Being agender feels very lonely & weird sometimes, and the best example I've heard to describe it was described to me as follows:

It's like walking around & everyone's wearing a hat. They come in many colors. You often get asked what color your hat is.

But you don't own a hat.

Not everyone wears their hat all the time either, but they still own a hat.

But not only are you not wearing a hat, you just don't own one.

And I think this is the issue I have with agender being under the umbrella of trans or non-binary. It qualifies as those, and yet...

Yeah, my hat isn't the color I got when I bought it. And yes, my hat doesn't fit into the typical binary of warm & cool colors that people typically use to talk about hats.

But that's not because my hat is black or a weird shade or something.

It's because I don't have a hat.

It may look like I have a hat. Hell, I look so much like I have a hat that people assume I do have one & don't even bother to second guess it.

And that's fine & all. My style is one which would you lead you to think I have a hat, I get why people would think that.

But I don't.

It just feels... not quite right.

Like I'm sitting at a table with a bunch of people who own hats. Some of them own a couple. Some of them have a collection. And so as people examine their own hats they want to know about mine.

And I can't say anything except "I don't own one."

I simultaneously relate to others under our collective umbrella because yeah, turns out the hat I bought wasn't something I liked. So I binned it. It'll take me a while to get used to not wearing one, but it feels like the best representation of me. And people are nice about it.

I don't say this because people who are non-binary or trans haven't made me feel welcome. I feel very welcomed, in a way I never have before. The outpouring of support I got when I came out last summer really meant a lot to me & I've been able to grow as a person because of it.

But with Pride Month coming up, what would've been my first Pride Month being out with my new identity, I can't say I still don't have a little trepidation.

It doesn't feel quite right to call myself trans or queer or non-binary.

I don't have a gender which I identify with.

And I'm fine with that, but I'll be honest: I don't know how to talk to my parents about it. I haven't told them. Because my dad has made comments & jokes about how they is plural, or called things it.

And if I say I'm trans, that means something very different to my parents.

Because when someone says they're trans, what do you think? I'd say the default right now is "that person is the opposite gender they were assigned at birth."

And for my parents, they'd think I was meaning to say that I am actually a woman.

And I am not. I don't have a hat.

So I could say I'm non-binary, tell them I don't fit on the spectrum. But that's still me explaining the spectrum of gender & still not acknowledging that I'm not even on it. They sold hats for the gender spectrum and I didn't buy one.

I am ungendered as can be, simply agender.

But to just say that to someone feels... odd.

"Yeah, I'm not gendered."

"But you have facial hair?"

"Yes."

"So that's a masculine trait."

And then it's a bio-essentialist argument & then it's not even about me, it's about the fundamental issue of gender as a whole itself.

Part of the wider frustration of being online is that it feels like you have to wave flags sometimes so people remember stuff.

"Hey, remember that time literal Nazis dogpiled me? Yeah, that sucked."

"Hey, remember how I'm not gendered? Yeah, please just remember to use they."

And "they/them" really isn't even what I'd prefer. Because we don't have languge for what I'd prefer.

I happened across some college students from my college online here (Do Great Work!) & got a chance to chat with one of them. They're part of a queer house on campus.

And the fact that that even exists is wonderful to me. Back when I was in college, all we had was the LGBTQIA+ club that was a BRANCH of the Women & Genders Studies department. I didn't learn what being transgender was until I was like a sophomore.

I'd wish I'd had that then.

I wish that the language existed in a greater capacity as it does now.

And I think also about how there will be folks, like me, who go into those spaces & see everyone wearing a hat & think that they have to be wearing a hat as well.

I'm lucky I had folks I could talk to on it.

Because if there's two thing I'm grateful for in the last year, it's that I have had the space to really meet myself & also a community that has encouraged it & been mindful of it. I'm very thankful, it's meant a lot.

I'm still new to this me & who I am, but I'm still hatless.

My hope is that maybe, in the future, our language & the way we think about this will be open to people like me sooner & more explicitly & that one day I'll find my spot around the table where I feel comfortable.

Things are still shifting right now but I believe we'll get there.