Abstract
When I asked Manisha to describe her gender identity, she gave a simple answer: “meh.” By this time, I had been interviewing asexual individuals from across the United States for months, so Manisha’s response did not shock me. Like more than a third of the 77 people I interviewed in 2020 and 2021, Manisha was uncomfortable with defining herself through the lens of gender. “I don’t have a gender identity,” Manisha explained with further probing. “I get that other people look at me and see a woman, but, for myself, there’s a blank space where my gender ‘should’ be. My gender is ‘none.’” In this article, I examine interviews with 30 individuals who, like Manisha, experience a detachment from gender in structuring their sense of self.
Western feminist scholars have long anticipated some type of ungendering, or the end of gender as we know it (e.g., Firestone 1971; Rubin 1975; Wittig 1980). In the final chapter of
I began this project with an interest in comparing the gendered experiences of asexual individuals, commonly understood as those who experience low or no sexual attraction. A historically understudied topic (Carroll 2024; Winer 2023), asexuality has seen a recent surge in scholarly interest. With some important exceptions (Gupta 2019; Tessler and Winer 2023; Winer 2024a; Yang 2023), but the intersection of gender and asexuality has remained relatively unexplored, particularly empirically. This is striking, given that asexuality appears to be a gendered identity, with men markedly outnumbered by other genders (Bauer et al. 2018; Bogaert 2004, 2013; Brotto et al. 2010; Greaves et al. 2017; MacNeela and Murphy 2015; Tessler and Winer 2023; Winer 2024a). A 2016 survey of 9,294 asexual-identifying individuals, for example, demonstrated that 63 percent identified as woman or female, 10.9 percent as man or male, and 26 percent as “none of the above” (Bauer et al. 2018).
My initial research plan was straightforward: compare the experiences of asexual men, asexual women, and beyond-the-binary asexuals. However, I quickly found that these three categories did not accommodate my respondents. Some respondents, for example, did not fit neatly into a single group, often straddling a liminal zone between two categories. More unexpectedly, I found that a number of respondents did not fit within any gender category. These individuals were ambivalent, indifferent, and detached from gender as a system for understanding and defining the self.
Those individuals—the gender detached—are the focus of this work. In 2020 and 2021, I interviewed 77 asexual individuals about their experiences and perspectives on sexuality and gender. Of those 77, 30 spoke about feeling some level of detachment from gender, questioning it as a useful lens for understanding who they are (and perhaps who anyone is). I draw on those 30 interviews to introduce the concept of
What Is Asexuality?
Asexuality is perhaps best understood as both an umbrella term and a spectrum referring to those who experience low or no sexual attraction (Winer 2024c). The prevailing definition of asexuality refers to those who do not experience sexual attraction. This definition is said to have emerged from the Asexual Visibility and Education Network and appears in much of the literature (e.g., Brotto et al. 2010; Jones, Hayter, and Jomeen 2017; Van Houdenhove et al. 2015). However, the meaning of asexuality varies, and its definition remains in flux (Chasin 2011; Mitchell and Hunnicutt 2019; Scherrer 2008). Some asexual individuals, for example, define their asexuality as a revulsion to sex, while others define it as a lack of interest in sex. Some asexual (often abbreviated as “ace”) individuals report experiencing sexual desire in specific situations; others report a complete absence of sexual desire (Winer 2024c). Some asexual individuals are sexually active, while others are completely abstinent. Some asexual individuals report feelings of romantic (but not sexual) attraction, while others do not. And some asexual individuals identify only as asexual, while others use more complex identifiers, such as bisexual asexual, demisexual, gray asexual, heteroromantic asexual, and others (Winer 2024b; Winer et al. 2024). Scholars have offered definitions of asexuality as referring to individuals’ sexual desires or behaviors (Aicken, Mercer, and Cassell 2013; Brotto et al. 2010; Prause and Graham 2007), but a study by Van Houdenhove et al. (2014) examining the interaction between identity, attraction, and behavior among 566 asexual survey respondents concluded that “lack of sexual attraction” was the most commonly shared definition. Asexuality differs from celibacy, virginity, and “involuntary celibacy” both because it is a sexual identity (indeed, it is the
Ungendering
Western feminist scholars have long critiqued the notion of discrete, naturalized gender categories as a driving force of gender inequality and male supremacy (Firestone 1971; Lorber 2000, 2005, 2021; Risman 1999; Wittig 1980). For this reason, Connell (2005) called a strategy of ungendering “unavoidable” and indispensable. Deutsch (2007) similarly highlighted the importance of “undoing gender” in resisting and eliminating the gender system and the inequality it (re)produces. Lorber (2000, 2005, 2021) has argued that “degendering” would powerfully contribute to combatting gender inequality. From a trans perspective, Currah (2022:96) similarly argued for the “disestablishment” of sex. And, of course, Butler (1990) famously emphasized the radical potential of destabilizing discrete, naturalized gender categories.
Relatedly, scholars have critiqued gender categories for creating a false sense of stability and coherence that misleadingly separates “gender” from other political and cultural intersections, such as class, race, region, colonialism, sexuality, and others (Butler 1990; Crenshaw 1989; Mohanty 1984). This can create complex relationships between ungendering and those racialized as people of color. Postcolonial and indigenous scholars, for example, have argued that gender (and particularly the gender binary) is a colonial imposition (Foster et al. 2016; Lugones 2016; Oyěwùmí 2005) and that through colonization “gender differentials were introduced where there were none” (Lugones 2007:196), though some scholars caution that such arguments risk romanticizing indigenous cultures and denying the existence of patriarchal formations prior to colonization (Sabsay 2025). Postcolonial scholars have also argued that raising the salience of gender, particularly vis-à-vis Western feminist frameworks, can function to perpetuate colonial power dynamics (Ballakrishnen 2021; Roy 2022; Roychowdhury 2013). Recent work that looks at indigenous scholarship alongside asexuality (Kenney 2020; Przybylo 2024) has similarly noted the colonial roots of modern regimes of gender. Relatedly, scholars have noted that the imposition of Western gender systems and ideologies was central to projects of racist dehumanization, while also indicating that ungendering can itself be made compulsory (Snorton 2017). Spillers (1987), for example, highlights gendered personhood as a property of whiteness. Specifically, Spillers discussed ungendering as rooted in white supremacist violence, in which ungendering is used as a tool to deny personhood to people racialized as Black. Building on Spillers, Weinbaum (2024) situated ungendering a tool for transforming enslaved Black women into property. Asexuality studies scholar Owen (2018) similarly argued that controlling images of Black people as both hyposexual and hypersexual operate as tolls of enforced ungendering.
