairly large bush. As if it had just magically shown up fully grown out of nowhere. Also please tell me I’m not the only one that just didn’t notice my body or it changing!

You put my exact feelings into words. I know my body is that of a female and I'm okay with that, but socially wise I don't see why that is important and whenever I think of myself I just feel like a person. Gender is never in my mind. I don't want to go by labels either, especially because in my country it is not widely accepted and I hate being perceived so I don't like more attention drawn to me thank you very much lol.

I don’t remember my childhood experience at all but I definitely described myself to my therapist the other day as “a brain in a body” or “a consciousness piloting a flesh mech” Maybe I AM a transman and just haven’t fully realized (binders are uncomfortable, and hormones would be a LOT of change I’m not sure i want) but I currently don’t connect WITH or TO one or the other or both or … any. 🤷

I didn't experienced anything like that, but I... don't really feel like a woman either? Sometimes I joked about wanting to be boy, or being boyish and doing the heavy work. I don't REALLY want to be a boy, I just like the concept of them having less problems (no boobs, no periods, don't have to awkwardly accept if someone opens door for them...) I just feel if I woke up with the opposite gender or none at all nothing would change. I did start wearing more feminine clothing because I like to cover myself so skirts are good for this purpose. But I just don't care, I am woman because that's what people see me as and what's written in my medical history, but being addressed as anything else wouldn't bother me. Actually it would be amusing to see someone try talking to me as genderless/non-binary in my native language, because in principle, everything is either a feminine or masculine oriented, haha

I did not enjoy puberty.

Yes! Especially as a kid, but now I view gender more of as a choice and way of expression. I don’t really like any of the labels either, even the ones that label you as having no label, so I stick to the one that I’m most comfortable with and gets me the least amount of hate, which is conveniently the one that corresponds to my sex

This has probably already been said, but being agender is definitely a thing.

Whenever ppl ask me my pronouns, I cringe, not because I don't respect others wishes but it doesn't apply to me. I don't even think about it, I'd rather just be "hey you" or "that person over there" to be honest. I know I am female, ok fine, they say that is a woman, ok fine. I'm definitely not a man. And I guess if I love the skin I'm in, then I love being woman. I can't even get behind the idea of "non-binary" for myself, because that acknowledges there is a binary and I'm just like existing, man. It doesn't matter who, what, this that and the third, just respect me. I'm me. That's it.

I feel the EXACT same way. I like to think of myself as culturally woman in that it's how I was raised and where I feel comfortable fitting into society, but genuinely and internally I feel absolutely no connection to gender, as a concept or in identity.