On Gender

The other day I was listening to the audiobook of Threads of Life by Clare Hunter, and there were several instances in her book where she discusses the synergy of cis women working together and relating to each other in a space all their own. Listening to it, I was puzzled that people experience that kind of synergy or easy relation. I often chocked up my discomfort to being autistic. By nature, I’m not particularly good at “blending” with neurotypical people. As Hannah Gadsby talks about in their comedy shows, being autistic is like being the one sober person in a room of drunks; you constantly feel like you stick out.

But it runs deeper than the autism. I’ve never felt like a woman. People would talk about womanhood or what women want or feel, and I would feel my eyes glaze over. Cannot relate. At an abstract level, I get it. I can see and understand what other people in the same way I can say people can be the same gender and be very different people. The problem is woman has always fit like an outfit two sizes two big. It just sort of hung around me with no shape, and the shape people tried to give it didn’t make me feel good about myself or make sense in terms of how I see myself.

That has always been the bigger issue for me: how people perceive me. The lack of control over other people’s assumptions is a burden I constantly struggle to deal with. Any time I get hit with “ma’am” or “miss,” I can feel my soul curl like a shrimp. I’m lucky in that I’m an adjunct college professor, so most of the time, I get called “professor,” which is blessedly neutral. There are assumptions that come with being a woman or man, none of which I want or live up to. If I tried to ascribe to either, I would always be failing, falling short of someone’s idea of what I should be.

The best way I can describe my gender is neither or none or femininely masculine. One of the reasons I gravitated toward Stede Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death is because he hits the right gender buttons for me. He is a queer, autistic man, but he’s quite feminine and fussy compared to the other male characters. He wears bright colors, loves a luxury fabric, and isn’t clinging to traditional masculinity. I look at him and see gender inspiration. Same with Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire, though I’m far too silly to embody that fully.

I joke with my partner that “weird little guy” is my gender. Can a gender be queer? Not genderqueer, per se, but slightly masculine in a queer way, not a cis het guy way. Mostly, I use agender or nonbinary as the closest labels I can get. I add lightly masc because if I wear anything too feminine, I get dysphoric. Truthfully, I’d rather toss gender out the window as an unnecessary nuisance. The people I tend to vibe with most tend to be neurodivergent nonbinary people because I think we look at gender differently than neurotypicals. Autistic people are more likely than the general population to be trans or nonbinary, and that’s probably because gender is made up. We hate when people make arbitrary rules or try to create hierarchy, so why would we let made up gender rules get in the way of living our best lives?

While in the past it may have bothered me that I didn’t vibe fully with cis men or cis women, I’m more than happy to vibe in the agender autistic/ADHD club with the rest of my friends. I may never feel the synergy people talk about, but I feel at peace and at home where I can talk about my special interests, not be chastised for a verbal fumble, and not be judged for the parts I came with. For those people, I am eternally grateful.