The historic intertwining of white supremacy, colonialism, and gender regulation creates complexities in how people of color relate to various gender categories. For example, Bey (2021) noted that the denial of gendered personhood can fuel the presumption that nonbinariness is a privilege only afforded those proximal to whiteness, since nonbinariness is believed to be possessed only by those not subject to needing gender as a vector through which to gain personhood, the case for many people of color. (p. 231)
At the same time, being racialized outside of whiteness “muddies cisgender identity” (Bey 2022:24). This is to say that racialization (and whiteness in particular) structures gender, creating challenges for people of color both inside and outside of the gender binary—and ungendering has specifically been used to deny personhood to people of color. Nonetheless, Snorton (2017) argued that even when its emergence is tied to the violence of American slavery, ungendering can be a tool of emancipation for people racialized as Black.
Others do not see liberatory potential within ungendering. Notably, West and Zimmerman (2009) questioned the plausibility of “undoing” gender, claiming that this implies abandonment of accountability to sex category, which they see as impossible. They argue that gender can be “redone” but not “undone.” Similarly, Lorber (2021) argued that “To live without a gender in a gendered world is almost impossible” and “As long as one’s official documents proclaim a gender, it is impossible to be a ‘non’” (p. 38). Halberstam (2017) wrote that “The concept of being without a gender, however, is whimsical at best, since there are few ways to interact with other human beings without being identified with some kind of gendered embodiment” (p. 9). Given that the power of sex and gender categories is that they structure our social world and that they seem so natural (e.g., Risman 1999), these arguments are compelling. Indeed, the question of ungendering is complicated by the ubiquity and taken-for-granted “naturalness” of gender, making it something that “can neither be withdrawn nor refused” (Butler 1990:124). Viewed this way, even acts and identities that subvert gender norms remain within a gender paradigm, as even “refusal constitutes engagement” (Butler 1990:124; see also Valocchi 2005).
These arguments have been influential in academia, but they have also mostly been theoretical. However, scholars have noted some empirical cases that suggest ungendering is possible and already occurring. That said, even these findings do not paint a straightforward picture of ungendering. At an institutional level, scholars have argued that ungendering bathrooms (Davis 2020) and official government documents such as passports (Quinan and Bresser 2020) and birth certificates (Murphy and Parks 2023) can reshape the gender order, but that these resources are unevenly available. In a study of 19 transgender individuals’ negotiation and management of gendered interactions at work, Connell (2010) found that some respondents were actively working to “undo” gender (see Butler 2004; Risman 2009) by creating blended gender performances and gender biographies. However, Connell also noted that these individuals were often still held accountable, by others, to adhering to the current gender system. Crawley (2022) further complicated the question of whether these enactments of gender constitute ungendering, arguing that “doing transgender” is doing gender rather than an undoing of gender.
Other empirical work that has presented evidence of ungendering has often focused on resisting discriminatory treatment and inequality (e.g., Chan, Doran, and Marel 2010; Claringbould and Knoppers 2008) or on gender integration (e.g., Sasson-Levy and Amram-Katz 2007) rather than on resisting gender categories themselves. Some may point to nonbinary gender identities—and specifically agender identity, which refers to not having a gender—as further empirical evidence for ungendering (Barbee and Schrock 2019). However, others have noted that nonbinary individuals cannot simply be understood as “undoing” gender, and that these identities involve both “doing” and subverting the gender binary (Darwin 2017; McCarthy et al. 2022). Moreover, nonbinary identification is often framed as an affirmation or discovery of a “true self” (Oakley 2016), leading some to argue that these identities may be individually rebellious but not necessarily entail a call to upend gender as a social structure (Lorber 2018, 2021). This argument is far from settled, with others arguing that nonbinary identities can powerfully disrupt gendered systems of power (e.g., Morgenroth and Ryan 2021). Nonetheless, claiming a nonbinary gender identity still involves claiming a gender identity, complicating arguments that nonbinary identification is best understood as “ungendering” (cf. Barbee and Schrock 2019). It is also noteworthy that previous interview research has already found that some asexual people do not feel strongly attached to their gender identity (Cuthbert 2019; Gupta 2019), though this finding was not examined in conversation with the literature on ungendering. Altogether, then, empirical evidence that ungendering is possible remains limited and unclear, suggesting that my findings of gender detachment may stand relatively alone in demonstrating a potential path forward.
In this study I offer
Methods
This study is part of a larger project involving interviews with 77 individuals on the asexuality spectrum. I draw on 30 of those interviews, which were selected because they conveyed elements of what I call gender detachment. The overwhelming majority of this subset of 30 interviews involved respondents who were AFAB, a remarkable trend, as those assigned male at birth constituted nearly a third of the entire sample of 77 interviews. Respondents resided in 15 states plus Washington, D.C., ranged in age from 18 to 50 years (mean = 28.9 years), and identified with various racial categories (see Table 1). Respondents were recruited on Twitter, Facebook, and asexuality-centric pages on Reddit. They were told that this study was about asexual people’s perspectives on sexuality and gender. Recruitment materials were shared widely by individuals within the asexual community, and I received far more indications of interest than I had time to interview. Respondents were not compensated, and all names have been changed to pseudonyms (some of which were chosen by respondents themselves). Participants were eligible to participate if they were at least 18 years old, identified as asexual or on the asexuality spectrum, lived in the United States, and spoke English; respondents were not screened for any other criteria. All interviews were gathered in 2020 and 2021.
