User blog:DragonMarquise/An Informal Discussion on the Agender Spectrum

Disclaimer that I do have a sandboxed article in development for the agender spectrum, but that's hit a roadblock due to lack of recognition outside of social media. Even when I do find something, it's grouped with the ace and aro spectra, and usually one of the other two gets talked about more, unfortunately.

This isn't intended to be a replacement source or anything, this is more me venting about how little recognition the agender spectrum gets by itself, even though it gets mentioned a lot alongside acespec and arospec. Also just going over concepts and ideas about the agender spectrum, to let people know what I'm trying to look for.

Suffice to say, I won't be putting too many links or sources here. This is a very informal discussion. Anything I would have used is probably already in my sandbox article anyways.

What is the Agender Spectrum?
To borrow similar wording from the acespec and arospec articles, the agender spectrum means gender identities that are agender or are closely related to agenderism. It's a spectrum from agender, as in no gender at all, to "allogender", as in some sort of gender at all. Whether the gender is man, woman, nonbinary, maverique, neutrois, etc., if it's experienced at 100%, then it's allogender.

Note, allogender is basically the gender equivalent to allosexual (i.e. not asexual) and alloromantic (i.e. not aromantic). You could also go with non-agender, or just plain "gendered"/gender.

The agender spectrum seems to have its own flag, though in my opinion I don't think it's quite as... nice? Appealing? As the other two specific spectrum flags (here and here). I think it also doesn't help that this flag was apparently originally intended to be just an alternative to the agender flag. I first found the flag being referred to as an agender spectrum flag on Tumblr, but then found out it wasn't meant to be an agender spectrum flag in the first place! At least I'm sure there'll be opportunities to design a proper agender spectrum flag in the future.

A small bonus, ideas for shortening the name in a similar manner as the other two spectra: "agen spectrum" and "agenspec".

Examples of Identities on the Agender Spectrum
These don't cover all possible identities on the spectrum, these are just some examples to give readers a better idea of what the agender spectrum can look like.

Demigender: Where a person feels partly a gender, with the big examples being demigirl and demiboy. If the other part besides the main gender could be described as being agender, then that would be an example of an identity on the agender spectrum. Using demigirl as an example, there could be someone that only feels 50% girl, or 10% or 70% or anything else between 0% and 100%. Then besides that percentage of girl, the rest of their gender just feels like agender!

Graygender: Where a person has a weak connection to their gender, or otherwise doesn't care about their gender. Fitting it in with the percentages examples, we could say someone who is graygender may only experience between 1% to 10% gender, with the rest being agender.

Genderflux: Where a person's gender changes in intensity rather than type (as with genderfluid). When it is less intense, a person could describe their gender as being more like agender. So then think of like a thermometer changing in temperature, with one end of the thermometer being agender!

Agenderflux: A subset of genderflux where a person is mostly agender, but then it fluctuates to other genders.

Agenderfluid: Kind of in a similar vein as agenderflux, where a person is mostly/usually agender, but can be fluids towards other gender identities. I think some places can also define this as being fluid among several different agender spectrum identities!

Libragender: Where a person's gender is mostly agender, but can also have a partial connection to other genders.

Apogender: I've seen this one more or less described as the following, "a subset of agender in which one feels not only genderless but entirely removed from the concept of gender". An apogender friend of mine once joked that this identity could basically be called "Advanced Agender".

Gendervoid: A microlabel of agender that is often defined as something like "an absence, a blank space or void where a gender might otherwise be."

The Agender Spectrum vs. the Gender Spectrum
I think maybe part of why the agender spectrum isn't talked about as much as the other two a-spectra is that the concept of a regular gender spectrum is already a big idea in the LGBTQIA+ community. Stuff like this and the Venn diagram here is what I mean, having charts and graphs where genders can be "mapped out" across man, woman, nonbinary (sometimes specifically maverique, neutrois, etc.), and agender. I guess maybe some people think there's not much of a point to an agender spectrum since it's like "agender is included on most gender spectrum charts anyways".

The way I see it, the agender spectrum is different in that it's a spectrum between having no gender and have any gender at all! Again, going back to the allogender/gendered terms I used earlier. Meanwhile the gender spectrum is more like figuring out the specifics across as many specific/distinct gender identities as possible. And again, enough people keep mentioning an "agender spectrum" alongside the other two a-spectra. why not acknowledge it as something separate from the gender spectrum as well?

The A Spectrum (Ace, Aro, and Agen)
So the a-spectrum is defined on this wiki as being the asexual spectrum and aromantic spectrum together under one big spectrum. However, there are a few formal sources out there that also list the agender spectrum alongside the other two, as I've mentioned repeatedly by this point. I've even put in a few sources on that in the a-spec article's Controvery section.

However, at this point it's just so frustrating. The agender spectrum is pretty much always only mentioned alongside the other two, and practically never on its own. The asexual spectrum and aromantic spectrum have each gotten their own articles and papers and such discussing them by themselves, but it seems there's basically nothing for the agender spectrum on its own!

Why bother mentioning it so much when it feels like people just can't separate it from the other two?! And to be fair, I'm basically guilty of that myself, having mentioned them so much in this very blog post already! I feel like there needs to be a big change in how the agender spectrum, and agender as an identity by itself, is looked at by everyone.

One last note, I think perhaps the a-spectrum (as defined as a combined spectrum of the ace, aro, and agen spectra) should be renamed to the AAA-spectrum, to better acknowledge that it's the three different spectra in one. There's an identity known as AAAflux, where a person's identity is in flux on all three spectra, so there's a bit of basis to calling it the AAA-spectrum. It would just be a matter of getting articles, journals, etc. mentioning it as well.

Could Advocacy Help?
As much as I'm kind of annoyed about how the agender spectrum doesn't get much spotlight away from the asexual and aromantic spectra, I can acknowledge that maybe the agender spectrum can use the other two as a reference point for how to get more recognition.

Both asexuality and aromanticism have at least one fairly well-known advocacy group: AVEN for asexuality and AUREA for aromanticism. Maybe something that could help get the agender spectrum more recognition, and help agender people overall, is to have an advocacy group specifically for agender? Whenever I look into support groups and the like for agender, or even just more info in general from official-ish sources, it's almost always paired with nonbinary overall, or alongside asexual and aromantic like usual.

So I think it might be time for agender to have its own advocacy group! And who knows, this could lead to groups for other individual nonbinary identities as well, and I'm sure that could only help in the long run. Admittedly I even went as far as looking into domain hosting, custom emails, and even picking out a fancy acronym, but at this point I gotta stop myself before I get too far ahead. I don't have much free time right now for a lot of personal projects I want to do, let alone something like this.

That's really about it for this blog post. Thank you for reading this!