#non-alignment

Non-aligned or unaligned: rejecting binary gender/sex alignments; rejects all gender/sex alignments; aligning with none gender/sex; someone who does not experience strong alignment with either binary gender/sex. A stellar/singular person (stellarian/stellaradic, singularadic/singularian/voidarian, puckian/psamanthian).

Some definitions seem to be similar to abinary-aligned. This flag represents relationship with alignments, not reflecting necessarily one’s gender identity, as a nonaligned person can be (mid)binary or anonbinary, for example.

“This product is for people of any gender.”

“People of any gender are welcome in this space.”

“Trans people of all genders are valid!”

This is what I mean when I talk about agender erasure, especially and particularly for those who see agender as the absence of gender. This is meant to be NB inclusive, and it does include a great many NB folk, but it does not include everybody who might need the product or the community.

All of those things exclude me.

Can we recognise that framing the vast majority of general community, political, social, support and marketing discussions in terms of gender/genders as though it is a universal possession or experience (be it binary or non-binary or queer) can be erasing? That it carries with it the constant implication that I don’t exist or only exist if I accept that the use of “gender” means me too, even though it erases the importance of not having a gender to my sense of identity and personhood? That we can change all those above validations by acknowledging that folks without gender(s) or gender-alignment(s) (which isn’t the same thing as having a gender) do exist alongside those who do have a gender, genders or a gender-alignment(s)?

I saw someone write today that folks who say the above lines don’t mean to erase me, that it isn’t their point because hurt isn’t intended. I’m upset enough to write this post in response. Why should I accept erasure on this point just because most people have a gender, genders or gender-alignment(s) and our language best accommodates that possession? Many casual cissexist folks don’t mean to be cissexist, but we point out that they’re being cissexist because expecting trans folks to endure even no-harm-intended cissexism isn’t fair or right. So why is it right that me, a person with no sense of gender or gender-alignment whatsoever, shouldn’t be upset by this erasure just because it isn’t intended?

There are almost no conversations in queer and LGBTQIA+ spaces, beyond using agender to challenge “SGA” as a metric used to hurt multi and NB folks, that phrase things in ways that don’t assume everyone has a gender or that our identities are still a form of gender. Discussions are getting so much better about not assuming that everyone has a binary gender, but the idea of having a gender is still very much part of our communication. The idea that people don’t have a gender(s) or gender-alignment(s) and don’t wish to be defined by the concept of having either, but still belong in these community conversations and need to included in our communication because we endure the same cissexism and exorsexism (at least) just isn’t explored.

As a non-aligned genderless-agender person it hurts me to have my identity always referred to in terms of my possessing a gender as much as it hurts me to be treated as though I’m cis or straight. Neither of those three things is natural to me. They’re all an imposition made by outsiders. It hurts worse because I’m surrounded by community conversations that I need as a multiply queer person, but all those conversations speak as though my possession of a gender is natural, expected, reasonable and unassailable.

When I talk about this, I don’t even have a word to describe the experience, not of being gendered or misgendered, but having my feelings, words, spaces, communities and conversations framed in the context that gender is something everyone possesses, such that my absence of a gender is contextualised and understood by the gender-possessing folk who dominate conversations on gender as a kind of gender. I don’t even have a word. I hope one exists somewhere, and someone can point me towards it, but the lack of a word is an awful thing.

And while there are folks who see “agender” as “neutral gender”, that fact shouldn’t make erasing non-aligned agender people who do not have a gender at all acceptable. In fact, I rather feel that “agender = neutral gender for some” can be very easily used as reasoning to dismiss my pain at being referred to as though I have a gender, because if agender can mean “neutral gender”, there’s no need to change our conversations or our words. I don’t want to invalidate others’ experience or tell them they can’t use the word, but it does make it so much harder for me to discuss my experiences or my needs in the wider communities.

I love not having a gender. I don’t want one, not in the slightest. It makes no sense to me, it’s absolutely caught up in my being autistic, and I’m quite happy not understanding or feeling gender.

