Why I Can't Call Myself Agender

When I was a kid, I forget how old, I went to the rugby club with my grandfather because he wanted a pint of beer. It was a familiar place to me because it's where all the birthday parties and seasonal discos were held. I'd been there many times for cake, cheap fizzy drinks, games of musical chairs and endless renditions of the Macarena.

On this occasion, my grandfather went into the lounge and I didn't know what to do.

On the door to the lounge was a sign. It was the female figure, the silhouette in a dress, a big cross right through it. Underneath was a plaque that read, 'No Women.'

That applied to me. I was a categorised under that silhouette in a dress, which I knew because it indicated the right toilets in public places and because girl/woman meant me. I'd learned that in school.

A teacher had split the class into halves based on gender for some kind of activity, and I'd lingered in the middle of the room, unsure.

"This side," she'd said impatiently, and guided me with a hand on my back to stand with the others, who found it hilariously funny that I'd hesitated.

"Obviously you're a girl," they sneered.

Of course, it was obvious. I had a girl name, girl hair, girl clothes, girl body. The reason I hesitated wasn't because I was unfamiliar with those things, but simply because I not used to being defined by them. It took a little while for my brain to catch up to the fact that 'girl' meant me.

It wasn't an earth-shattering revelation. Girl, fine, that side of the room, whatever. After that, it was a recognisable part of my identity. If somebody said, 'girls over here', there I'd go.

At the rugby club, I lingered outside the lounge where girls were not allowed until my grandfather stuck his head back out to see why I hadn't followed him in.

"Come on," he said, impatient, not realising the problem. I pointed meekly at the sign. "Oh," he said, blinking, baffled.

He called to the man behind the bar. There was a brief conversation, my grandfather pointed at me, the bartender nodded and beckoned me in.

"No causing any trouble, now, love," he said, and winked at me. They seemed to find it funny. I didn't understand why.

I entered reverently into this Place in Which I Was Not Allowed. It was a pokey room with faded carpets that smelled like old beer, upholstery on the booths that looked older than the building, the air was fuggy with cigarette smoke and there were shelves cluttered with trophies and framed black and white photographs of rugby teams from generations past. On one wall, there was a mounted glass case with an ugly stuffed fox in it. All in all, it was distinctly unimpressive. I felt sorry for the fox. Its beady plastic eyes were wonky.

It's only looking back I realise that, apart from the signs or instructions to say where I should or shouldn't go, my gender had no real relevance to me as a child. My mother decided my name and my hair and my clothes, I didn't care about any of that. When it came to my peers, I was a level removed from the girls. I didn't get them. They seemed to be operating and communicating on a plane I didn't understand, and judging me for it. Boys were more straightforward, but I damaged their street cred.

You can't play with us, you're a girl.

But why does that matter?

Nobody seemed to know why it mattered, only that it did. As I got older, it only mattered more. It wasn't just physical features. It was ingrained in everything. What I should like, who I should like, how I should behave, how I should see others, how I should see myself. I was constantly trying to fit in with the idea of what I should be, without really understanding it at all.

What is female, besides biological? Other people seemed to know this. I was supposed to be female, but the only understanding I had of 'female' was hair and clothes and certain names and stereotypes. None of it was relevant to me. So, I pretended it was. The disconnect between my identity and the one put upon me shrank through a combination of time, assimilation and sheer effort of will.

Puberty is when you really start to learn what it means to be a woman. I was warned that was the case, and it was exactly right. It's no coincidence that I remember it as one long identity crises. I came out on the other side of it a feminist.

When I say I'm agender, what I mean is that the way I perceive myself is mist. Undefined. Grey, shapeless, an amorphous blob. If I died now and my spirit left my prison of flesh, it would not, by default, be a she. I think that's what being agender is, though I'm not sure. Because even though I am not a she, not really, not all the way through anyway, it is what I am.

I can't say I'm not a woman. I have been painted female in my life and I can't just let that go. I've earned womanhood, even if I don't particularly care for it, and it is mine.

I've earned it by being patronised and feeling small, and on some occasions by proving myself anyway. I've proved it by having my options limited, by being taken less seriously, by my career, by my relationships, by answering a million questions about marriage and children. I've earned it through housework and my work never being done, every time I've had to ask my partner to open a jar because of my stupid small hands, or to climb counters to get something from the top shelf. Every time I've sat behind the wheel of a car at greater risk of being killed because it wasn't built for me. I've earned it by shutting down stupid jokes about how I should be making sandwiches, and by making the sandwiches. I've earned it through voting and not voting.

I've earned it by wearing outfits I don't feel comfortable in, in allergic reactions from dying my hair, by plucking my eyebrows and shaving away hair, by walking barefoot with high heels in hand. I've earned it with an eating disorder, and by being groped, through being drugged, by standing up for myself, through fear for my safety. I've earned it through a million side-eyes and lewd comments.

I've earned it with periods and smear tests and birth control and bra fittings, and it is mine, goddamn it. Even if I never felt it applied by default.

As a feminist, I can't say I have no gender. My experience of the world has been the experience of a woman. Possibly an agender woman, but a woman nonetheless.