Respondent Demographic Information.
Early in each interview, I asked respondents for their gender identities. Their answers are reported in this column, though some respondents later clarified that the answer they provided did not feel entirely accurate.
Informed by abductive techniques (Timmermans and Tavory 2012) and their openness to unexpected findings, I conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews following a flexible interview guide (see the Appendix), allowing questions to evolve as I collected data. I asked respondents about their gender identities and presentation, their feelings about the relationship between their gender and sexual identities, and their feelings about their gender. I also asked a number of questions related to respondents’ experience and views of gender. For example, I asked whether they thought their sexuality had influenced their experience of gender (and vice versa); how they would describe their gender identity; and whether they considered themselves more masculine or feminine. As I discovered themes of gender detachment in some early interviews, I began asking respondents about how closely tied they felt to their gender identity. If respondents gave answers communicating loose ties, I presented them with the language of gender detachment (and a brief explanation), asking them if they felt that accurately described their own feelings about gender.
At first, all interviews were conducted via Zoom, lasting from one hour to two and a half hours. Shortly after opening recruitment, a number of potential respondents had asked if they could be interviewed via e-mail. Prospective respondents explained that an e-mail option better accommodated their neurodiversity, unpredictable or demanding work schedules, and nervousness interacting with a researcher they did not know. Previous research has also noted that e-mail interviews are useful for reaching vulnerable groups (Walker 2014). Although, e-mail interviews can produce rich qualitative data (Illingworth 2006; McCoyd and Kerson 2006), they differ from more traditional interview formats in that they lack the spontaneity of traditional interviews and provide less extralinguistic data such as facial expressions and body language (Gibson 2010). With these considerations in mind, I decided to give respondents an asynchronous e-mail-based interview option and reopened recruitment with this advertised option. Following this, most respondents chose to be interviewed via e-mail. In this study, nine respondents were interviewed via Zoom and 21 via e-mail. E-mail responses gave respondents time to consider the question before responding, and fostered a more collaborative approach to research in which respondents could also choose to reach out to me, unprompted, to ask questions, add further clarifications or amend earlier responses (James 2015). Each initial interview transcript was at least three single-spaced pages. As new questions arose during data collection, I sometimes e-mailed follow-up questions to respondents (both those who initially participated via Zoom and e-mail). I had a 100 percent response rate on e-mail follow-up questions.
After each interview was transcribed, I used Atlas.ti to begin coding. I first engaged in initial coding to describe what each segment of the interview was about (Charmaz 2006). Initial coding involved coding individual sentences based on themes that arose in the data (e.g., “discomfort being perceived as a woman,” “apathy about gender identity,” “difficulty explaining gender identity,” “gender is imposed on me”). I used an inductive coding approach, constructing analytic codes and categories as they emerged from the data, rather than from codes and categories logically deduced from hypotheses (Glaser and Strauss 2017). This approach identifies a wide range of themes and is useful for allowing unexpected themes (such as apathy about gender identity) to emerge organically in the data. Initial coding began while I was still collecting data. This allowed me to revise the interview guide while data collection was ongoing, facilitating exploration of unexpected themes (particularly those related to gender detachment). As I revised the interview guide, I also returned to already collected data to see if there was uncertainty about how previous respondents might have responded to newly emergent themes and interview questions. I contacted previous respondents with these updated questions if I felt uncertain how they were likely to respond on the basis of their responses to the original interview guide questions.
After completing initial coding on an individual interview, I used Atlas.ti to condense initial codes into focused codes that grouped together resonant themes (e.g., “apathy about gender identity,” “gender is imposed on me”) into broader themes (e.g., “gender detachment”). I wrote a memo for each individual interview where I examined the prevalent themes in that interview and identified quotations that best exemplified those themes. This concluded the focused coding stage of analysis. After focused coding, I wrote memos exploring similarities and differences between interviews. This helped identify themes that emerged not only within but also across interviews. As with coding, memo writing was conducted while collecting interviews, which I continued until reaching saturation related to the emergent categories.
Findings
Overall, I find that respondents framed gender as irrelevant, unimportant, pointless, and/or not useful in understanding and defining the self, evidence of what I call gender detachment. Gender detachment is centrally about respondents’ sense of self. Although respondents sometimes described wishing they could abstain from gender in reflection of that sense of self (i.e., that a gender identity is not part of that selfhood), they generally did not seek to “accomplish” this in their interactions or discuss working to disrupt gender as a social structure. I sort my findings into three main themes: straightforward detachment, ambivalent detachment, and the connection between detachment and (a)sexuality. The first two themes highlight a range in respondents’ precise feelings about gender. The final theme emphasizes the relationships between gender and (a)sexuality that help produce gender detachment.
Straightforward Detachment
Some respondents communicated straightforward detachment from gender, in which they did not feel connected to any gender identity. Ollia was the first respondent I spoke with who communicated gender detachment. They noted that at one point, they had felt connected to a gender identity on the basis of their assigned gender at birth but that this had “fallen away.”
My gender is like an empty lot; there may have been a building there at some point, but it’s long since fallen away, and there’s no need to rebuild it. The space is better for being left empty. (Ollia, white, 32, California, Zoom)
Ollia’s responses reflect personal detachment from gender. Ollia does not use gender labels, a discussion they said they rarely had with others, as “people, I’m sure, assume I’m nonbinary or a woman.” Some respondents, however, also critiqued the gender system more broadly, often focusing on the gender binary.