I don’t love the way I can never get too many people to understand that the non-existence of gender isn’t a gender and referring to it as a gender is erasure of (to me) the most important and profound way I am queer.

(Some of those blogs are even acknowledging the frustration felt by agender folks in constantly having our lack of gender and or NB identity discussed in terms of possessing a gender.)

Because my heart breaks every time I see all those posts that support disabled/autistic/neurodiverse girls/women/women-aligned folk. Every time. Yes, I know girls and women-aligned folk are massively underdiagnosed and undersupported and need support/positivity because they deal with the intersectionality of their disability/ableism and misogyny. I won’t argue that for a second. It’s a problem, though, when non-aligned non-binary folk very often share those same specific experiences and seldom get positivity posts that don’t align them to a binary gender.

(Because general/non-gendered positivity posts often don’t address the things I experience specifically because of the gender people perceive me as.)

I’m being told, basically, that despite enduring misogyny - as distinct from transmisogyny - just as much as a woman-aligned NB person or a woman, I need to align myself in order to be included in posts that actually are about my problems and issues. I’m perceived, erroneously, as a woman, but there’s nothing there for folk who deal with the intersectionality of disability/ableism and misogyny and alienation from binary genders.

There’s this very real feeling that I need to be binary-aligned to be remembered, included, supported and even possess things like the stories and memes and culture binary-aligned folk take for granted. There’s this very real feeling that I’m being repeatedly forced into aligning just to exist, even though I’ve got the shitty bundle deal of enduring all the difficulty of one gender without feeling any alignment to it at all. That enduring misogyny, by default, must make me woman-aligned even though I feel no connection to either binary gender.

Talk about supporting girls and women and women-aligned folk, especially as regards their experiences with misogyny and disability/ableism.

For me, being autistic is about not identifying with a binary. Any binary. Including poetic, joking and light ones. It’s about finding the very idea of choosing one, even something that makes no impact on me, my life or how others see me, so incomprehensible I nearly shut down trying to figure it out. I don’t get it. I can find bits and pieces of me on any side; how am I supposed to choose just one? Why do people even answer (I know why they ask) the question? It feels just as wrong to declare myself a hoodie autistic over a T-shirt autistic as it does to align myself to one wrong-feeling gender (even non-binary ones) over another; I keep getting hung up on all the reasons picking one choice doesn’t work.

(I wear T-shirts in the summer and hoodies in the winter! But I always wear T-shirts under hoodies and shirts, but I don’t like wearing them alone, because everyone can see my breasts! But I don’t love hoodies, either, and I only wear them for warmth; I’d love to live in a town so warm I can wear a button-down shirt all year around! How do I pick one? And what about shirts? I like shirts most of all, but I wouldn’t call myself a shirt autistic because I don’t have that much passionate feeling towards my clothing...)

Yes, I know it’s a joke, especially the memes about gender. I know it’s a commentary on society forcing us into binary choices and making mock of those binary choices. Yes, I know I’m way, way overthinking it.

But I’m autistic. Overthinking it is practically in the diagnostic criteria! I sit there and I think about the options and get myself flustered because, at the end of the day, I can’t even choose one option for a joke. Most of the time I’m staring at the screen, hands in the air after considering the options for five minutes and thinking, fuck me, I’m too autistic for this shit.

It’s another (oh, so many of them) meme I cannot relate to.

(I don’t get most memes. I wish the people who talk about changing language, linguistics and communication online, including memes as communication, stopped to consider their exclusionary aspect as well.)

THE Tories are pushing ahead with their “race to the bottom" plans after the Chancellor confirmed there will be no alignment EU regulations after Brexit.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Sajid Javid told manufacturing leaders the Treasury would not lend support to manufacturers that favour EU rules as the sector has had three years to prepare for Britain's transition.

The SNP have warned that this spells “disaster” and will lead to a rolling back of several rights and protections...

...Javid confirmed in his interview that the UK will not be in the single market or customs union and will not be a “ruletaker”. This will be done by the end of the year. "We're ... talking about companies that have known since 2016 that we are leaving the EU,” said Javid.

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