‘My Gender Is Like An Empty Lot’ The People Who Reject Man, Woman And Any Other Gender label
‘My gender is like an empty lot’ − the people who reject man, woman and any other gender label.
When I asked Manisha to describe her gender identity, she gave a simple answer: “Meh.”
“I don’t have a gender identity,” Manisha explained. “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.’”
Manisha’s response didn’t shock me. In my work as a sociologist, I had been interviewing asexual individuals – people who experience low to no sexual attraction – across the United States for months from 2020 to 2021. Like Manisha, more than a third of the 77 people I talked to were uncomfortable with defining themselves through the lens of gender. Gender was, as I came to describe it, detached from their sense of...