I don’t have preferred pronouns. I don’t feel of any particular affinity to either gender. I don’t believe in the binary. At all. (Sandy, Asian American, 31, California, Zoom)
Sandy’s statement was not simply an expression of a nonbinary identity. Like many other respondents, Sandy explained after probing that she felt a detachment from gender altogether and a desire to critique the pressure to “choose” a gender. It is noteworthy, however, that many respondents (Sandy included) used the gendered pronouns that correspond to their assigned gender at birth, typically explaining that those pronouns felt “okay enough” because they had gotten used to using them from a young age. Sandy, for example, explained that using she/her pronouns was “out of default” and that choosing new pronouns felt like unnecessary work. “Using those pronouns doesn’t mean I’m a woman. . . . It feels like being forced to put even more effort into this thing I don’t care about to decide I need new pronouns,” Sandy explained. Similarly, although some respondents said they aimed to achieve more “neutral” performances of gender (e.g., avoiding makeup, dresses) most explained that they felt no need to alter their gender performances. As Sara explained, I have interests that others would call feminine, and I like wearing makeup sometimes, wearing cute clothes, all of that. . . . I don’t see any need to stop doing those things. It’s not my fault other people think sewing and looking pretty are about gender. (Sara, Black, 23, Zoom, Alabama)
Sandy’s explanation of her use of she/her pronouns and Sara’s explanation of being perceived as feminine suggest that for them, and most respondents, gender detachment is generally not reflective of a desire to “do” or “perform” gender differently. Instead, their detachment is in relation to identifying with a gender and using gender labels to structure their sense of self.
Most respondents did not make overt, broad critiques of gender, instead focusing on their personal disinterest in being gendered.
My feelings about gender, for myself, are very detached and distant. I just don’t identify really with most concepts of gender, because it honestly just confuses me. I just don’t get it. I don’t know
Some responses sounded similar to a nonbinary gender identity, and specifically to an agender identity. However, most respondents explicitly said that they found those terms personally inaccurate or insufficient. For example, Brandy, when initially asked about their gender identity, said that they were agender. When I asked how accurate that label felt, Brandy explained that agender was “handy,” especially in the absence of another term that could indicate their general apathy toward gender identification, but that it ultimately did not feel accurate.
I’d say I’m very detached from gender. I think the analogy I used was that a lot of people see gender as a spectrum, from pink to purple to blue to variants, and I’m a splotch of green on the frame. I just don’t see myself in that spectrum, and so while agender and nonbinary are handy terms, they still work within a gendered framework that I don’t place myself in. (Brandy, white, 28, Pennsylvania, Zoom)
This apprehension toward gender as a framework was true even of respondents who, when asked their gender identity, said that they were agender or another nonbinary identity. Rebecca, for example, told me that she identified as agender when I asked for her gender identity. However, when I later asked how attached she felt to that identity, she communicated gender detachment and noted that identifying as agender was mostly out of conversational convenience.
I do not feel strongly tied to an agender identity. It just happens to be the most convenient term to use for me especially when trying to explain things to other people. I feel pretty detached from gender in general. (Rebecca, white, 28, California, Zoom)
Rebecca further explained that although she uses the term agender when asked, she internally felt that she did not have nor need a gender identity, including an agender one. As Rebecca’s quotation demonstrates, gender detachment is different from, and sometimes masked by, agender and nonbinary identification. Although agender and nonbinary identities represent a departure from the gender binary, gender detachment presents a different gender challenge, questioning the utility and relevance of gender identities altogether.
Ambivalent Detachment
The gender detachment conveyed by respondents like those above was fairly straightforward. Some respondents, however, communicated more ambivalent gender detachment, saying that they felt attachment to some aspects of gender and detachment from others.
For me personally, I think “woman” is probably a term that’s not too far off from my particular permutation of gender (such that it is). I like how she/her pronouns sound the best, I usually prefer a femme presentation, and I don’t mind being perceived as a woman. At the same time, there are narratives tied into the concept of womanhood that are . . . repellant, maybe? . . . to me, . . . [including] woman as mother, woman as nurturer, and woman as romantic/sexual partner. I don’t vibe at all with the word womanhood, either. To put it another way, I think that much of my resonance with women comes from socialization and shared experiences with other people who use that label rather than perhaps any inherent shared feeling. . . . Of course I support and respect people who feel gender to be a strong thing in their life but personally I feel like it’s not real and basically a construction. At the same time, I don’t feel like I’m doing much that’s disruptive to dominant constructions of gender, so a term like nonbinary or genderqueer feels incorrect. So yes, perhaps detached is a good term. . . . Let me put it this way: if somebody came up to me and insisted that I was a man, I would disagree with them. If somebody came up to me and just insisted that I
This sense of shared connection with women was raised by several respondents. Combined with a sense that gender is “repellant” in some ways, as Amanda put it, or even simply unimportant, this created mixed attachment and detachment from gender for these respondents.
