Does Everyone Have a Gender? Gender Detachment, Compulsory Gender, and Asexuality

• In Event: 50251 - Open Topic Paper Session on Sex and Gender

Abstract

Feminist scholars have written for decades about the radical potential—if not the necessity—of ungendering for resisting gender inequality. Yet, the bulk of this work has been theoretical, and other scholars have questioned whether ungendering is even possible. Drawing on interviews with 30 asexual individuals, I present empirical findings that lend support to the plausibility of ungendering. Based on my findings, I introduce the concept of gender detachment, which refers to individually-held notions that gender is irrelevant, unimportant, pointless, and/or overall not a helpful framework for understanding and defining the self. I argue that the difficulty of navigating these feelings highlights gender—and not merely the gender binary—as a compulsory system of categorization. I also argue that this finding highlights the need to theorize around compulsory gender. I conclude by discussing gender detachment’s connections to and differences from the concepts of degendering, ungendering, undoing gender, redoing gender, nonbinary identification, and gender vertigo. I also consider gender detachment’s potential for radical resistance to gender (and the inequality gender produces) and the potential complications in realizing that potential.

Author

• Canton Winer, Northern Illinois University