I would say that I’m mostly a cis woman, but I don’t feel super strongly about it? I saw a Tumblr post once that said something like, “I’m a ‘she’ in the same way inanimate objects are ‘she’ to gays and sailors” and like . . . yeah? I’m a she because nothing else fits or feels right, but it’s a loose concept. . . . I think more than anything, my gender is something aesthetic? I’m loosely attached to it as a concept, but I do construct it in a certain way that most people generally interpret as at least feminine-leaning, and I’m content with that. I like being a woman in the same way I like being queer, in that I feel a sense of solidarity with other people who share that experience/attribute, so it’s important to me in that regard, but I also don’t think about my gender identity very much day to day, so I’m not sure what that tells you about how attached I am to it. (Dana, white, 27, Massachusetts, e-mail)
Some respondents indicated lingering gender attachments, in the midst of broader gender detachment, because they did not see alternative language to convey their relationship with gender. For example, Lydia said, I consider myself gender queer. I mostly use female pronouns (she/her) since that’s easiest for me, but I don’t feel especially connected with being a woman other than my appearance, which indicates to other people that I am a woman. The problem I have is that there doesn’t seem to be a descriptor for gender that exactly describes how I feel or see myself. Being considered a woman doesn’t cause me distress so I usually just consider myself a queer woman since queer is kind of all encompassing but woman just feels slightly off the mark for me. (Lydia, white, 31, New York, e-mail)
However, when I later told Lydia that I had heard similar things from other asexual individuals I had interviewed and asked if she felt detached from gender (thereby offering her alternative language), she enthusiastically said that she did.
Detached from gender at large is a great way to describe it. It’s not that I experience any kind of dysphoria like someone in the trans community might feel; I just don’t feel especially attached to femininity or masculinity. Mostly, I feel kind of neutral about gender as a whole. . . . Even calling myself non-binary or agender doesn’t feel right, other than in philosophically. I don’t really think about myself in terms of gender, and trying to fit a label on myself seems kind of unnecessary. The labels that were more or less assigned to me at birth work well enough and don’t really cause me any discomfort so I go with it, but they don’t really explain me. The closest thing I can come up with is queer since it explains that I don’t fit the norm of gender or sexuality but doesn’t say anything specific. Since I don’t even know how I would describe my gender other than through a long explanation like this, queer is the best I can come up with. (Lydia, white, 31, New York, e-mail)
Reflecting insights that gender categories are inextricably racialized, and often exclusionary of people of color (Bey 2021, 2022; Snorton 2017; Spillers 1987), some respondents communicated a relationship with gender that was complicated by their other social identities, such as Blackness.
I’m cis, but as a mixed Black asexual autistic lesbian, my experience with womanhood is fundamentally different from any experience that I’ve seen before. I don’t feel super attached to my gender, but I feel even less connected to any other gender terminology I’ve heard. I’m not a woman in a vacuum, if that makes any sense. Describing myself as a Black girl feels right, a queer woman feels right, any of the other labels I mentioned before feel right, but just “woman” feels off. Also so many of so-called female experiences are VERY white women-centered, so a lot of my disconnect comes from that too. (Bee, Black, 23, D.C. area, e-mail)
As Bee’s statement shows, race could also play into individuals’ feelings of gender detachment, as womanhood has been culturally constructed through whiteness in the United States. It is equally worth noting that respondents racialized as white did not mention race when reflecting on their relationships with gender, reflecting the increased ease of navigating gender categories for those who are racially unmarked. Moreover, Bee includes “asexual” in her list of attributes that gives her a “fundamentally different experience” with womanhood, hinting at the connections between asexuality and gender detachment that I explore in greater detail in the next section.
Altogether, then, the reasons for mixed attachment/detachment from gender varied, but most implicate inadequate identity options (or language to express nonidentity) as a driving factor.
Connecting Gender Detachment and (A)Sexuality
The final important theme deals with respondents’ statements on the relationship between (a)sexuality and gender. Many respondents, including those quoted earlier in this manuscript, said that they felt their feelings and thoughts about gender were connected to their feelings and thoughts about sex and/or their sexuality. This was particularly true with those who were AFAB, who often communicated discomfort with what they saw as the inherent sexualization of womanhood.
I feel my gender identity is tied to my sexual orientation. . . . I think, since I grew up thinking of myself and my identity in terms of how can I make others attracted to me, that my gender became a part of that. Being a girl meant certain rules for sexuality. Since letting go of that pressure and tension after realizing I do not experience sexual attraction myself and don’t want that kind of relationship . . . it felt like something was lifted from my gender. . . . Maybe I associate the girl/woman gender identity with sexual attraction, in a cisheteronormative, patriarchal construct, and that’s why I feel that way. (Honeybee, white, 18, Georgia, e-mail)
Honeybee further explained that as they learned about asexuality, they also began to detach from identifying with their assigned gender at birth—and the idea of “having” a gender more broadly.
Honeybee was far from alone in associating being a girl or woman with sexuality and sex. Respondents repeatedly raised this as an important factor in their discomfort with and detachment from gender.
I’ve really started to question, if I was 12 years old at this moment, would I still consider myself female? Do I just consider myself female because there wasn’t really another option when I was growing up? . . . Sometimes I equate the word feminine with being sexy as a female, and I do not want to be seen that way. It would make me very uncomfortable if anyone told me they found me sexy. I’m not sure how to explain why but it is somehow tied to be asexual. (Lori, white, 39, New Jersey, e-mail)
Some respondents explained that although gender is not entirely about sex and sexuality, they felt detached from the aspects of gender that are associated with sex and sexuality. For Stacey, and others, this led her to forsake any gender labels.
If you were to take away the parts of gender that are related to sex and sexuality, I’d say yeah, I’m a woman. But there’s a lot more to gender that just doesn’t feel relevant to me, and in those ways I’m not. I haven’t really settled on a specific gender label for myself, and honestly don’t know if I will, at least not any time soon. (Stacey, Black, 27, Pennsylvania, Zoom)
Stacey went on to explain that her race also informed these feelings. “The whole hypersexualization of Black womanhood adds to it [my feelings of detachment from gender],” Stacey explained. “My gender feels inherently sexualized partially because of my Blackness.”
Again, this is reminiscent of the observation that gender categories are inextricably racialized and can be marginalizing for people of color (Bey 2021, 2022; Snorton 2017; Spillers 1987).
Others said that their feelings (or lack thereof) about sex caused them even to be relatively uninterested in others’ gender.
I tend not to care much about bodies. Your umm . . . arrangement of flesh . . . means very little as it doesn’t lure me anyway. Sex, when I feel like pursuing it, isn’t very appearance driven. At least I don’t think it is. Maybe a certain degree of “attractive looking” is involved overall. But it isn’t the parts. In that aspect, it is probably related to being asexual. It makes me view parts themselves and gender from a more “I don’t care” perspective. I also tend to break things down to how it makes me feel. I tend not to like penetrative activities, for example. I don’t care what parts those are. So I think it just creates a mindset where sex and gender don’t matter to me. (Judith, white, 50, Colorado, e-mail)
Most respondents were unlike Judith. Instead of describing a broad disinterest in anyone’s gender, most respondents focused on their disinterest in their own gender. Nonetheless, Judith’s response is important for showing the various ways respondents understood the connection between their asexuality and their feelings of disinterest and/or distrust of gender.
Discussion
My findings lead me to propose the concept of gender detachment and to encourage scholars to integrate compulsory gender into their conceptualization of gender. Gender detachment entails situating gender as irrelevant, unimportant, pointless, and/or not useful for understanding and defining the self. The emergence of gender detachment points to the existence of, and the desire to break free from, compulsory gender. My findings presents important implications for the study of asexuality, but also for the study of sexuality, gender, identity, and resistance.
My findings complicate the (often unstated) assumption that everyone “has” a gender identity. By disrupting this assumption, these findings emphasize gender as a compulsory system of categorization. This builds on Rich’s (1980) concept of compulsory heterosexuality, asexuality studies’ concept of compulsory sexuality, efforts to interrogate “compulsory gender binarism” (Cole and Cate 2008:285), and Stryker’s (1994) observation that “gender attribution is compulsory” (pp. 249–50). A focus on compulsory gender also presents valuable connections to postcolonial (Ballakrishnen 2021; Foster et al. 2016; Lugones 2007, 2016; Oyěwùmí 2005; Roy 2022; Roychowdhury 2013; Sabsay 2025), antiracist (Owen 2018; Snorton 2017; Spillers 1987; Weinbaum 2024), and indigenous scholarship (Kenney 2020; Przybylo 2024), perhaps even pointing toward compulsory gender as a Western, white supremacist, colonial project. A number of previous studies have considered the idea of “compulsory gender,” but they specifically emphasize the man/woman gender binary as compulsory (Cole and Cate 2008; Hughes and Dvorsky 2008; Thornton 2019; Zeiger and Ball 2022). This approach suggests that nonbinary and other gender expansive identities operate outside of compulsory gender, an assumption my study troubles. My findings lead me to propose a more expansive understanding of compulsory gender in which identifying with any gender identity, whether within the man/woman binary or not, is compulsory.
My findings suggest that the ways we measure and ask questions about gender may erase the possibility of gender detachment by operating under the compulsory gender assumption that everyone has a gender. Indeed, that was initially the case for this study. In each interview, I asked respondents for their gender identity. Almost all (including the gender detached) gave a specific, discrete label. I was only able to discern later in some interviews that this label did not feel entirely accurate to a large portion of respondents. This is because after asking respondents for their gender identity, I asked about their feelings about gender and how strongly tied they felt to their gender identity. It was at this point, and with further probing, that I found that a large portion of respondents felt detached from gender.
If so many respondents felt detached from gender, why did almost all of them unwaveringly give a gender identity when initially asked? Partially, this speaks to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of “opting out” in a social world that is profoundly structured by gender (Butler 1990; Lorber 2021; Risman 1999) and powerfully fueled by compulsory gender categorization. But it also highlights the hidden assumptions within questions like “what is your gender identity?” Implicit to that question is the assumption that you do indeed have a gender identity. However, it seems that the reason gender detached respondents overwhelmingly did not reject the premise of this question is not exactly because they felt cornered into giving an answer, but rather because they simply did not have the language to do so. Indeed, respondents often explained that the gender identity they initially provided functioned more as a placeholder in a universe of limited and inadequate options. Moreover, when respondents would give a hint of gender detachment in their answers, I would follow up by noting that other asexual individuals I had interviewed had told me they felt detached from gender altogether. Recall Lydia, for example, who said that she identified as gender queer when I initially asked for her gender identity. However, Lydia also told me that “there doesn’t seem to be a descriptor for gender that exactly describes how I feel or see myself.” This led me to offer Lydia the language of “detachment,” which she replied was “a great way to describe it,” saying she found this new term useful because she “[didn’t] even know how I would describe my gender other than through a long explanation.” Similar interactions occurred in many of my interviews, with respondents enthusiastically agreed that “detached from gender” was an accurate reflection of how they felt, and many leaned on that language for the remainder of the interview. In these interactions, I essentially offered my respondents another option in their process of identity making. Put differently, offering the language of detachment not only helped me better understand my respondents, but may have also helped respondents better understand themselves.
These linguistic dynamics highlight a tension of gender detachment. The lack of language to express gender detachment makes it invisible and illegible—but this lack is perhaps produced by the skepticism of labeling that often accompanies gender detachment. Thus, creating a term (such as
However, the detachment from gender described by my respondents was not anticipated by West and Zimmerman (2009). To some degree, West and Zimmerman appear to have been correct: that my respondents gave a gender identity when asked (even though they did not find that identity accurate) does indicate an accountability to sex categorization. Moreover, although respondents indicated an undoing of gender as it relates to constructing their sense of self, they simultaneously note that they are still interpreted—for example, via hobbies, self-presentation, and pronoun usage—as “doing” gender by others. Yet West and Zimmerman alleged that gender is redone but never undone because accountability can be shifted but not removed. No such shift is evident among my respondents. Although they are certainly still held to account under our gender system (partially through questions such as “What is your gender identity?”), they appear to be genuinely uninterested in creating a new gender/sex category or adjusting the boundaries of an existing category. Perhaps, though incompletely, my respondents truly are undoing gender rather than redoing it.
That said, my respondents are not undoing gender by creating a void in which one can escape gender altogether. Even if their self-concept provides a respite from gender, interfacing with institutions—ranging from the family, marriage, bathrooms, sports, clothing sections in stores— and interacting with others continue to make gender salient. Put differently, my respondents do not evade the grasp of compulsory gender. This does not, however, place the gender detached outside of the scope of theorists who have anticipated some kind of ungendering. Indeed, the very messiness, confusion, and unclarity produced by gender detachment (and the potential debates over what gender detachment means for gender as an institution and a social structure) fits quite well with touchstone feminist theorists of ungendering. Risman (1999) expected the “gender vertigo” produced by the process of ungendering to be “dizzying.” Butler (1990) argued that refusal and resistance to gender necessarily involve engagement with it, also noting that perhaps the most effective strategy in destabilizing gender lies in denaturalizing sex categorization as permanently problematic. Much as the existence of trans people creates a category crisis (Meadow 2010), the mere existence of individuals who publicly claim detachment from compulsory gender categorization seems likely to create a crisis of its own. In other words, gender detachment may still operate within a gender paradigm, but this is a necessity for any ungendering project rather than a sign of underbaked resistance.
It appears that making gender detachment more visible may be necessary for it to exist as a model of radical resistance. Heightened visibility would increase pressure in broader society to accommodate the possibility of ungendered individuals. This highlights an apparently inherent tension with mobilizing gender detachment as a mode of resistance: gender detachment must be visible to destabilize gender and sex categorization, yet increasing its visibility runs counter to an interest in deemphasizing gender as a lens to understand the self. This may help explain why many respondents had little interest in adopting “gender neutral” pronouns and self-presentations; crafting neutral performances of gender often requires effort, and that effort may simply feel unnecessary to individuals who do not feel compelled to signal their (non)gendered sense of self to others. This raises the question: what does (or would) “visibility” look like for gender detachment? Although some sort of gender neutrality or gender abstinence may be the goal, the paradox (cf. Lorber 2021) is that this may only be (eventually) possible by first making systems of gender categorization more visible.
Although many respondents did not mention the role of race in their relationship with gender, my findings also suggest that the deep links between race, gender, and sexuality (Butler 1990; Crenshaw 1989) shape how respondents experience gender detachment. In particular, Black respondents explained that the cultural construction of gender through whiteness, alongside the framing of Blackness as hypersexual, helped fuel their detachment from gender. Nonetheless, ungendering has not historically been liberatory, and has instead been imposed, on those who are not racialized as white (Bey 2022; Owen 2018; Spillers 1987; Weinbaum 2024). Bey (2021) noted that the denial of gendered personhood to Black people in the United States can situate nonbinary gender identities as a property of whiteness. This suggests that although the present study did not produce data that situates gender detachment as nonliberatory, processes of racialization likely will make gender detachment less liberatory for some people of color. With this in mind, the absence of discussion of race among white respondents is also worthy of consideration, perhaps indicating a greater ease for those racialized as white in detaching from gender, as white experiences of gender are not freighted with equivalent racialized baggage.
Gender Detachment versus Nonbinary Identity
Gender detachment should not be conflated with claiming a nonbinary identity (including agender). Respondents sometimes mentioned identifying with a nonbinary identity, but most did not. Relatedly, respondents did not generally present gender detachment as an affirmation or discovery of a “true self,” thus contrasting with prevailing narratives of nonbinary identification (e.g., Oakley 2016). That said, although gender detachment and claiming a nonbinary gender identity are not synonymous, they are also not mutually exclusive: one might feel detached from gender and still claim any gender identity, including nonbinary gender identities. Perhaps the emergence of agender identities reflects the inescapable scope of compulsory gender, in which even the feeling of “not having a gender” is subsumed as a gender identity. Again, this points to an important question: can one truly “detach” from gender? Inevitably, even individuals who personally eschew gender find themselves to be gendered by others and to face gendered pressures in a society that is structured by gender (Connell 1987, 2005; Ridgeway 2011). This raises a further question: what does gender detachment offer people in such a society?
Is Gender Detachment Specific to Asexual Individuals?
The regulation of gender heavily relies on the policing of sexuality (Butler 1990). Asexuality interrupts that policing in unexpected ways, thus presenting opportunities for destabilizing gender. It remains unclear, however, if gender detachment either enables or is enabled by asexual identification or if similar attitudes would be prevalent among individuals of other sexualities. Previous research has also hinted that some asexual people do not feel strongly attached to their gender identity (Cuthbert 2019; Gupta 2019), suggesting my findings are not an anomaly. Perhaps some people are simply less “gender-y” than others (Sedgwick 1995:16), and asexual people are more likely to fall into that group. It seems possible that because sexuality is typically defined by not only the sex/gender(s) of those to whom you are attracted but also your own sex/gender, asexual individuals (whose sexual identity is based on lack of attraction whatsoever, rather than being defined by attraction to certain sexes/genders) may be feel less compelled to perform sex/gender in a way that is legible to others. Such an explanation would resonate with Cuthbert’s (2019) findings that some asexual individuals understood sexuality and gender to be inseparable and felt alienated from gender, with some finding recognition in agender identification, though others (Yang 2023) have found some asexual individual uncouple gender and sexuality. My findings may also further contextualize Chasin’s (2011) observation that 27 of 214 participants (12.6 percent) refused to identify as “male” or “female” (the only gender options given) in Brotto et al.’s (2010) highly cited study of asexuality. Rather than only indicating “substantial gender diversity within the asexual population,” as Chasin (p. 716) speculated, this refusal may indicate some respondents’ hesitance to be gendered whatsoever.
It is worth considering whether asexuality profoundly disrupts the “heterosexual matrix” (Butler 1990), leading asexual individuals to unravel the connection between gender and desire that produces and reifies the gender binary. Perhaps in their original formulation, Butler overemphasized the power of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1980) and undertheorized the power of compulsory sexuality (the idea that all humans do and should experience sexual attraction and desire) (Gupta 2015; Przybylo 2019) in the construction and maintenance of gender. Indeed, some respondents specifically argued that identifying as or performing any gender is pointless for individuals who are uninterested in sex, situating detachment from gender as a detachment from sexuality and being seen as a sexual object. To some degree, this argument is dubious; after all, agender individuals can be sexually attracted and attractive to others (e.g., Galupo et al. 2016), and individuals may identify as agender or genderless but still be perceived and treated by others as men or women.
It is also worth noting that respondents who were AFAB were much likelier to convey elements of gender detachment. My findings suggest that gender detachment may be common among asexual individuals, but that it is much more specifically common to asexual individuals who were AFAB. This suggests a gendered relationship to gender detachment. If true, this could be explained by differential relationships to the gender structure between men and women. Because this structure legitimizes the dominance of men over women at a group level, people gendered as women may simply be less invested in and/or have a more critical relationship with that structure. Perhaps for those who are gendered as women, gender detachment can be a strategy for survival or resistance in a patriarchal, misogynistic society.
The likeliest explanation for the apparent connection between asexuality and gender detachment is that sexuality and gender are coassembled (see also Cuthbert 2019), with each as the foundational base for the other. Put differently, to be “sexual-ed” is already to be gendered, and to be gendered is already to be “sexual-ed” (see Valocchi 2005). Because asexuality falls outside of widely accepted notion that everyone experiences sexual attraction (Gupta 2015; Przybylo 2019), this destabilizes not only sexuality but gender as well. Although asexuality may make the possibility of gender detachment easier to recognize or imagine, however, it seems plausible that gender detachment could be found in settings unrelated to asexuality. Indeed, gender detachment resonates with a larger body of research documenting queer people’s movement away from stable, essentialized identity labels (Galupo et al. 2016; Holmes and Ghaziani 2025; Hord 2022; Pfeffer 2014), suggesting it may be part of a broader shift in how people relate to gender and sexuality labels. Even if gender detachment did originate among asexual individuals (itself a contestable assertion), it could travel to non-asexual spaces. Future research should allow for the possibility of gender detachment to examine whether these seeds of ungendering exist in non-asexual spaces as well.
My findings suggest that scholars should rethink how we measure gender. When scholars do not allow respondents to indicate nonattachment to a gender identity, we reproduce compulsory gender. Recall that respondents in this study almost all gave gender identities when asked, and I only later learned through probing that these answers were misleading. Because it is common for researchers to solicit respondents’ gender identities but not to probe much further, it is possible (if not likely) that other studies are also missing these experiences of detachment from gender identification. This is a challenging problem without a simple solution. However, I do have several suggestions. One is for scholars to include questions in their research design that ask respondents how attached they feel to their gender identity, how important gender is to their sense of self, and if they have a desire to “opt out” of gender categorization. Another is to include a “none of the above” option which, when selected, leads respondents to be asked questions aiming to discern if they are detached from gender identification. I encourage other researchers to consider other avenues for addressing the challenge of compulsory gender in our research practices. Doing so will not only make our research not only more inclusive but also more accurate.
Conclusion
This study builds upon feminist theorists’ work on ungendering (e.g., Firestone 1971; Lorber 2000, 2005, 2021; Risman 1999; Wittig 1980). However, this study departs from the bulk of previous work in providing empirical support for this concept. From my data, I introduce the concept of gender detachment, which refers to respondents’ sense that gender is irrelevant, unimportant, pointless, and/or not useful in understanding and defining the self. I also build the concept of compulsory gender.
Gender detachment appears to be an example of the type of “ungendering” that various theorists have anticipated for decades (Butler 1990, 2004; Connell 2005; Deutsch 2007; Lorber 2000, 2005, 2021; Risman 1999, 2009). Others have questioned whether the “undoing” of gender is even possible, or if gender can only be “redone” but not “undone” (West and Zimmerman 2009). Previous empirical work on ungendering has largely not addressed this critique, as it has focused on resisting discriminatory treatment and inequality (e.g., Chan et al. 2010; Claringbould and Knoppers 2008) or on gender integration (e.g., Sasson-Levy and Amram-Katz 2007) rather than on resisting gender categories themselves. The limited work that has documented individuals who were actively working to “undo” gender (Connell 2010) has noted that these individuals both “undo” and “redo” gender.
This study pushes scholars to consider compulsory gender, or the sense that everyone does, and should, have a gender identity. Gender detachment can be viewed as a form of resistance (even if only an implicit one) to the pressures of compulsory gender. Nonetheless, gender detachment operates within and emerges from a gender paradigm (and specifically within a Western gender paradigm (Lugones 2007, 2016; Patil 2018). In that sense, West and Zimmerman’s (2009) allegation that escaping accountability to gender is impossible is inarguable. Yet it appears that resistance necessitates engagement (Butler 1990). By operating from the perspective that gender categorization is compulsory, we can see that gender detachment’s simultaneous engagement with and rejection of gender is perhaps inescapable. This echoes Crawley’s (2022) contention that even gender arrangements that challenge normative sex/gender/sexuality regimes still entail “doing gender.” This does not mean that phenomena such as gender detachment merely involve “redoing” gender (or even that “redoing” gender and “undoing” gender are necessarily distinct) nor that they are ineffectual forms of resistance. Resisting and “doing” gender may be fundamentally inseparable. As such, gender detachment has the potential to destabilize and denaturalize gender—while perhaps also “redoing” it.
Footnotes
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